Clearly, he’d been smart enough to hide how broken he was from the agency’s psychotherapist.
“I was doing quite well, actually,” he said almost conversationally. “Even met someone. She’s not Natalya, but she was a lovely distraction for a while. Until someone in James’s circle mentioned he’d helped you out. And for whom. And for why. A woman. Something just … something just snapped, Logan. Do you understand? Do you understand at least why I can’t let you have what you stole from me? Where is she? I know she’s here. We watched her take the crossing earlier and that is her vehicle in the clearing, is it not? Is she hiding in the house or the barn?”
He didn’t know she was the one who’d shot his companion.
Good.
“I won’t let you hurt her.”
“Whatever happens here, sheisgoing to die, Logan. Either I kill you first and then I kill her, or I kill her first and then kill you.” I saw his weapon lower ever so slightly to my gut and his finger tense on the trigger.
The shot rang out a second before my trigger finger moved.
50.Ramsay
Astrip of moonlight highlighted Ian’s face in the dark. His expression was frozen with wrath as a dark dot appeared on his forehead milliseconds after the shot sounded.
Like a puppet cut from his strings, his knees collapsed beneath him and he fell face-first onto the packed dirt.
Dead.
Bracken snapped and leaves crunched as I lowered my weapon, surprise rooting me to the spot for a second.
Until Silver appeared, the rifle at her side, her face slack with pale shock. “Told you I was a crack shot,” she whispered.
Relief and pride and adrenaline crashed through me as I bridged the distance between us. She released the rifle to fall into me, wrapping her arms around me as tightly as I embraced her.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” I murmured, my hands moving over her, to feel her, to reassure myself she was alive and unhurt.
“I … I killed him.”
I pressed a hard kiss to the top of her head. “I know. But he would have killed us.”
“I know. I heard everything he said.”
“I’m sorry.” I bent my head to murmur in her ear, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t.” Silver pulled away to look up at me. “It’s not my fault Halston Cole is a psychopath, and it’s not your fault Ian Kingston lost his mind when he lost his wife. Okay?Wedidn’t do this.”
I kissed her, probably too hard, too bruising. But for once, I couldn’t control my emotions as I pressed kisses to her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead.
“We’re okay,” she comforted me. “We’re going to be okay.”
They were on us before either of us realized.
Because real professionals were like fucking ninjas.
“Hands in the air,” a deep, Scottish accented male voice called out.
I raised my hands, looking up and around to see they had us surrounded. “We’re good.” I called out the code word. “Silver!”
The sound of weapons being lowered had me reaching for Silver again. The team moved toward us. The man who’d spoken identified himself. “Captain Reynolds, Special Forces.” He shook my hand and nodded at Silver. “I was going to say you were lucky our unit had stopped at the barracks off Skye on our way home from an operation … but it seems you didn’t need us after all.”
I suspected Reynolds was E Squadron, a secret unit of the Special Forces, mostly because they were the unit who reported not only to the Ministry of Defense but to MI6.
“I appreciate you coming all the same.”
Reynolds nodded. “Is everyone all right?”
