Delaney grabbed at his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Giving them a chance to live. Ten seconds.” He nodded toward the men. “The clock is ticking for you idiots.” As for his wife, “Delaney, run.” His backup wasn’t there. His backup should have been there.
“What?”
He shifted his focus to their attackers. The fools were laughing. He wasn’t. “I lied,” Nash informed them. He’d never planned to give them ten seconds. He’d just needed to get Delaney out of the line of fire.
Nash started shooting his gun.
One target down.
Two.
Delaney wasn’t running. A frantic look showed him that she was—she was raising a gun. Aiming it at the men in the gray uniforms. She fired and hit a man in the stomach. He dropped to the ground, howling. She turned her weapon at another attacker. Shot at him. She missed, but he ducked for cover.
Nash took out another perp. Then Nash lunged for Delaney. “You found the gun in the elevator?” He hadn’t even realized that she’d had it.
“Got it right before the doors opened and they began firing. Hid it behind my dress.” Her breath shuddered out. “Did I kill him?”
The man was currently howling at the top of his lungs, so, no, he was very much alive. For the moment. “Let’s go.” There was still no sign of his backup, and this shit wasn’t good. They were too vulnerable. Nash locked his hand with hers and rushed through the parking garage. That was where they’d wound up when the elevator decided to drop them—the parking garage. Which meant they’d fallen about four floors? They needed to get to the stairwell exit because this scene was clearly a coordinated attack.
Before they could reach the stairwell, bright lights flashed at them. A black van barreled toward them, like a beast that had just been waiting to attack. It came at them hard, and Nash fired his gun even as he shoved Delaney out of the way.
His bullets blasted through the windshield. But the driver didn’t stop. The front of the van plowed into Nash, and his ass was tossed into the air. Tossed toward one of the concrete columns. His head cracked into the concrete, and he heard Delaney scream.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I think the first time I fell in love with you, you threw me out of the path of an oncoming vehicle.” She gently slid her fingers through Nash’s hair, being careful to avoid the wound at the back of his head. The wound he’d gotten when the van hit him, and Nash flew through the air and slammed into a concrete column. “You yelled at me and you told me that no turtle was worth my life. Then you kissed me.” She leaned down, and her lips brushed over his. Tears stung her eyes. “Hey, Nash?” A whisper against his lips. “I’m not worth your life.” Her head began to rise.
But his hand flew up. He caught the nape of her neck. Pressed his mouth against hers and held her there for a timeless moment before, “You fucking are. You are my life.”
Her breath shuddered out. “Nash?”
He let her go, and as her head lifted, he stretched slowly, as if testing his body.
“Where the…hell…are we?” Gruff. A little groggy.
“From what I could tell, we’re in some shack, in the middle of a Las Vegas desert.” After the attack in the parking garage, they’d been tossed into separate vehicles. Nash into the rear of a black SUV. Her into the backseat of a Jeep. A gun had been pressed to her side for the entire, terrifying ride. She’d been so afraid that Nash was dead in the SUV. That she’d never see him again.
Then…
They’d arrived in hell. Or, whatever this little shack was. A storage shack? Maybe it had been, once. From what she could tell, the windowless place now held only dust and cobwebs. She’d been ordered inside. Nash had been dumped in there. Then the door had been closed.
They’d been locked in darkness.
His unconscious body had been tossed inside the shack or shed or whatever it was, even as she’d yelled at the abductors to be careful with him. They had not been careful. As soon as she could, Delaney had tenderly put his head on her lap in an attempt to provide a cushion for him.
Groaning, he sat up. “Sonofabitch.” His voice was stronger.
She bit her lower lip. “You have blood on your leg and your shoulder, too.” Blood she’d seen in the parking garage and felt in the darkness of the shack as she tried to assess his injuries.
“Screw that. Are you okay?”
“You could have a skull fracture. You hit that column really hard.” She’d heard the thud of impact. “Or a concussion. Or?—”
“Yeah, my head is freaking splitting open. I’m sure I have a concussion, but I don’t give a shit at the moment. Are you okay?” His hands slid over her in the dark. His turn to assess for injuries.
“I’m okay.” The only light came from a small sliver beneath the one door in the shack.
