FIVE
Sloane picked her up,slung her over his shoulder, and strode across the apartment. Her long black hair swayed against the thin armor covering his back as he navigated the tiny home he’d watched for so many months. He didn’t bother stepping around puddles of viscera or the twitching limb he’d torn off the dumb fuck who pistol-whipped his doe but stomped right through them both.
His breath rasped through his helmet’s filter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been breathless, let alone… whatever it was he was experiencing now, but he didn’t have time to think about what that meant.
The soft weight of his target, held so carefully over his armored shoulder, was his sole focus.
Sloane held her tightly with one arm as he reared back to kick out the remaining glass that clung to the window frame. It wouldn’t puncture his armor or even his skin, but Cecilia was far more delicate. She’d sustained enough damage due to his negligence. He refused to add any more.
When he had her secured, he’d return to the apartment to clean up the mess he’d made.
Carefully ducking through the empty window frame, he stepped onto the old fire escape. It groaned pitifully under his considerable weight. Silently cursing, he hurried to pull the curtains shut over the window, hopefully disguising the carnage for a little while, before he began the treacherous one-handed climb down the ladder.
Normally he wouldn’t have bothered, preferring to simply jump to the ground, but he was painfully aware of how brittle Cecilia’s bones were. Instead of the fastest route, he gripped the backs of her thighs and climbed down with one hand. His uniform absorbed the artificial light in the alley, keeping him hidden, but it wouldn’t do much good in the coming sunrise.
Even Fracture had to do their best to stay out of sight during the day.
His boots hit the cracked pavement of the alley with a solidthwump.Sloane adjusted his grip on his target and stepped confidently toward the curb. He’d left his bike at the barracks, just as he always did when he took up his post outside her home. To give the captain peace of mind, it was equipped with a tracker that Sloane wasn’t supposed to know about. Of course, they all knew they were constantly monitored, so it wasn’t a particularly effective deterrent of bad behavior.
When he wanted to be seen, he took the bike at the barracks. When he didn’t, he took one of the several other identical bikes he stashed around the city. Unfortunately, none of them were suitable for the situation at hand.
The vampires had come in a flashy vehicle that would work far better.
Sloane fished a small metal device from his pocket and held it up to the shiny red door. It worked by hacking the m-enhanced chip that connected all modern vehicles to the street grid and acted as something like a universal key fob. A handy tool to have for someone like him, especially because the scum of Burden’sEarth never seemed smart enough — or have the taste — to buy vintage cars.
The car’s security disengaged with a quick flash of the narrow headlights. Streaks of dawn were beginning to lighten the sky above the street when he opened the back passenger door and laid Cecilia across the shiny black seats. He didn’t stop to admire her. He couldn’t, or else he’d never get her to safety. Sloane barely allowed his gaze to skim over the vast expanse of her exposed legs before he firmly shut the door.
Evacuation,he thought, leaping over the hood of the car.Get her safe. Get her patched up.
After that… well, he didn’t have a plan, but he’d never been much for them anyway. Sloane acted first and figured out the rest later. It was why he was such a good assassin, and also why he’d never been able to stop himself from stalking her after that first night. Just because he’d given himself the assignment of her protection duty didn’t mean he’d changed his tactics.
His heart hammered as he slid into the driver’s seat. Sloane pulled away from the curb smoothly, his gloved fingers curled around the steering wheel. That raw, pulsing nerve in his chest screamed with feeling as he navigated the tangled knot of San Francisco’s streets. The m-grid kept him from the screeching speed he would’ve preferred, but it also helped to not draw any attention to them.
Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, soaking the folds of armored fabric that attached to the underside of his helmet. The wordsI have her, I have her, I have herpounded the inside of his skull like dozens of fists. The fists hit harder when they drove through the Presidio, where the sprawling Patrol barracks and officer quarters were. There was no way any of them would know what he’d done or that he had a civilian in the back of the stolen car, but the threat they represented raised his hackles anyway. There were hundreds of trained people who’d know immediatelythat they should be separated. They’d try to take her away, and he’d never see her again.
Never, never, never.
He had to grit his fangs to ease the tension until they crossed the border onto the bridge. The world was a blur as he crossed the Golden Gate with his precious cargo. The sunrise splashed reds and oranges across the sky, as vivid as the mess he left in her apartment.
He couldn’t leave it there. Once he had her secured in his bolthole, he’d return and dispose of the bodies in his usual way.
No one would know.
Paranoia blended seamlessly with determination. Sloane hadn’t planned this, but that didn’t mean he was unprepared. He’d been doing nothing but prepare for something like this moment for a year, just in case.
In case someone hurt her. In case she ran. In case they tried to take her from him.
For all scenarios, the response was the same.
Sloane drove for an extra hour, far beyond his bolthole, to a rundown storage facility off the freeway, where he quickly and efficiently moved his cargo into an unmarked vehicle he kept there, alongside a cache of money, fake identification, and weapons. Everything, including Cecilia, went into the trunk. Sloane carefully pillowed her head on a bag of clothing before he shut the door.
That done, he moved the vampire’s car into the storage unit and made a plan to dispose of it, too. He doubted anyone would report it missing, knowing the circles the owners most likely ran in, but he hadn’t survived this long by being sloppy.
With everything loaded up, he climbed back into the nondescript SUV and drove back the way he came. Just before he crossed the bridge again, he turned right. The property he’d purchased twenty years ago was deep in the heart of what wasthen about to become a Territory Recreation Area, meaning only the local wolf shifter pack could be his neighbors. It’d been a tip from Delilah that helped him secure the perfect bolthole, and he’d been as grateful as a man like Sloane could be ever since.
Located on the edge of a sea cliff overlooking the Bay and San Francisco beyond it, Battery 129 was built as a solid concrete watchtower at the height of the Great War. When the war ended, the massive guns had been removed and the soldiers stationed there reassigned. Abandoned, it fell into disrepair.
He purchased it under a series of shell companies and false identities just before the news broke that the area around it would never be developed. It was the perfect hideout — one of three he had scattered across the continent — and he’d spent the two decades since secretly turning it into more than a concrete shell.
