Suddenly, her nose picked up a trace of his scent coming from the roof of the other building. Her frown deepened. Jayson couldn’t possibly have jumped to the far roof. It had to be at least thirty feet.
Then she saw the steel pipe sticking out from the building. That was where his scent was coming from. She gauged the distance to the pipe. While it wasn’t quite thirty feet, it was still far. But Jayson had been trapped on the roof with people shooting at him and nowhere else to go—jumping had probably been the only option.
Layla threw a quick glance around, making sure no one had snuck up on her, then took a running jump and leaped over to the pipe, landing as quietly as she could. While she didn’t have a problem traversing the slick pipe as she followed his trail, the fact that Jayson had been able to do it—under the stress of combat, no less—was impressive as hell.
She’d almost reached the end of it when she picked up the tangy scent of Jayson’s blood. She stumbled, almost falling.
Oh God.
Fear gripped her. Jayson had been shot, and she had no way of knowing how badly he’d been hurt because his scent trail ended here. She stared down at the river. Had he jumped or fallen? Had he survived the impact with the water? Had he been able to swim all the way to shore? If so, where had he gone?
Spinning around, she raced back along the pipe until she came to support bars attaching it to the building, then climbed onto the roof and practically flew down the stairs to the first floor.
It took two hours to scour the shore closest to the warehouses, and she still came up empty. Then it took her another hour to backtrack through the city and find a way across the river. She’d been tempted to take the tunnel she’d seen earlier but decided against it. There was too much chance of soldiers guarding it.
When she got to the other side of the river, she discovered she was right about the militia standing guard at the tunnel. Careful to stay out of sight, she sniffed around. She quickly picked up the scent of the three people who’d been with Jayson when they left the church, then his scent a little while after that. Layla leaned against a tree for support, dizzy with relief. Jayson had made it across the river. That had to mean the gunshot wound wasn’t too bad.
Pushing away from the tree, she tracked his scent to an abandoned building three blocks from the river. Even in the darkness, Layla could see that the building had been heavily damaged by the fighting in the area. Part of the roof had collapsed and one of the walls was completely caved in. She skirted the worst of the damage and followed Jayson’s scent to a stairwell. It was stronger in there, but so was the smell of blood, and Layla had to force herself not to run down the debris-cluttered steps.
She was so focused on finding Jayson that she completely shut out everything else. Movement off to the right caught her attention as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and she only had a split second to see a curly-haired teenage boy rushing her in the darkness before he swung a piece of metal rebar at her head.
Instinct honed by hours of martial arts training with Ivy and Landon immediately took over, and she grabbed the bar, jerking it savagely away from her attacker and tossing it across the room. Then she kicked out, catching the kid in the stomach and sending him flying backward.
Another teen immediately stepped out from behind a bookcase, wielding more rebar. With a growl, Layla spun in a tight circle and put her heel into his chest, slamming him back into the shelf and sending the books on it crashing to the floor.
She was bracing herself in case either of them came at her again when a familiar scent filled the room, immediately followed by the glow of a flashlight.
“Layla?” Jayson’s voice was full of disbelief. “What the hell are you doing here?”
All thoughts of the two teens she’d put on the floor disappearing, Layla ran across the room. A third teen stepped out from behind Jayson and tried to get in her way, but she shoved the tall, lanky blond aside so hard he fell; then she slammed into the man she loved so hard they both almost went down. She didn’t think but simply wrapped her arms around him tightly and buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in.
Her whole body shook—with relief, pleasure, satisfaction, need, and, yes, hunger—as she realized he was safe and that they were together. The sensations were nearly impossible to describe, but she knew she’d never felt anything better in her life.
Layla had realized she was in love with Jayson before tonight, but the emotions she’d experienced before were pale compared to what she was feeling now. She would have happily stayed like this for the rest of the night, but a noise behind her made her stiffen.
She lifted her head to look over her shoulder. The teen she’d kicked in the stomach earlier had climbed to his feet and was glaring at her.
“Who the hell are you, and how did you find us?” he demanded in heavily accented English.
She growled as he took a step toward her and Jayson. Not because she felt threatened by him, but because he was getting too close to Jayson.
The big teen stopped short, a shocked look on his face. “Um…okay, I’m going to stop right here. Who are you?”
“This is Layla. She’s a friend,” Jayson answered for her. “She works for the same people I do. She’s here to help, Mikhail.”
Mikhail eyed her suspiciously, then glanced at Jayson. “How did she find us?”
“She’s good at tracking people,” Jayson said simply. “Why don’t you, Dylan, and Olek take a look around outside to make sure all that noise didn’t attract attention?”
Dylan and Olek looked as leery as Mikhail, but after a few moments, all three teens headed for the stairs. When they’d disappeared from view, Jayson placed the big flashlight on top of the bookshelf, then turned toward her. Layla braced herself for his anger, but instead, he gently took her face in his big, warm hands and kissed her.
The move was so unexpected she didn’t respond right away. Jayson must have thought she was rebuffing him because he started to pull away. She grabbed the front of his shirt, tugging him close and kissing him back, trying to tell him with her actions what she’d never been able to tell him with words.
Jayson’s arms went around her, his tongue slipping into her mouth to seek out hers. She shivered as his taste filled her, burying her fingers in his hair and urging him on. Jayson let out a groan and slid a hand down to her jean-clad ass, squeezing her bottom and fitting her more tightly against him.
Layla growled in approval as she felt his hard-on press against her stomach. She was wondering just how far they might take things when she heard movement in the collapsed building above them.
She and Jayson broke apart, pulling their handguns. He moved over to cover the stairwell, while she kept her attention focused on the ceiling, her ears attuned to any further noise coming from upstairs. A moment later, she heard Mikhail ask Olek if he was okay. Olek muttered something about falling over a pile of rubble in the dark. She let out the breath she’d been holding and shoved her gun back in its holster.
