Her eyes roll back, her body goes limp against the wall, and for one terrible second I think she's dead.
That he killed her and I was too late and everything I've done to get here was for nothing.
But her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
She's alive.
My wife is alive. My child is alive.
And the man who hurt them is about to learn what that costs.
I don't aim for Virgil's head.
That would be too quick.
Too merciful, and mercy is something I left on the highway about thirty miles back, somewhere between the motel where he wasn't and the compound where my wife should have been safe.
The shot tears through his right knee, shattering bone and cartilage, and he goes down screaming.
The sound is high and raw and beautiful—the first note in a symphony I'm going to conduct with my bare hands.
He crashes to the filthy floor, clutching his ruined leg, blood already pooling beneath him.
His face is a mask of agony and disbelief, like he can't quite understand how he ended up here.
How the hunter became the prey.
Behind me, I hear Ruger and Coin push through the wreckage of the wall I made.
Their boots crunch on broken glass and splintered wood, and I feel them take positions at my shoulders.
Flanking me. Guarding me. Bearing witness.
"Jesus Christ." Coin's voice is barely a whisper. He's seen Vanna. Seen the bruises blooming across her face, the blood matted in her hair, the way her clothes are torn. "Garrett..."
"I know." I don't take my eyes off Virgil. "Get Maddox in here. Have him take her to Ruby. Call Leah—tell her to meet them at the ER. Tell her..." My voice catches. "Tell her to be ready."
Ruger moves to the hole in the wall, calls out orders.
I hear Maddox's heavy footsteps a moment later, hear his sharp intake of breath when he sees Vanna.
"Careful with her," I say.
"I know, brother." Maddox's voice is gentle in a way I've never heard from him before.
He's our enforcer, built like a grizzly bear, hands that can crush a man's skull.
But he gathers my wife like she's made of glass, cradling her against his chest like she weighs nothing at all.
Because she does.
She's fought so hard during this pregnancy being clean, stress eating away at her, and now...
Now she's broken. And I'm going to break the man who did it.
Maddox carries her out, and I wait.
I listen to his footsteps fade across the gravel.
