The fire was roaring now, getting closer. Smoke seeped through gaps in the walls, through cracks in the ceiling, filling the space with a haze that made Lincoln’s eyes water.
“You should be dead.” Randall’s voice was calm. Irritated, like Lincoln was an inconvenient variable in an otherwise solid equation.
“Disappointed?”
“Annoyed.” His arm tightened on Morgan’s throat. “But this still ends the same way. I walk out of here with her. You don’t walk out at all.”
Lincoln kept his weapon trained on the only parts of Randall he could see—a slice of shoulder, a fragment of head, nothing that wouldn’t risk hitting Morgan. She was looking at him, her eyes bright with terror and exhaustion and something else.
Something that looked like a decision being made.
He saw the shift in her expression. Saw her shoulders drop slightly, her body settling into what looked like surrender. Like she was giving up.
Then she went limp.
Complete dead weight, no warning, every muscle releasing at once. Her body dropped straight down, and Randall stumbled, his grip shifting to compensate for the sudden drag, his balance compromised for one critical second?—
Morgan stomped down on his instep. Hard.
Randall’s arm loosened reflexively as he let out a yell, and Morgan drove her elbow back into his ribs with everything she had. The blow wasn’t clean—she didn’t have the angle, didn’t have the training—but she had desperation and fury compressed into one violent moment.
Randall’s hold broke.
Morgan dropped and rolled, clearing the line of fire, and Lincoln watched her do it with something swelling in his chest that he couldn’t name. She wasn’t waiting to be rescued. She was fighting. Creating her own opening with nothing but her body and her will.
That’s my Mercury.
He fired the moment she was clear.
The shot took Randall in the shoulder—exactly where Lincoln aimed, avoiding center mass where a through-and-through might still reach Morgan. The impact spun him sideways, blood spraying across his expensive suit, and he staggered but didn’t fall.
Lincoln crossed the distance in seconds, catching Morgan with his free hand, pulling her behind him, keeping his weapon trained on Randall.
She was shaking. Whole-body tremors that he could feel through his palm where he gripped her arm. But they were both alive and both here. That was all that mattered.
“I’ve got you.” His voice was rough, reduced to a rasp by smoke and fear. “I’ve got you.”
Randall was down on one knee, wounded shoulder hanging, blood soaking through his jacket. But his eyes were clear. Full of calculating rage as he pushed himself back up. Staring only at Morgan.
Lincoln pulled the trigger—easiest decision he’d ever made.
Click. Empty.
He’d lost count of his shots in the chaos—the guards, the choke point, the desperate run through the building. Rookie mistake. The kind of mistake that got people killed.
Part of the ceiling collapsed in the adjacent room—a crash of concrete and metal that sent flames billowing through the doorway. The fire was closing in. They had minutes at most.
The exit was right there. A loading dock door, night air visible beyond. Ten steps and they’d be out, they’d be safe, they’d be?—
“No.” Randall lurched to his feet. His face had twisted into something barely recognizable—greed and fury stripping away the professional mask he’d worn since Lincoln first saw him. He moved toward them. Not toward the exit. Toward Morgan. “She’s mine.Myinvestment.Myfiling cabinet. You don’t get to take what’s mine.”
“It’s over.” Lincoln dropped the useless weapon. “The building’s coming down. Get out or die here.”
“Then you and I will die together,” Randall sneered. “Taking out some computer nerd shouldn’t be a problem. If I can’t have her, nobody can.”
Randall lunged for Morgan, one arm reaching past Lincoln, trying to grab her even now, even with his shoulder destroyed, even with the building burning down around them.
Lincoln intercepted.
