The gun comes up, steady and merciless.
“Stay there,” the stranger growls. “Or you die.”
Luke goes white.
For the first time all night, he looks afraid.
My breath catches on something jagged.
The stranger tightens his hold on me and drags me toward the side door.
My legs barely work.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You can,” he says, rough and hard. “Now.”
Behind us, his men fan out with practiced precision.
Guns raised, bodies set like a wall.
The stranger doesn’t look back.
He doesn’t need to. He trusts them.
Like they’ve done this before.
He pulls me through a side door and into a back hallway that smells like smoke and cleaning chemicals.
Footsteps thunder behind us.
Someone shouts Luke’s name.
Someone shouts mine.
My lungs burn.
A door slams. Then another.
Security voices bark orders. Radios crackle.
Then a gunshot sounds behind us, closer than I want to think about.
The man dragging me forward never breaks stride.
“Listen to me,” he says, low and brutal. “Don’t stop. Don’t scream. Don’t fight me. You do exactly what I say.”
My throat tightens. “Who are you?”
“Later,” he snaps. “Run.”
We burst into the cold night behind the club.
The air slaps my face.
A motorcycle waits in the alley, black and sleek, angled like it’s ready to fly.
The sight of it should terrify me.
