Hudson stood there, his gun still raised, his chest heaving. Behind him, in the dim light of the alley, I could see a figure crumpled on the ground.
"Are you okay?" I grabbed at him, my hands running over his chest, his arms, searching for wounds. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." He holstered his gun and pulled me against him, holding me tight. "I'm fine, baby. It's okay."
"What happened? I heard a gunshot. I thought..." I couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't put into words the terror that had gripped me when I'd heard that shot.
"Someone was waiting for me. One guy, hired muscle by the look of him." Hudson's arms tightened around me. "He drew on me. I was faster."
I looked past him at the figure on the ground. He wasn't moving.
"Is he..."
"Shoulder wound. He'll live." Hudson pulled back to look at me, his eyes hard. "But this changes things. They're escalating. They sent someone to kill me so they could get to you."
"Oh God." My legs went weak, and I would have fallen if Hudson hadn't been holding me. "They're not going to stop, are they? They're going to keep coming until I'm dead."
"Hey." He cupped my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him. "Listen to me. They are not going to touch you. I don't care how many people they send. I don't care what they try. You are going to make it to that trial, and you are going to testify, and those bastards are going to spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison. Do you understand me?"
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust that he could keep me safe, that his skills and his team and his resources were enough.
But the fear was a living thing inside me now, coiling around my chest, making it hard to breathe.
"Okay," I whispered. "Okay."
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. Someone had heard the shot and called the cops.
"We need to get you inside," Hudson said, already guiding me back through the door. "Santos is calling the FBI. They need to know about this."
The next few hours were a blur of flashing lights and uniformed officers and questions I'd answered a hundred times before. Agent Torres arrived around midnight, her expression grim as she took in the scene.
"The guy Hudson shot is talking," she said, pulling me aside. "He's a local thug, hired through a shell company that traces back to the same network Lang and Briggs have been using.We're getting closer, Betty. Every move they make is building the case against them."
"Great," I said flatly. "So they just have to kill me before the trial, and none of it matters."
Torres's expression softened. "I know this is hard. But you're almost there. One more week, and this is over."
One more week.
It felt like a lifetime.
By the time the police cleared out and the bar was empty, it was after two in the morning. Marco and Jesse had gone home, and Hudson had sent Santos back to his post outside.
It was just the two of us, standing in the middle of my bar, the silence pressing down on us like a weight.
"You killed someone tonight," I said quietly.
"I wounded him. He's going to survive."
"But you would have. If you'd had to."
Hudson was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Yes. If that's what it took to protect you, I would have killed him without a second thought."
I should have been horrified. Should have been scared of the casual way he said it, the complete lack of hesitation.
Instead, I just felt... grateful.
"I don't know what I'd do without you," I admitted. "These past two weeks, having you here, knowing you've got my back... I don't think I could have survived this alone."
