Bad timing. Wrong place. Worse reason.
Doesn’t change the truth.
There was one second in that garden, one stupid second, when I turned her around and got a look at her face. Baby blue eyes too big for the dark, angry and terrified at the same time. Chocolate hair tangled with leaves. Freckles scattered over her nose like someone tried to make her sweeter and failed, because that mouth was pure sin and sass.
Then she bit me.
I flex my hand on the throttle.
The sting is still there.
Little hellcat.
She should piss me off. Reckless civilians usually do. They wander into things they don’t understand and expect luck to do the work of training.
But she isn’t looking for excitement.
She’s looking for her sister.
And she was ready to crawl into hell with no backup and a pair of boots that damn near got her killed.
That kind of loyalty is either beautiful or dangerous.
Most days, it’s both.
Ghost’s voice crackles low through my earpiece.
“Shadow. Status.”
I tap the mic once, keeping my eyes on the road. “Moving.”
“With the girl?”
He heard enough before I killed the channel. The shot. The scramble. My order for her to run.
“Yeah.”
A beat of silence.
“Pursuit?”
“Not close.”
“Need coordinates?”
“Not yet.”
Ghost doesn’t like that. I hear it in what he doesn’t say.
“Check in when stopped.”
I cut the mic before he can argue.
Talia’s arms tighten.
“Almost there,” I call over the engine.
She doesn’t answer.
