“Yes.”
Darcy landed on his feet but tumbled immediately to his ass. Thankfully, he knew enough not to catch his fall on his busted arm. “Run to the Jeep. Now.”
Without waiting to see if he complied, I locked eyes with Lukyan, who had descended the fence again and stared up at me from the other side. A picture of confusion and fury painted his features. He balled his hands into fists.
I wasn’t sure what he saw on my face, but the instant he registered that I was not leaving with Darcy and was instead coming after him, he panicked, tucked tail, and ran.
I jumped from the top of the fence and landed on my feet, taking off in an instant. Lukyan weaved down the maze of rows, ducking in and out of several aisles, but I stayed hot on his ass. Like Tallus, the man had chosen poorly when it came to footwear, and as he rounded another bend, he slid and crashed hard to the ground.
As I gained on him, Lukyan bounced back to his feet and kept running. He ducked around the next corner, almost falling again. By the time I rounded the bend fifteen seconds later, he was already diving into his car, slamming the door, and revving the engine.
I didn’t stop.
But the fucker hit the gas.
And the car lurched forward.
Squealing tires.
Burning rubber.
I didn’t have time to get out of the way.
29
Tallus
Echo yipped when I started the Jeep. I imagined her giving me hell for sitting in Diem’s spot, while wondering where her daddy was and if we were leaving without him. She peered out the window again, then barked in my ear.
“Okay. I know. He’s coming. He went to rescue Darcy. Remember Darcy? The bratty man-child he adopted?”
Echo cocked her head and made a noise in her throat as though acknowledging she understood. She was smart to the point of creepy sometimes.
I glanced in the direction of the storage facility, then toward the main road in the distance, but there was no sign of them. How long had it been? Five minutes? Three? Ten? Had Darcy been caught?
Time ticked by, and the longer they were gone, the more I worried. Soon, it was me whimpering and not Echo. She sat like a pillar, staring along the dark street, waiting in an eerily similar fashion.
How long were we supposed to sit here and do nothing?
As I was about to give up and search the compound, Echo barked. A dark form materialized from the shadows, running from the main road up the side street in our direction. One person, and they weren’t big enough to be Diem.
Darcy collided with the Jeep before scrambling to get the door open. He fell into the passenger seat, tumbled over the middle console, and nearly landed face-first in my lap before righting himself and slamming the door like he was being chased by zombies. Huffing and puffing, cheeks red from exertion, he stared out the window toward the main road.
Echo clambered from the back seat to the front and licked Darcy’s face, her joyful tail whacking me with every violent swing.
“Echo, Echo, move. Your ass is in my face. There isn’t room for you up here.”
She huffed and relented, returning to the back seat, but not before rotating once, stepping on my thigh, and swatting me in the mouth a final time with her tail.
I spat fur before barking, “Where’s Diem?”
“He went after Luke. Holy shit. Ohmygod, ohmygod. He looked furious. I think he’s going to kill him.”
My brain stuttered, momentary panic eclipsing reason, but my senses quickly aligned, and I shook my head. “No, he wouldn’t. Diem wears that murderous expression like a second skin, but he doesn’t hurt people.”
“Are you sure?”
No, but I didn’t say that out loud. Diem used to be a fighter. He used to be reactive and aggressive. Long before I met him, he used fists instead of words. He still had a hair-trigger temper at times, but he’d adopted different outlets to temper his rage. He punched walls andcars and smoked cigarettes and drank too much. He didn’t run around killing people.
