The gun disappeared into the back of his pants before he gripped her wrists, pulling her into a sitting position. When she didn’t keel over, he skimmed his fingers through her hair.
“It’s just the one goose egg. Up you go.”
Still reeling, she let herself be hauled to her feet and led to her car by a firm grip on her elbow. Propped against the door, she watched Rusty Eyes rip a strip from the bottom of his faded Dr Pepper T-shirt.
Makeshift bandage wadded into a ball, he aimed the bunched-up cotton for her hairline.
Senses returning, Gray jerked her head away. “It’s just a scratch.”
He smiled. “If you say so.” He pressed the impromptu dressing into her hand and looked around. In seconds, he located the fob and retrieved it. On his way back, he unlocked the car before escorting her to the passenger side.
“Watch your head.” One hand on the roof of the car and the other on the door, he had her boxed in. His smile stayed in place while he waited for her to comply with his unspoken command, and recognizing she was in over her head with this one, and for the moment out of options, Gray sank into the passenger seat. Through the windshield, she watched the man pull his gun, walk up to the still-unconscious would-be rapist, and shoot him in the head.
Bile hit the back of her throat, and her mouth turned sour.
Oh God. Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit. Don’t—
CHAPTERSIX
Damn it.Chase arrived too late. He lowered his Glock and eased his finger off the trigger. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t shoot the man. Killing Grant Kincaid contravened a direct order. Zero body count unless necessary.
This situation didn’t come close. Not by a long shot.
He watched from behind the cover of the dense underbrush as Bodak’s head of security pulled his gun and plugged one of his own in the head. Then with the efficiency of a practiced killer, he stripped the dead man of his radio and weapon.
A quick scan and Kincaid retrieved the empty shell casing. Evidence dealt with, he grabbed the photographer’s backpack and threw it into the back of the car. From the driver’s side, he spoke to the woman as he adjusted his seat.
She refused to acknowledge him, staring straight ahead and looking a little green as a trickle of blood ran from her hairline. When Kincaid brushed her hair aside to inspect her wound, Chase had a visceral reaction.
He didn’t like it.
Not. At. All.
He liked it even less when the bastard addressed her again, waited for the span of a heartbeat, and then reached over her to pull the passenger seat belt and secure it.
Her response was surprising, emphatic, and easy enough to make out through the windshield. “Go fuck yourself” did not require sign language or even lip-reading skills. Green-tinged skin notwithstanding, she was stunningly beautiful and either tough as nails or batshit crazy.
Chase couldn’t decide which.
Regardless, she did have a spectacular ass.
As the Mazda’s brake lights vanished from sight, the fact her ass was now in Kincaid’s possession made Chase want to shoot the SOB all over again. He had to find a ride and fast.
Plan B materialized as soon as he left the woods and stepped out onto the gravel road. The Denali was parked to the right of the parking lot entrance. Locked. No keys in sight. No problem. He broke the rear passenger window and hit the power lock.
Anti-theft his ass. Chase was a self-admitted mechanical junkie. If it had a motor, he could fix it, start it, drive it, fly it. Keys or no keys—didn’t matter. If it ran on gas, it spoke his language.
It took less than a minute to bypass GM’s security system, and going zero to sixty in six-point-one seconds had him reconsidering his career path. The bad guys always had the nicest shit. When it came to vehicles, the JTT had to settle for function over flash. It was the price they paid for working for a unit that didn’t exist. Total anonymity. Probably safer that way.
The volume on the high-end Bose system cranked, some decent vintage heavy metal filled the cab. Chase dialed it down but didn’t turn it off. He wanted to hear any traffic coming from the two-way radio left sitting in the center console.
He didn’t have to wait long. Kincaid’s voice fired over the airwaves, ordering his men to make their way to the south lot to recover Becker and the Denali. His following message was for Black. “Package secure. ETA to base thirty minutes.”
Not a chance.The photographer would be Chase’s in the next ten.
Catching up to the dust kicked up by the other car’s tires, he fed the beast, and the truck responded with a growl and a surge. It wasn’t until the third hairpin curve where the road changed from gravel to asphalt that he caught sight of the little four-door sedan.
What he witnessed next wasn’t even in the realm of batshit crazy. This woman was seriously flirting with permanent residency on the other side of life as she lunged over Kincaid’s arm, yanking the steering wheel hard to the right.
