Go.
I spun, raising my weapon as Alexei kicked the door, blasting it open for me to surge through, finger tight on the trigger.
The door hit the wall, splintered against the bricks with a crack that rattled my brain, loud above the noise in my ear.
In my head.
In my heart as it sank to my stomach and the shot I fired off found nothing but air in the empty room.
[ 28 ]
RANGER
Something was wrong.
I knew it even without the fucked radio squealing like a deflating balloon in my ear. Without Saint ripping the wire from his skull and hurling it to the ground.
DNA.
I scooped up the fragmented radio and stuffed it in my pocket. “This better be the kind of bullshit you had a plan for.”
Saint made this noise. It was fucking awful, like he was being split in two, and it dawned on me that he was.
Cam and Jakov were behind us.
Vik and Alexei—they’d gone into that building, weapons raised, and we had no idea if the radio shut down had got them fucking killed.
I grabbed Saint’s arm, yanking him forward. “The bosses can take care of themselves. We need to be where the fight is.”
Sound logic but flawed. Cam and Jakov had guns. It stood to reason that anyone they came across would too. Or fucking handcuffs. But we had to choose, and I knew Cam well enough to trust he’d already shoved his own name to the bottom of the pile.
Viktor did stupid shit like that too. A thought that expanded in my panicked brain as me and Saint charged for the building, vaulting the goons we’d already put down and dragged away.
In front of the building was a concrete abyss—a car park with no cars, save the ones we’d disabled, that should’ve lit up with security lights as we sprinted across a second time. But like the first, nothing happened. Jake’s hack held, and it made no fucking sense.
This isn’t right. An instinct that gripped me as hard as the desperate need to get to Viktor. A primal necessity that pumped my blood faster, adrenaline powering my stride.
Me and Saint were both fast. Halfway there in seconds. Caught in the middle as the main door banged open and two figures rushed out.
I dropped low, gun raised, vision grappling in the dark to aim, but some fucker bodied me before I could make a decision about firing, sending me crashing to the concrete, my skull bouncing off the tarmac, starlight blasting my eyes.
Time stopped.
I stopped.
Maybe.
For a thudding, sickening heartbeat, I wasn’t fucking sure.
Then I was in motion again, yanked to my feet, and it dawned on me that the hulk that had sent me flying was Saint. That he still gripped my wrist, angling my gun at the ground.
“No.”
Dazed, I couldn’t grasp what he meant. Wet warmth trickled somewhere near my ear, and his masked face blurred, a smear of black wool in the dark as fast-approaching footsteps came up behind us.
I whirled around, wrestling Saint. But the fight in me died as my vision cleared and Viktor and Alexei popped up, whole and unhurt.
“That building is empty.” Alexei grabbed Saint, heaving him away hard enough to make me stumble. “Where is Cam?”
