What happens next happens fast.
The third man moves first, not toward us or away from us but sideways, crossing the room in three strides toward the woman who has been standing near the window. He takes her arm and pulls her with him toward the door on the far side of the room, a woman with long dark hair and a face white with something that isn’t entirely fear.
“Stop them. Flame, Luke, go…” They go.
Flame and Luke move without hesitation, but the third man doesn’t run. He walks fast and deliberately with the woman’s arm in his grip and her feet moving willingly, and pushes through the far door and disappears into the corridor beyond.
Clemente tries to run, one direction then another, the desperate recalculation of a man whose exits are closing one by one, and then he is moving toward the rear door. Already moving to cut him off, we meet in the middle of the room with a hand at his throat, his back against the wall, and a weapon at his temple before he has finished deciding where he is going.
He goes still.
Those dark eyes, sharp, cold, and calculating even now, find mine.
“Don’t.”
He doesn’t.
Cable’s voice comes through the earpiece. “Rhyder has Lawrence. East grounds. Moving fast.”
Keeping the weapon at Clemente’s temple, I feel Quill come up beside me with Hawke flanking him, the two of them moving like the unit they always are.
“Quill.”
“I’ve got him.”
Stepping back and letting Quill take position, I watch his face as he does, those blue eyes finding Clemente’s with the weight of everything the Blood Brothers have been through because of this one man sitting in every line of his expression.
Outside somewhere, a single shot.
Then silence.
Rhyder.
Lawrence.
Done.
Quill presses his weapon to Clemente’s forehead, and for a moment, the room goes very still. Clemente’s jaw is tight. Whatever he’d expected when this moment came, it clearly wasn’t two motorcycle clubs in his own home with his security down and Lawrence already gone.
“You have any idea…” Quill says, “… what you’ve put my men and their families through.”
Not a question.
Clemente says nothing, smart enough to know that nothing he says is going to help him now.
Quill’s finger moves to the trigger.
“Quill.” Hawke’s voice comes from directly beside him, calm and certain. “Don’t.”
Quill doesn’t look at him.
“He deserves—”
“I know what he deserves.” Hawke’s hand comes to Quill’s shoulder, steady and present, the certainty of a man who has been beside his president through everything and knows exactly when to speak and when not to. “And he’ll get it. Just not from you. Not tonight. Not away from Jasmine. Not away from your kids.”
A long moment passes with Clemente breathing hard against the wall, and Quill’s hand is completely still.
Then the door behind us opens, and Sam Reeves walks in.
