Page 109 of Velvet Vaughn

“No.” He waved her off with visible effort. “Just tapped out. Turns out disarming a homicidal maniac twelve hours after getting stabbed takes a bit more out of a guy than the doctor probably would’ve recommended.” He managed a faint, exhausted grin. “I’m okay. Just need a minute.”

“Take your time.” Anja kept one arm braced under Leo’s shoulder, easing him toward the doorway, her eyes flicking constantly between the two men, unwilling to fully release the tension coiled through her body until both were safely away from this cabin and the lake outside it.

They’d made it three steps toward the porch when a roar sounded behind them, low and furious and unholy. Anja spun in time to see Curtis stirring on the porch boards, one hand fumbling beneath his jacket.

A second weapon.

“Curtis!” Anja’s shout tore out of her as her weapon swung back around, but he’d found his feet and leveled the pistol. Curtis’s face was a bloody pulp and his eyes, wild and cornered and entirely finished with restraint, locked onto Leo with unmistakable intent.

“No!”

Her body moved on pure instinct. She threw herself across Leo’s battered frame and drove them both off the porch to land on the hard ground as a gunshot split the air.

She braced for the impact, for the tearing pain, for whatever came next in a life that might end right here, right now, on a stranger’s property beside a lake she’d never wanted to see again.

It never came.

Instead, Curtis Lennox tumbled backward off the porch steps and into the grass below, his sightless eyes staring at nothing.

Anja looked up, heart slamming, and found Remi still slumped against the doorframe, his own weapon raised, his hand shaking with the effort of having lifted it at all, but his eyes fixed and certain on the man he’d just killed.