I roll left, the heat of a grazing round whispering past my ear, and return fire, feeling the familiar recoil vibrate up my arm through the colorful sleeves of tattoos that twist like serpentsready to strike. He drops, and I don't spare him a glance because there's no time.
Storm reaches the shed first and kicks open the door. He tosses accelerant in and then adds a pack of lit matches.
Flames roar to life instantly. The orange tongues devour the dry timber and send acrid smoke billowing into the sky, a signal to every last Vulture that their hideout is done.
Heat blasts my face, drying the sweat on my cheeks to a tight mask, and the crackle of burning wood mixes with shouts as more enemies spill out, panicked and exposed.
Our crew picks them off systematically.
Phantom’s shotgun booms like God’s wrath on judgment day.
Cipher's Desert Eagle 44 Magnums pop from the ridge with deadly accuracy while I push forward. My heart is a relentless drum in my chest that has nothing to do with the fight and everything to do with the woman I've hunted for five endless months.
And then, through the haze and chaos, I see her.
Layla.
She bursts from the mansion’s front door like a furious goddess. Black hair streams behind her in a beautiful mess of perfection.
Fuck.
She’s got me thinking like a damn poet.
She stops and her hair falls around her delicate shoulders, making her look wild.
Her body is clad only in underwear that clings to her curves.
My breath catches, a vise clamping around my ribs. Layla Wren is alive. Even from this distance I can see the fear and determination in those hazel eyes. She pushes at her glasses, the black frames in stark contrast to the light dusting of freckles and her flushed skin.
She clutches a wad of papers to her chest with one hand and a gun in the other, her bare feet pounding the grass as she sprints into the large field stretching toward the dirt road. Every instinct screams to drop everything and fall to my knees right here in the mud and thank God that I’ve found her breathing and fighting.
She glances over her shoulder, fear and stubborn fire warring in her eyes. For a split second, our gazes lock, and in that space between heartbeats, something inside me shifts. I feel it settle into place, heavy and right where my heart belongs. She is the reason I have not slept, barely eaten, and not given up. She is the ghost I’ve chased for months, and now she is flesh and blood, sweat and tears, and I will kill anyone who tries to take her from me.
A Vulture lunges from behind the column to my left, gun drawn. I surge forward, body moving on instinct, every muscle tuned to violence and need. I eliminate him but she doesn't see another one barreling down from her left until he's almost on her.
Time fractures.
She spins, raises that shaky gun, and fires. Her shot hits dead center.
The Vulture drops in a heap, his body twitching once before going still.
Pride surges through me, hot and fierce, because my girl isn't just surviving. She's claiming her freedom and I recognize the fire I know flowing through her veins.
She stumbles then, momentum carrying her over the hill's edge, disappearing into a tumble of thorns and dust that rips at my gut like claws.
Shit.
I cut across the field, legs burning as I vault a fallen log, the metallic bite of blood in my mouth from where I bit my tongue holding back a roar.
Bullets zip past, one clipping a tree trunk and showering me with bark that stings like wasp strikes, but I weave through it all. The hill looms, and I launch myself down, boots sliding on loose dirt until I hit the dirt road at the bottom, chest heaving.
She's there, scrambling to her feet amid the thornbushes, scratches blooming red down her legs and arms, her delicate build trembling but damn if she doesn’t grab for her glasses and start moving again.
And this time she’s moving toward me.
“Layla.” Saying her name for the first time does something to my soul. It shifts in a way that tells me I will never go back to the days of wanting to ride this world solo.
And ain’t that a kick in the ass. I’ve forever thought love and all the shit it brings with it had a space in my life and here I am romanticizing saving a damsel in distress like a hero in some book Charli makes everyone read.
