Keeping his arm around his witch, Kaz grimly asked, “What’s that, Norm? It sounds an awful lot like you don’t want my mate to call Enforcement. Seems to me like you’d prefer I took care of things. I wonder why that is?”
“You don’t understand!” he sobbed, pink-tinged spittle and tears mingling on the floor under his cheek. “You don’t understand what they’ll do! This was my last chance and youruined it!They’ll take away my funding and thenkillme! Atria, babe, please listen to—”
Kaz’s tone hardened. “Seems like your priorities need to be reorganized, Norm. And if I were you, I’d stop calling my matebabe.Now.” He dug his boot in a little deeper, until he heard the breath wheeze out of his lungs. “Who put up the bounty?”
Norman gasped. He tried to reach back to wrest Kaz’s boot off of his spine, but he was both too weak and too terrified to do more than slap at the meat of his calf. “I’m not going to tell you!”
“You sure about that?” He twisted his heel, grinding rubber-encased steel into delicate vertebrae. “Because I’ve heard all sorts of nasty rumors about the EVP’s shadow squad. They’re very, very good at getting people to talk, and you’ve made the extremely stupid mistake of betraying someone under the sovereign’s protection. Theyreallydon’t like that.”
Norman made an incoherent sound of alarm. “Are you saying they’lltorture me?”
Kaz curled his free hand around the nape of Atria’s neck. Speaking with every ounce of rage and hate he felt, he promised, “Only afterIfinish with you.”
“You don’tunderstand,”he wailed. “They’ll hunt me down and—”
The shot came out of nowhere.
At least, itfeltlike it came from nowhere. In reality, the bolt that ended Norman Chambers’ pitiful existence on Burden’s Earth came through a blacked-out window at the front of the lab, melting the smallest hole in the glass on its way to enter his body. The smell of singed flesh tickled Kaz’s nose.
Kaz blinked once before he acted.
Wrapping his arm around Atria’s waist, he bounded the three steps between them and the swinging door just as another shot streaked through the air — exactly where his head had once been.
“Fuckingsniper,”he growled, shoving them past the door and back into the hallway. “We can’t go back out the way we came. If they were smart, they didn’t come alone and probably have it covered.” And theyhadto be smart. They were certainly smart enough to use Norman as bait, and they were smart enough to know exactly when to cut off the liability he represented.
If things had gone according to his plan, they probably would have shot him anyway.Because Norman was expendable. Atria was the real prize.
Whether these were bounty hunters or the people who put the bounty out in the first place, he couldn’t be sure, but he wasn’t about to risk another confrontation. He needed to get themout.
Looking down at Atria, he found her staring wide-eyed at the door. Her tear-streaked face had gone ashen, and when he cupped the side of her throat, he felt her whole body tremble.
“Princess,” he barked, giving her neck a quick squeeze. If Norman was smart enough to not give them his security codes, they had a precious few seconds before they were overrun and outgunned.
When her gaze finally moved to meet his, he said, “I know you’re in shock right now, but you said Norman showed you the blueprints of this place. Is there another exit besides the front and side doors?”
“I—” Atria swallowed thickly. “Yes. Yes. There’s a loading dock.” She pointed over his shoulder, down to the opposite end of the hall from where they came in. “He said he was going to turn it into a garage.”
“Good. That means he might have a car in there we can use.” Kaz didn’t waste anymore time. Grabbing her arm, he swung her behind him and then lifted Norman’s gun, keeping it aimed straight ahead with both hands locked around the grip.
Moving briskly down the hall, he asked, “You remember what I told you? If I go down, you haul ass.”
Atria’s sandals slapped against the linoleum as she tried to keep up with his long strides. He could hear the tremble in her voice when she asked, “Did you mean what you said to— to Norman?”
Kaz paused a moment at the swinging door to the loading dock, listening for any other movement, before he shoved the door aside. Stepping into the dark, musty storage space gun first, he made sure it was clear before he shoved Atria inside and shut the door.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” he grunted, jogging over to the dark form of what appeared to be an older model of compact SUV.
Atria circled around to the passenger’s side. Gripping the mirror with white-knuckled fingers, she rasped, “When you said I was your mate. Did you mean that?”
Using the handy lock jammer he kept on his key ring at all times, Kaz disengaged the lock on the driver’s side door and slid into the seat. Reaching over to unlock her door for her, he thrust it open and snapped, “Do you think I’d do this for anyone else?”
He was already working on the controls by the time she clambered in and shut the door. The car came to life with a low, rumbling hum.
Kaz eyed the button on the dashboard monitor that readopen door.Could he risk it? Waiting for the door to open would just give anyone outside more time to aim a gun—
Atria’s fingers gripped the leather of his jacket bunched against his wrist. Kaz’s eyes swung her way. He found her staring up at him with a jutted jaw and eyes burning.
Spitting every word, she said, “I’m your mate. You don’t get to tell me to leave you to die.Never,Kaz. Never.”
