Chaos erupts instantly as the smoke starts to move in around us. Dex curls over Elias, shielding him from the raised rifles in front of us. Sly and Pete move in, forming a wall between us and the agents who shout orders through the thickening smoke. Safeties click. The air fills with coughing and confusion. The smoke makes everything blur, shapes smearing and shifting in unpredictable currents.
Jagger holds me tighter, trying to keep me from running into gunfire. I open my mouth to scream for Elias again, but a sharp sting hits the side of my neck. I gasp, reaching upinstinctively, but my fingers are already going numb. My breath catches, my cry dying in my throat.
Jagger jerks against me, his body going rigid. His embrace falters for the first time, muscles locking before they start to give out.
I try to call his name, but there's no sound.
My vision narrows. My limbs turn heavy as the world tilts. Unfamiliar hands grab me, dragging me backward into the smoke.
Jagger collapses to his knees beside me, reaching out even as his body fails him.
The last thing I see before the darkness floods in is his hand stretching toward mine… and the smoke swallowing us both.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PETE
Everything seems to explode at once. First, Elias is shot, then the agents move in as the smoke surrounds us. I lose sight of Jagger and Wren, then I’m pushed to the ground, my hands cuffed behind my back.
I cough, the smoke so thick I can’t see anything anymore.
“Wren!” I yell, hoping to at least hear her voice, but even her screams of Elias’s name have grown quiet.
Fucking shit, we’re really in trouble this time.
I hear the others coughing around me as I’m told not to move. Someone speaks into a radio. “I need medics in here, we have an agent down.” Were they referring to Elias? I don’t remember hearing any other gunshots.
The smoke starts to thin, and I notice Sly and Dex in the same position as me, on their stomachs with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
“You okay?” I ask Sly when his eyes connect with mine. He nods. “Can you see Wren or Jagger?” He shakes his head, then looks around from his restrained position as I do the same. The smoke is dissipating fast, and my heart starts tohammer in my chest, knowing something is wrong before my head does.
“Where is she?” I yell to anyone who will listen, but nobody answers.
I watch as two medics rush in and kneel at Elias’s side, immediately cutting his shirt open so they can get to the wound in his shoulder.
Blood is covering his skin, and I hiss at the sight. “Elias, shit man, are you okay?”
“Do I look like I’m okay?” he asks through clenched teeth.
“No, you look like you’ve been shot in the shoulder.”
“Fuck!” he yells when they press something against the wound.
“We need to get him to the hospital,” one of the medics informs the agents watching over them. He waves for a stretcher to be brought out.
Elias starts looking around him, and I see the panic in his eyes. “Where the hell is she?!” he yells.
“She’s gone, they took her,” the agent standing over him says, sounding calm but also frustrated.
“What do you mean? Who took her?” Elias asks, eyes narrowed on the agent.
“Ivan’s men. They took Jason, too.”Jason?Right, that was Jagger’s real name.Why would Ivan take them both?
“Fuck, I need to get to my laptop!”
“The only place you’re going is the hospital,” the agent tells him firmly.
Elias glances at the rest of us cuffed on the ground, with no ability to help. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.
