My mind went into overdrive, calculating angles, distances, probabilities. Three armed men. Diesel close to Mia, Snake with the fastest draw I’d ever seen, Tommy fumbling but armed. My Glock had sixteen rounds. I might get Diesel before Snake put two in my head.
Might.
“The hell is she doing here?” Tommy started down the ladder, hand fumbling for his Beretta. “This place is supposed to be abandoned.”
“I’m just a photographer.” Mia held up her camera with her free hand. Christ, her voice. Still musical even when terrified. “The real estate company sent me to?—”
“Real estate? Who cares?” Tommy’s voice pitched higher as he reached the ground. “She’s seen the trucks. The plates. Our faces. She knows we’re here.”
I watched Mia’s face as understanding dawned. Watched her realize these weren’t just crude men who’d let her go with awarning. The little color she’d regained drained from her skin again, leaving her pale as winter moonlight.
“Then we got ourselves a problem, don’t we?” Diesel kept his grip on Mia’s wrist, yanking her closer. “And I only know one way to solve problems like this. Quick and permanent-like.”
Six years. Six years, I’d stayed away to keep her safe. Six years of checking her Instagram from burner phones, of driving past her apartment at three a.m. just to see her lights on and know she was alive. Six years of knowing there were other men holding her, kissing her—I may not have ever seen it, but it was happening—living the life I’d walked away from. All to keep her out of my world, because I knew I brought danger.
I never dreamed it would bethissort of danger.
“Please, I won’t tell anyone—” Mia’s voice broke.
“’Course you won’t.” Diesel’s free hand went to the knife on his belt. “Dead girls don’t tell stories. How you want to do this, Snake? My way takes longer, but it’s more fun.”
Snake stepped forward, drawing his SIG Sauer in one fluid motion. No emotion on his face. Just business. “No time for games. Two to the chest, one to the head. Clean.”
He raised the pistol, aiming center mass.
Mia’s eyes—those beautiful eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon—went wide with terror. A sob escaped her throat. She was going to die, thinking I was just standing here. Watching. Doing nothing.
Snake’s finger moved to the trigger.
My body coiled tight as piano wire. Three seconds until he fired. I could draw, maybe get one shot off before—no. The math didn’t work. She’d still be dead.
Two seconds.
There had to be another way. Had to be?—
One second.
I had to fucking do something, even if this got me killed. I stepped forward, using the drawl I’d perfected the past six weeks.
“Hang on there. I don’t think so, fellas.”
Chapter 2
Coop
Every eye swung around toward me.
My fingers itched to pull the trigger. To drop Snake where he stood before he could hurt her. To paint the barn walls with Diesel’s blood. To become the killer they already thought I was.
I’d do it in a heartbeat if it meant keeping Mia alive.
Six years, I’d stayed away, convinced myself she was better off without me. Now she was here, trembling against Diesel’s grip with Snake’s SIG aimed at her chest, and every sacrifice I’d made meant nothing.
I couldn’t watch her die. Not Mia. Not the woman who used to trace my scars in the dark and tell me I was worth saving. Even if it meant burning my cover, destroying six weeks of groundwork, failing the mission that would take down this entire militia operation and stop military-grade weapons from reaching terrorist hands—none of it mattered if that gun fired.
But there was another way. A way that fucking sucked, but one that might keep her breathing.
The idea formed like poison spreading through my veins. These men respected only one thing more than violence: ownership. If Mia was mine, if I claimed her, she’d become property instead of a problem. It made me sick to my core, but sick was better than dead.
