Page 110 of Breaking His Exile

Hobbs stood near the SUV’s rear tire, and Rainey sat on the ground beside him.

His chest locked.

Blood on her lower lip. A darkening bruise along her cheekbone, the skin split at the crest where something had caught her hard enough to break it. Her wrists were tied behind her back. She sat against the tire with her chin up and her eyes on Evander, full of love and, if he wasn’t mistaken, irritation.

He kept walking. Twenty yards. Fifteen.

Mal met him halfway. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come.”

Evander stopped. Ten yards from the SUV. Close enough to talk. Far enough that Mal still felt safe.

“Let her go,” Evander said. “Let her get in my truck and leave, and I’ll stay.”

Mal laughed. A short, pleased sound and nodded to Hobbs. “Bring her.”

Hobbs grabbed Rainey by the arm and hauled her upright. She came up fighting — her weight dropped, her boots dug at the gravel, and Hobbs adjusted. He pulled her against his chest, one arm locked around her ribs, and produced a knife from somewhere — a folding blade, short, utilitarian — and pressed it against her throat.

Just like at The Dead Marshall.

Evander’s breath snagged in his chest as her eyes found his. She didn’t plead. She didn’t beg. She looked at him with the same steady, furious clarity he’d seen on the mountain, in the cabin, in every moment she’d refused to be small, and the message in her face was not save me. It was don’t you dare give them what they want.

Mal walked closer. Stopped five feet from Evander. Close enough that Evander could smell peppermint on his breath and see the fine grain of stubble along his jaw.

“On your knees,” Mal said.

Evander looked at Rainey. At the knife against her throat. At Hobbs behind her, his face blank, his arm around her ribs, holding her like cargo.

He went to his knees even as every fiber of his body screamed at him to move—to close the distance, to take Mal’s throat before the blade could press deeper, to do something, anything, other than kneel in the dirt while a man held a knife to Rainey’s neck.

He didn’t move.

This was the plan. Walk in. Confirm she’s alive. Signal. Let the men in the trees do their work. Trust them. Trust Jax on the ridge with a rifle and Ghost beside him, trust Walker and X moving through the north tree line, trust River leading Brandt through the pines.

Trust.

Evander raised his hands over his head. The signal.

Mal’s smile flickered. “What’s that? You surrendering?”

“Something like that,” Evander said.

The attack didn’t come from where he expected.

Rainey tightened her core, dropped her chin against the blade, then drove the back of her skull into Hobbs’s face.

The crack of bone on cartilage was sharp and wet. Hobbs’s head snapped back. Blood erupted from his nose in a bright fountain, and his grip on the knife went slack for one stuttering heartbeat as both hands flew to his face.

Rainey twisted. Dropped her weight. Her right shoulder came free of his arm, and she spun toward the opening, her bound hands still behind her. She got halfway around before Hobbs’s hand shot out and caught her hair.

He yanked. Her feet went out from under her, and she hit the gravel hard, hip-first, and Hobbs was on her before she could roll. He punched her, snapping her head sideways and dropping her flat.

Rainey lay on the gravel. Blood from her split lip smeared the stones. Her eyes were open, dazed, and her bound hands twisted beneath her back.

Something broke in Evander’s chest. Not cracked. Broke. Clean through, the way bone breaks when the force exceeds what it can hold.

He started to rise, but Creed moved faster. The rifle came off Creed’s shoulder in a single fluid motion, the barrel swinging not toward Evander, not toward Rainey, but toward Hobbs.

Creed’s voice cut the air. “Get off her.”