Saint tilted his head, but I ignored him. I’d never been sure how much Alexei had told anyone about me, and I didn’t feel like talking about it right now. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything except falling back into the arms of the man I’d woken up with this morning.
“Who’s that?”
Mateo’s growl yanked me back into the present. I followed his glower to a van approaching the site entrance where we loitered. It was dusty white and nondescript. Not out of place on a construction site full of tradesmen, but everything about it pinged my radar.
I straightened up from the slouch I’d lapsed into against a half-built wall, instinct kicking in enough that I almost reached for a gun I didn’t have.
“Who is it?” Mateo repeated. “And why the fuck are they slowing down?”
I had no answers for him. Only a honed sense of imminent danger that had kept me alive long enough to be here in this moment.
The van drew closer, the driver obscured by the glare of the summer sun. Not that it mattered. His hands were on the wheel. Unless he floored it, he wasn’t the threat.
In an ambush, the danger came from the—
The rear door of the van slid open in the same split second that I lunged for Mateo, shoving him hard enough that he careened into Saint.
They both went down.
A shot rang out, the ear-splitting pop of a silenced firearm. Then another as momentum carried me forward and I found myself in a tangle of arms and legs that weren’t my own.
My hands touched something wet and warm as the van engine roared and brakes squealed.
The scent of iron filled my lungs.
Blood.
I couldn’t tell if it was mine.
17
FOLK
The blood was Mateo’s, and it was everywhere. On me and on Saint, saturating our clothes as we tore at his, scrambling to find the entry wound.
“My arm,” he ground out. “Calm the fuck down. It don’t feel bad.”
Saint ripped the last of Mateo’s T-shirt away. Blood seeped from a ragged gash at the top of his bicep, but as I zeroed in on it, I relaxed a fraction.
He was right. It was a clip, not a bullet hole.
A literal brush with death.
“This is going to hurt.” I brought my hand to the bloody mess, forcing pressure into the wound while Saint stood and addressed the brothers who’d spilled out of the building site.
“Lock it down. Secure the perimeter. Anyone pulls their phone out, bring them to me.”
The orders were cold. And I got it. Death threats weren’t my thing. I liked action more than words. But I knew how this went. If word of the gunfire leaked out, this place would be crawling with feds.
I focused on Mateo again. He was fine, hadn’t even lost colour in his face. “Looks worse than it is. Stay down for a bit, though. Let your body acclimate.”
Mateo rolled his eyes. “It’s just a graze, man. You want to go after those fuckers?”
It wasn’t my call.
I met Saint’s stare and he shook his head.
“It’s a game.”
