“You’re one of them.”
Cass kicked the gun away from the fallen man.
Her breath shuddered in and out. She grabbed for the phone on the nightstand. She dialed nine-one-one. “Help,” Agnes said as soon as the operator picked up. “There has been a shooting at the Grove Motel on?—”
Cass snatched the phone from her fingers and slammed it back onto the cradle. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Damn. He’d moved fast. As far as what she’d been doing… “Calling for help. You said he was still alive.” She still gripped the gun in her right hand.
Cass sucked in a deep breath. “You aren’t a Fed any longer, remember?”
“I just shot an intruder who tried to shoot me, I?—”
“You’d better get her the hell out of here.”
Her gaze flew to the open doorway.
Javion Booker stood there, hands on the wooden frame, a twisted glower on his face. Javion Booker, Cass’s right-hand. Agnes knew he had been a member of the Night Strikers since?—
“Can’t a man even get half an hour’s worth of damn sleep,” Javion grumbled, “without some prick getting his ass shot? Without gunfire waking everyone up?”
When had Javion arrived at the motel?
Javion’s dark eyes locked on her. “She shouldn’t be here when the cops arrive,” Javion warned. “None of us should be.”
“Tell me shit I don’t know,” Cass groused.
She looked back at the man sprawled on the cement. She lunged for him.
Cass locked an arm around her waist and hauled her back against him. “What are you doing?” His breath blew lightly against the shell of her ear. “Trying to help the man who just attempted to murder you in your sleep?”
Her gaze whipped back toward the bed. She could see the bullet hole in the pillow. Where her head had been. And the two holes in the sheets and mattress. Where her body had been.
“Good thing your ass fell out of bed,” Cass added.
Her mouth dropped open. “I didn’t fall! I leapt out! To save you! To cover you!” How dare he suggest that she’d fallen? She hadn’t accidentally been protecting him.
He grunted and tightened his hold on her. “Good thing you fell.”
The jerk?—
“We’re getting out of here. Now.”
“Great plan,” Javion praised. He crouched next to the man in the doorway. “Oh, yeah, he’s dead.”
What? “Cass said he was still alive! That he was breathing!”
Javion frowned. “That’s a hole in his heart.”
She jerked against Cass’s hold. “Were you lying to me? Is he already dead?”
When he didn’t respond, Agnes elbowed Cass and tore from his grip. In two seconds, she was on her knees next to the fallen man. She searched for a pulse. Didn’t find one, dammit. Her hands flew over him. “We can help him.” Absolutely, one hundred percent. Maybe? Potentially?
He wore a motorcycle helmet with the visor still down. Like that didn’t play right into her nightmares. She grabbed the helmet and lifted it off his face.
Teardrop tattoos marked his cheeks. Two on the left. One on the right. A series of skulls and spiderwebs covered his neck. She grabbed his sleeves and shoved up the right one.
Two-headed cobra. Not the one from her nightmares, though. This was too high on his forearm. The heads were right at his elbow. And the heads were smaller than they’d been on the man who’d killed Max and used his knife on her.
