Page 45 of Crown of Ash

Andre didn't wait for anything else. He hit the stairs at a dead run, Zain's footsteps echoing his own frantic pace a half-stride behind him. Neither of them spoke, because there wasn't a word that would have made either of them move any faster than they already were.

The door was half ajar, a sliver of light spilling out into the darkened hallway. Andre approached the last five feet with a calculated stillness, his every muscle coiled and ready. He knew better than to barrel into this room; such recklessness was a surefire way to get someone killed.

Inside, Drakov had Marcus by the collar, a pistol pressed so hard under his jaw that it would leave a bruise even if the trigger remained untouched. Blood trickled from a cut above Marcus's eyebrow, a thin rivulet of darkness against his pale skin. His hands were open at his sides, empty and eerily still. It was the kind of stillness that spoke volumes, the stillness of a man calculating every possible move and finding each one lacking.

Before Andre had fully absorbed the scene, his own weapon was already raised, his grip firm and steady. Zain mirrored him, half a step behind, as silent as the grave.

"Ah." Drakov didn't even flinch at the sight of two more guns entering the room. Instead, his lips curled into a satisfied smile, the kind of smile that belonged to a man who had been waiting for an audience. "The detective. I wondered when you'd get here."

He didn't look like the monster Andre had spent six years hunting. He looked like an ordinary man in his sixties, silver-haired and impeccably dressed even in this dire situation. His face was one that belonged on a glossy magazine cover about philanthropy, not on a kill list. That was the worst part.

"Let him go." Andre's voice was steady, belying the adrenaline coursing through his veins. "This ends however you want it to end. But let him go first."

"Does it, though?" Drakov's thumb moved along the pistol's grip, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world. "I've read your file, detective. Years of good, clean police work, and here you are, pointing a gun at a private citizen in his own home, backed by an armed militia that answers to nobody. Tell me... Whose side of the law are you standing on right now?"

"The side that gets him out of this room alive," Andre retorted, his voice echoing in the tense silence of the room.

Drakov's eyes flicked to Marcus, a look of almost fondness crossing his features. It was the way a man looks at something he's already decided to break. "He's cost me a great deal, your Mr. Whitfield. Years of careful work. Money I'll never see again. And now, apparently, my last safe house." His grip tightened around Marcus's collar, and Marcus's breath hitched sharply, controlled, refusing to give Drakov the satisfaction of a pained sound. "I find I don't have much left to lose by finishing what I came here to do."

"Drakov..." Andre's voice was a warning, but he got no further.

"Take the shot." Drakov's smile was chilling, not reaching anywhere near his eyes. "Go on, detective. You've wanted to for years. I would, in your position. I'd have taken it the day you walked into my office with your little warrant and your little theories if I'd had the nerve for it back then. Go on. Prove you're not as soft as your file makes you look."

Andre's finger found the trigger guard and stayed there, his heart pounding in his chest like a war drum.

There was no shot. Drakov had positioned himself perfectly, Marcus's body between his and the door, the pistol close enough to Marcus's skull that even a clean hit risked the dying reflex doing what the bullet hadn't. Andre had run a hundred scenarios in a hundred training rooms. None of them had ever been this one: the man he loved, a smonster's finger on a trigger, no angle in the world that made the math come out safe.

"I don't have the shot," Andre admitted, his voice barely above a whisper, not to Drakov. To himself. To the room.

"No," Drakov agreed, his voice almost gentle. "You don't."

Marcus's eyes found Andre's across the room. He didn't look afraid. He looked like a man doing the same math Andre was, arriving at the same answer, and making his peace with it faster than anyone should have to.

"It's okay," Marcus said, his voice quiet but steady. "Andre. It's okay."

It was not okay. Andre was about to say so, about to do something reckless and probably fatal, because standing still while Marcus told him it was okay to let him die was the one thing he genuinely could not do. Then the second doorway on the far wall opened without a sound.

Cass, Reaper, had an angle Andre never had: square to Drakov's temple, nothing of Marcus in the line at all.

Drakov never saw him.

The shot took him before the sound of it finished, before Andre's own brain caught up to what his eyes had already watched happen. Drakov's grip went slack. Marcus twisted free and down in the same motion, years of training taking over before conscious thought could, putting distance between himself and a dead man's falling weight as his dying shot finally went off.

The room went silent except for the ringing in Andre's ears and Marcus's breathing, fast and alive and real.

Andre crossed the space between them without remembering deciding to move. His heart pounded in his chest as he reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he touched Marcus's shoulder, reassuring himself that Marcus was alive, that he was real.

Andre's hands found their way to Marcus's face, cradling it with a gentleness that belied the turmoil within him. It was a mirror of a moment they'd days months ago, in a different kitchen, under different circumstances. His fingers traced the contours of Marcus's features, as if by touch alone he could assess the damage.

"I'm fine." Marcus's voice was rough, a gravelly reassurance that scraped against the silence. The cut above his eyebrow was already clotting, the flow of blood slowing to a stubborn trickle. "Andre. I'm fine."

"You're bleeding." Andre's voice was a whisper, a protest against the reality before him.

"I've bled worse from shaving." Marcus caught Andre's wrist, his grip firm and grounding. He held it there against his own jaw, halting Andre's frantic inspection. "Look at me. I'm here. It's over."

But it didn't feel over yet. It felt like the eerie quiet that followed an explosion, the aftermath of a sound too loud to comprehend. The echo of it still rang in Andre's ears long after the noise itself had ceased. He forced himself to breathe, a deliberate inhalation and exhalation, before he trusted his own voice again.

"He's dead."