Page 12 of Until the End

Blood rushed from her head as her pulse kicked up from freaked to frenzied.

The brawny kidnapper shoved her behind a tree, pressing her spine into the abrasive bark. He wedged a thick, rock-hard leg between her thighs, pinning her between two hundred plus pounds of chiseled muscle and two feet of dense wood. God, those shoulders and that chest were almost as wide and solid as the tree.

“Achilles, down,” he said.

The dog fell in line behind him, doing as instructed.

He lowered his face close to hers. Then she spotted it. A flesh-colored earpiece.

“I need you to stay still.” His voice was deep and husky with a lethal edge of steel. Warm, minty breath caressed her mouth.

How could he be so infuriatingly calm? And why was he so distractingly hot?

“When the bells start ringing,” he said, “those guys are going to start shooting.”

Wait. What? “You just said they wouldn’t.”

“The sound will—”

Mighty bells tolled a symphony orchestra, heralding a hail of suppressed gunfire. No distinct pops rang in her ears, only the loud, solemn ding-dong and her terrified screams.

The force of bullets slamming into the tree reverberated through the trunk like power-driven nails, rattling the teeth in her head.

Terror spilled through her.

A volley of gunfire shredded the bark. Wooden shards exploded past the sides of her head. Grass and dirt kicked up in the air. Bullets whistled by, riddling shrubs and trees. Leaves rained down around them in a surreal cascade of greenery.

She cringed, knees buckling, wanting to curl up like a baby, but the big guy’s immense body held her upright, fastened to him. Prickly bark dug into her calves, scratching at her bottom through the thin fabric of her dress. He peered around the side of the tree, firing back. She couldn’t catch her breath but needed to regulate it before she hyperventilated and passed out.

Curling a hand around the back of her head, he tucked her face into his solid chest and engulfed her twitching body with the formidable plane of his. Her kidnapper—turned timely protector—nearly crushed her in an effort to keep her safe. The surreal scene had her drawing herself in tight against him, burrowing into his heat. She momentarily absorbed the strange comfort of the granite shelter he provided, and for a harebrained second, the sensation of being held overcame the chaos.

“Do you see the others circling in, Alistair? When the hour strikes, lay down suppressive fire so I can get her to the car.”

He wasn’t crazy and now she knew his partner’s name, but that left a huge question. “Who are you?”

“Government operative. Name’s Castle.”

Double crud. A government agent—freaking spook—was worse than the cops. And she was stuck. Without his help, she was going to die. With his help, she might end up interrogated at some gruesome black site.

She knew all too well how the CIA made hackers disappear.

But as slim choices went, he was better than Bravo and Delta. For the moment, anyway.

The bells stopped and so did the gunfire. She raked in shaky breaths, straining to steady her escalating pulse. He looked down at her, and she wished she could see his eyes.

“I need you to trust me,” he said. “Things are about to get really hairy.”

“Huh?” Really hairy? As if what had just happened wasn’t bad enough?

“That was the preliminary chime. The large bell is about to toll the hour. They’ll have almost a minute to fire and close in. We have to move.”

Move from behind the cover and protection of the tree? Was he serious? “No. No. If we move, they’ll shoot us.” She shook her head and pushed against him. The man didn’t budge, keeping her lodged in place with the anchor of his startling weight. Hard as a boulder and probably not an ounce of extraneous fat.

“W-we should wait it out.” Her voice trembled worse than her body.

He pressed a warm hand to her face, cradling the base of her skull, and his callused thumb swept over her cheek. She stilled, and the scream cranking up in her belly flattened. His touch was like a grounding conductor, preventing her system from overloading and going into shock.

“Stay behind me. Move as I move so I take all the fire,” he said slowly, calmly, as if this was an ordinary day at the park. Maybe getting shot at was his norm. “Don’t freeze up. I’ll shield you to the stairs, then you hightail it to the street.”