Cade didn’t miss.
Dom stood with the echo of the shot ringing in his skull. What the hell was that?
An apology?
A peace offering?
Whatever it was, now was not the time to figure it out. He filed it away in the place where complicated things went to wait. Cade was a problem for later, if they all survived this clusterfuck.
“Sabin! Sabin, stop?—”
At Vivi’s voice, he turned and found them in the gap between two rows of dead machinery. Griffin had Sabin by the arms from behind, locked up in a clinch that would have immobilized almost anyone else, but Sabin was driving backward into the machinery, using the impact to wear at Griffin’s grip. Weston threw himself across Sabin’s legs and held on with the white-knuckled determination of a bull rider. Bridger came in from the side and got a forearm across Sabin’s throat, applying controlled pressure, and Sabin’s response was to tuck his chin and slam the back of his skull into Bridger’s face hard enough that Bridger’s head snapped back.
“Tess,” Weston called to his sister. “Could use a chemical hand here!”
Dom pushed toward them, his left arm screaming at the movement, his right hand keeping his weapon up and tracking the warehouse floor for any Praetorian operative still capable of causing problems. He reached the edge of the melee and found there was no clean way in—three trained men were fully occupied holding one, and adding a fourth body to the pile would only create more angles for Sabin to exploit.
Vivi dropped to her knees on the concrete in front of her brother, heedless of the broken glass and grit, and grabbed his face between her hands—physically forcing his head up, forcing his eyes toward hers.
“Jean-Sabin!” Her voice snapped out. “Knock it off.”
Sabin’s body went rigid. And there it was again, that flicker behind the blankness in his eyes. Recognition. Or the ghost of it.
Then the blankness flooded back, and he surged against the hands holding him, nearly tearing free, and Vivi’s grip on his face was the only thing that didn’t give.
“Don’t,” she said softly. Fiercely. “You’re in there. I know you are.”
Tessa appeared, syringe in hand. “Keep him still.”
Weston grunted as Sabin kicked out. “What do you think we’re trying to do?”
She stabbed the needle into Sabin’s neck and depressed the plunger.
For a moment, nothing changed—Sabin still fought against the hands holding him, his body straining, arching off the concrete with unnatural strength—and then his muscles began to loosen, his struggles becoming less coordinated.
“That’s it,” Tessa murmured, her hand on Sabin’s wrist, monitoring his pulse as the sedative took effect. “Easy now.”
Vivi didn’t let go of her brother’s face, even as his eyes began to lose focus. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m right here, Sabin.”
Dom crouched beside her, ignoring the flare of pain the movement sent through his shoulder. Around them, the gunfire had thinned to isolated pops—WSW mopping up, Praetorian’s numbers depleted and their coordination gone.
Sabin’s muscles went slack, his head lolling in Vivi’s hands. The fight drained from him like water through a sieve, and when his eyes closed, his face transformed—all the hardened edges softening into something closer to the man Dom remembered.
“We need to move,” Davey called from across the warehouse. “Now!”
Griffin and Weston hoisted Sabin between them, his arms draped over their shoulders, feet dragging on the concrete. Dom tried to stand, but the world tilted sharply. His knees buckled, and he caught himself with his good hand against the floor.
“Shit,” he muttered, blinking hard against the gray haze creeping into the edges of his vision. The adrenaline was wearing off fast, and reality was coming to collect.
“Dom?” Vivi’s face swam into focus, her eyes wide with panic. “You’re bleeding—God, Dom, that’s a lot of blood.”
“I noticed,” he managed. The gray haze was getting worse, the warehouse tilting at a nauseating angle. He tried to focus on Vivi’s face, on the particular shade of hazel her eyes turned when she was terrified, but everything kept sliding sideways.
Tessa appeared beside him, her hands already moving to his shoulder, pressing something against the wound that made him hiss through clenched teeth.
“Gunshot wound, left shoulder, through and through,” she reported clinically. “Heavy blood loss but no arterial spray. Dom, can you feel your fingers?”
He tried to wiggle them. They responded, though the movement sent a spike of fire up into his collarbone. “Yeah.”
