One bike clipped the horse’s rear leg as Sundance tried to cut away. The impact wasn’t enough to break bone, but it was enough. Sundance went down in a screaming mass of muscle and tack, hitting the dirt hard.
Beef stayed with him. Blair saw the impact, saw Sundance’s leg give, and watched in horror as Beef hit the ground still mounted, his weight twisted and pinned by the horse’s heavy shoulder. He wasn't moving. The two bikers skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt, and came in fast, boots hitting dirt, knives already out. They were moving to finish a downed man.
A cold, sharp spike of terror pierced through her. "Beef’s down," Breakneck’s voice was a tight wire in her ear. “No shot! No shot!”
“I’ve got him,” Tyler snarled, and a heartbeat later, he was hauling Blue around in a sharp, powerful turn, driving hard toward the fight.
Blair felt the pull then, a physical, gut-deep instinct to turn back, to help, to bring Jet around and put herself between her people and the knives. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to go.
She trusted them. Jet’s stride never faltered. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, to keep her eyes on the prize while one of her own might be dying behind her. But she was the point of the spear, and the spear didn’t turn back.
She drove Jet harder, pouring every ounce of her will into the animal beneath her. “I know you got it in you, my love. Dig deep.”
Torres saw the opening and took it, plunging into the treeline like a man fleeing a fire. He was livid. Blair saw it in the way his shoulders tightened, the way he shifted closer to his last bodyguard, using the man as moving cover without hesitation. Cold. Efficient.
She closed the distance, Jet’s stride a desperate, powerful rhythm, the trees rushing up fast now, dark and tight and unforgiving. The remaining bodyguard rode close to Torres’s flank, his eyes locked on Blair with naked, murderous intent.
Behind her, she heard the sharp, percussive cracks of Tyler's rifle, followed by a short, sharp scream. The world was narrowing to a single, brutal point. The ground shrank to a trail, branches whipped and snapped at her face and shoulders, and the air grew thick and heavy, swallowing sound and light.
She couldn’t stop now. If Torres escaped, all this was for nothing, and she always got her man.
Breakneck lost them there. Blair knew it the instant the canopy closed overhead, plunging them into a green, shadowed twilight. The bird was blind. Her men were fighting for their lives. She was on her own.
The trees swallowed her. One second Blair was there, Jet driving hard, her line clean and fearless, and the next the canopy closed and the picture vanished. Telemetry gone. No angles. No shot.
Breakneck’s chest locked tight. The instinct to go after her hit fast and violent, a full-body demand to put boots on the ground and tear through the trees until he had eyes on her again. He didn't recognize it. He just acted. He keyed his mic, his voice a raw, ragged thing he barely recognized as his own. "Lost visual on Brown. I'm going in."
The answer came back immediately, a sharp crack of command. "Negative! Hold position, Breakneck! That's an order." Iceman's voice, clipped with an edge that was just as primed, but his boss read the mission right. "Stay on Beef and Tyler until medevac. Then you get your ass over that treeline and look for her. We’re on our way."
The raw command hit him like a slap of ice water. For a heartbeat, he couldn't breathe. He just stared at the solid wall of green below, the urge to disobey a physical itch under his skin, and then he knew. Fear. Not doubt. Never doubt. It was pure, undiluted fear that had made him sound like a rookie, made his voice break.
Blair didn’t need saving. She needed room to work. He forced his breathing steady, grounding himself in the truth of her, her skill, her guts, the way she ran toward danger instead of away from it. She was the best rider in that field. She had chosen the trees because she could handle them. What scared him wasn't losing her in the brush. It was that for the first time in his life he wanted something for himself. Wanted her, whatever shape that took. Wanted a future that wasn't just duty and distance. He didn’t know yet how to want that without fearing he’d destroy it.
He stayed where he was, hands steady on the rifle, eyes snapping back to Beef and Tyler. He would do his job. He always did, and Blair would do hers.
The forest slammed shut around them. Light died fast beneath the canopy, the world collapsing into a tunnel of shadow and motion. Branches, thick as arms, clawed at Blair’s jacket and face as Jet drove forward, his hooves a frantic, punishing rhythm over roots and rock. The ground was a treacherous, shifting thing. The air was thick here, wet and close, swallowing sound until the chase felt muffled, unreal.
She couldn't see Torres, but she knew he was close. Jet’s breaths came hard now, loud in her ears, his sweat slick against her knees. He was tiring, a deep, bone-weariness she felt in every heavy stride, every costly correction.
The trail pinched. A fallen log, half-buried in brush and shadow, appeared too fast. Jet gathered himself to clear it. In the instant Jet’s stride shortened, Torres’s bodyguard lunged, reaching low and hard. This was a planned ambush, and she’d run right into it. Fingers, like claws, locked around Blair’s boot and shoved.
The world snapped sideways. Blair went out of the saddle in a violent wrench, instinct taking over as she hit the ground and rolled. Her shoulder took the first brutal impact, and her breath punched out of her in a sharp, pained grunt. The world was a blur of green and brown, and then, sudden, jarring stillness.
Blair gasped, forcing air back into her lungs as she pushed herself up. Her hand went instinctively to her hip, her fingers closing on empty leather. Her sidearm was gone. Torn away in the fall.
A shadow fell over her. Torres dismounted, his face a mask of cold fury. He drew his own sidearm, a sleek, dark pistol, and pointed it right at her head. For a split second, pure ice flooded her veins. Then he pulled the trigger.
Click.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber. The sound was tiny, pathetic in the vast woods. A wave of hot, blinding anger washed away the fear, burning through the shock. He had duped her. He had bluffed, and she had fallen for it, almost getting herself and Jet killed because of it.
Torres threw the useless pistol aside with a snarl of rage and came at her, his hands raised to kill.
He was bigger, heavier, and fueled by pure rage. But Blair was a tactical hunter, trained for this. She let him close, letting his momentum become his enemy. As he lunged, she dropped low, pivoting on her heel and driving the heel of her palm up under his chin. His teeth clicked together, and he staggered back, stunned. She followed up, aiming a sharp kick to the side of his knee, but he twisted, taking the blow on his thigh. He roared in frustration and charged again, this time grabbing her by the jacket and slamming her backward.
The impact was brutal. Her head cracked against the hard trunk of a pine tree, and a galaxy of stars exploded behind her eyes. She dropped to her knees, dazed and struggling to stay conscious. Through the haze, she saw it. Her sidearm, lying just a few feet away in the damp moss, gleaming dully.
Through the ringing in her ears, she heard a furious whinny. Jet. He hadn't fled. He was a cornered, thousand-pound stallion, teeth bared, ears pinned, lunging and snapping at the bodyguard who was trying to get past him to help his boss. The man was trapped, terrified of the horse's murderous hooves and teeth, unable to assist.
