Emily pressed herself against the center console, as far from the door as she could get, and she breathed, counted, held Chloe's voice in her mind like something to grip.
Seven minutes. Seven minutes. Seven minutes.
The second man had circled around to the passenger side. She could feel them, a pressure around the car, testing it the way you test a door to see if it'll open, looking for the weak point.
She was the weak point.
She was very small, right now, in this car, with the dark all around it and the two men moving around it like water finding a crack, and the little voice inside her; the soft one, the one nobody knew about except the characters in the books she loved, saidsomebody please come.
Then she heard them.
The bikes.
Three of them, the sound rolling in off the highway like thunder given direction and purpose, headlights sweepingacross the lot in a wide arc. Big. Loud. The kind of sound that meant something.
"Emily, that's Rampage's men." Chloe's voice. "They’ve come to help."
The motorcycles pulled into the lot and positioned themselves with a practiced ease that said this was not new territory. Then there were three bikes between her car and the truck, engines idling, headlights on the two men who had gone completely still.
"Step away from the vehicle." The voice was deep enough to feel in her chest through the closed windows. "Both of you back the fuck away from that car and explain what you're doing."
Emily pressed her hand flat against the glass.
The men made excuses. She barely heard them. Because then there was a fourth bike pulling around her side of the car, and a man got off it, and even through the dark and the distance she could feel the weight of him, the controlled deliberate way he moved, like someone who'd never once needed to hurry because the world already understood it needed to make room. It was him. The man who’d been so polite when she’d come into town the first time to pick up the equipment. Chloe’s Daddy’s friend. The incredibly sexy, unbelievably masculine man who’d been way out of her league… so she’d never returned his text messages or calls. No way a man like him could be interested in her.
And now, here he was. Coming to rescue her.
He crouched down outside her window. If they hadn’t already met, she’d have been terrified. His jaw was ticking and his forehead was drawn tight. He was not happy.
"Emily." His voice was different from the other men giving orders outside her car. Still deep, but quieter. She felt a controlled anger behind it, but it wasn’t at her. She just knew it wasn’t. "Emily, Can you roll down your window about an inch, baby girl? Just enough so we can talk? I know you're terrified."
Baby girl.
Something in her chest cracked open like a window letting in air.
"Is it really you?" Her voice was embarrassingly small.
"It's really me."
She rolled the window down.
He had dark eyes that didn't look away from her face, and a scar along his jaw, and an expression that was somehow both entirely calm and completely certain, like a man who had been in worse situations than this one and had already decided how it would end. He looked like a stubborn man who wouldn’t take no for an answer from anyone.
"Good girl," he said. "You did everything right. Staying in the car, calling for help. You're safe now."
Emily started crying. She hadn't meant to, after all she was a grown woman, she had a budget spreadsheet for her yoga business and a skincare routine and an opinion about geopolitical policy for God’s sake, but her eyes filled up anyway, and she couldn't stop it, and she didn't even try.
She was safe.
She believed him completely, without evidence, without reason, the way you believe something you've been waiting your whole life to hear.
She was safe, and he'd said so, and that was enough.
CHAPTER 2
RAMPAGE
The call with Chloe and Tyler wrapped up fast.
