As I hit the concrete on the second floor, my knee explodes in pain. A shot pierces the still, quiet night, and my left arm starts to burn. Screaming, I throw my hands over my head, curling into a ball.
Another shot splinters the concrete a few inches away. Everything hurts. I can barely breathe, and when I try to push myself up, my arm collapses under me.Move. Move. Move or die.
“Wren!”
Ryker’s panicked shout is so close. I’m hallucinating. I have to be. He hasn’t come for me.
“Wren. Get up! Now!”
Oh my God. He’s really here. The look in his eyes—terror, pain, desperation. He’ll save me. If I can get to him.
The next shot comes from below, followed by three more, and my heart leaps into my throat. Glass shatters, raining down on me as another sound, more solid, lower, echoes from across the street.
“Wren! Please! Jump, baby. Jump and run.”
Bullets fly overhead, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I can do this.
White hot pain pulses through my arm, but I grab onto the railing and haul myself to my feet. The ground is so far away. But there’s Ryker. Firing more shots over my head.
Fear glues my bare feet to the concrete until the Groper lands on the other end of the balcony. “You will be sorry,cyka.”
Another dull thud, and red blooms on his white shirt. He clutches his chest, sinking to his knees, and I throw myself over the edge, praying Ryker will catch me.
29
Ryker
Wren falls, and I’m a second too late. Her legs crumple under her, a gasp escaping her lips, followed by a moan, and then her eyes close. Firing another three shots towards Kolya’s men, I kneel at her side. “She’s down. Not moving. Cover me.”
“Roger. Four hostiles north corner,” Inara says calmly. A shot flies across the square. “Three.”
Blood stains the frosty grass under Wren’s naked body, and she’s covered in bruises. Sliding my arms under her legs and back, I cradle her to my chest. “Fall back!” I shout.
“Hostiles neutralized. Falling back.” Inara clicks off comms, and I run for the next street over.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” I whisper. “You’re going to be okay.”
Will she? There isn’t an inch of her unmarked, and she’s so cold, her skin is almost blue.
As I skid around a corner, the car—with West at the wheel—screeches to a stop right in front of me, and I yank open the door and fall into the backseat. “Go, go, go.”
“Elena?” West asks.
“No sign of her. Got a hundred yards away and saw Wren climbing across the fucking balconies.” Brushing her hair away from her face, I watch her breathing. Shallow, but as I bite down on the tip of my glove to pull it off so I can check her pulse, her eyelids flutter.
“Wren? Can you hear me?”
A little whimper escapes her chapped and split lips, and my instinct is to tighten my grip, but I don’t know if she broke anything in the fall. “I’ve got you, baby. You’re safe now. But you have to tell me what hurts.”
“Ry?” The single word is so faint I only hear her because I’m watching her lips so carefully.
“Right here.”
She turns her head into my chest and starts to cry, and I give up being careful, crushing her against me and rubbing her back as West takes a corner on two wheels, slams on the brakes, and leans over to open Inara’s door.
“Holy shit. Your girl’s insane,” Inara says as she tosses her gear bag next to us and turns in the seat. “And braver than half the guys in my last unit.”
“She doesn’t like being called a girl.” The retort comes out sharper than I intended, and I curse under my breath. “Sorry. Turn up the heat in here. She’s an icicle.” Wren’s tears soak into my shirt, and her entire body shakes in my arms.
