It started low, broken, and built into something loud and manic, echoing too sharply in the quiet woods. He threw his head back as far as the cuffs allowed, laughter ripping out of him in jagged bursts.
“You think there is one?” he choked out between laughs. “You think it is that simple?”
Carver’s jaw tightened a fraction.
Valdivia leaned forward, eyes bright, breath stinking of blood and dirt. “I will give you what you want,” he said, the laughter creeping back in around the edges of his words. “Three places. Can’t make it easy for you.”
He rattled them off, one after another. Coordinates. Locations. Each delivered with relish, with a smile that dared them to believe him.
Jones glanced at Carver.
Carver stared at Valdivia for a long moment, searching his face for certainty and finding only chaos and spite.
Valdivia’s laughter finally faded into a harsh, satisfied grin. “Good luck,” he said softly. “I hope you like funerals.”
Carver straightened. “Kill him.”
“What if he’s lying?”
It was Carver’s turn to laugh, cold, deadly, final. “He’s not. One of them is the stash house. He just likes to have the last laugh. Too bad it belongs to us.”
A single shot rang out. The forest swallowed the sound.
Back where the Mounties had fallen, they put the finishing touches on the scene, a buzzing caught his attention and he looked up.
“Trev…” He gestured with his chin. “Take care of that.”
Jones took a bead and fired off a shot. The drone dropped from the sky into deep brush.
The treeline was a dark, solid wall rushing to meet them, but the speed wasn't the same. Jet was laboring now, his big body drenched in sweat, his breaths coming in ragged, heaving gusts that Blair felt in her own lungs. The explosive sprint was taking its toll, every stride a monumental effort of muscle and will. She could feel the tremor in his flanks, the subtle flagging of his power, and a cold fear for him began to prickle at the edges of her adrenaline.
But the greater fear was still a fresh, raw wound in her chest. It was the memory of the technical’s heavy machine gun tearing the ground apart, the line of death stitching toward them. She could still hear the pilot’s clipped warning, the pop of the RPG launcher, and the stomach-dropping lurch of the helicopter as it fought for its life with the man she loved on board, fighting for them. For a few horrifying seconds, she had thought they were all dead.
Then Breakneck had spoken, his voice a blade of ice in her ear, and the world had changed. She hadn't seen the shots, but she had seen the results. The gunner folding like a doll, the RPG man disappearing, the technical shuddering to a halt in a cloud of flame.
A masterclass in lethality, a display of such cold, absolute precision it was terrifying. It was the culmination of a thousand hours of training, of breathing, of waiting, all distilled into a handful of life-saving shots.
He had been hit, she knew it, she'd heard the change in his voice, but he had ended a threat that should have killed them all.
A wave of heat washed over her, sharp and primal, that had nothing to do with fear. It was pure, unadulterated admiration for the man who was bleeding in a helicopter miles away and was still fighting to keep her alive. God willing we survive this, she thought, a fierce vow forming in her heart, I'm not letting him out of my bed for a week.
She pushed it all down, the fear, the awe, the exhaustion. Jet needed her to be strong, to be the leader he was following. Torres was just ahead, his own horse tiring, the sanctuary of the trees only seconds away. The game was about to change.
Torres rode hard, low over his horse’s neck, disciplined even now. Two mounted bodyguards stayed welded to him, tight enough that their stirrups nearly kissed. Beyond them, the last of the Hell’s Eight bikers fanned out, engines screaming, angling wide like wolves looking for a throat. They were a distraction, a chaotic screen to hide the real threat.
Gunfire cracked again. A shotgun blast tore through the air to Blair’s right, the pellets chewing dirt just ahead of Jet’s stride. The great horse flinched, a powerful shudder of muscle and instinct, but he didn't break. He corrected, gathering himself and driving harder, his hooves barely missing the cratered ground. “Easy,” she breathed, the word a sharp command, a promise she had no business making but had to keep.
One of Torres’s rear bodyguards crested a rise. For a heartbeat, he was a perfect silhouette against the sky. Then he vanished. He simply folded sideways and hit the ground hard, his horse bolting free without him, a sudden, terrifying punctuation mark in the chase.
Another shot followed almost immediately. Blair saw the second bodyguard jerk as if struck by lightning. His shotgun exploded apart in his hands, the barrel spinning end over end before disappearing into the brush. The man swore, clutching his bleeding hand, his face a mask of shock as he stared at the empty space where his weapon had been. He was suddenly empty-handed and very, very aware of it.
Breakneck.
He wasn't just clearing the field for her, he was dismantling their defense piece by bloody piece.
Both remaining Hell’s Eight riders reacted instantly, charging straight at Beef, engines howling, their intent clear. This was a kill run.
“Beef—!” Blair shouted, already knowing it was too late.
