“Isa, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think about—”
“This is not the time for that,” Isa said. “You need to leave.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
Warm fingers over mine. “I know, caro,” she murmured. “I forgive you. I’ve always forgiven you. And as much as I want you to tell me all about your life these last years, you need to go.”
“Come with us,” Dan said.
“No,” Isa said. “I can’t. Now go, Eva.”
“Isa,” I whispered.
Fingers on my cheek. “I know,” she said softly. “Now go. Do good. Be happy.”
Dan waited for her to step back. “You sure you won’t come.”
Isa nodded.
And he didn’t ask again, didn’t wait any longer, just hustled down the stairs, following my whispered instructions. And it was getting harder and harder for me to even whisper them. Blood dripped down my side, soaked into my pants. My ankle hurt more with every bump, until it threatened to swallow me whole.
I dropped one of the guns, unable to hold onto it any longer, focused on holding tightly to the other, on trying to remember how many shots there were left in it.
There couldn’t be many, not after the twisting halls and the shooting in the family room.
Was it three?
Maybe two?
“Which way?”
I blinked, realized we’d emerged into a kitchen. “Straight out. Brick fence. Right. Follow it until the gate.”
We were out into the sunshine a few seconds later, sprinting through the trees, and then I found myself on the ground, surrounded by a cluster of comically cheerful wildflowers.
Dan backed up and threw his shoulder at the wooden gate.
It groaned but didn’t give way.
Not for three more painful, jarring hits.
Then it burst outward, and I was in his arms again, and we were running.
A yell sounded behind us, more gunshots, and I knew we weren’t going to make it.
There were too many of them. I was slowing him down.
We would never make it to the car, and even if we somehow did, we wouldn’t make it out of the compound.
Dan just needed to leave me. This wasn’t some martyr bullshit. I didn’t want to stay here, but fuck, I also couldn’t be the reason he didn’t make it out alive.
I opened my mouth, started to speak. “You need to—”
And the world exploded around us.
Twenty-Three
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Dan
It was too fucking early in the evening for bloodshed.
But evil didn’t always wait for a convenient hour.
“You need to—”
Ava didn’t get to finish her order for me to leave her—not that I would have done it—because an explosion rent the air.
I dove toward the wall, trying to take the brunt of the fall, before rolling us and protecting her body with mine. My ears rang, cuts littered my bare skin, and I knew the constant jarring couldn’t possibly be good for her injuries.
When the noise stopped, I started to lift her into my arms.
But then my nape prickled. I released her, spun with my gun extended, and . . .
Breathed a long sigh of relief.
“Fucking hell,” I said, staring at Ryker and Laila. “Took you guys long enough.”
“Maybe next time don’t leave your tracker someplace you’re not.”
We didn’t have enough time to get into the details, so I simply turned back to Ava, saw she was on her feet, gun in hand, balance teetering.
Her chin came up, and she hobbled forward. “Let’s go.”
And then she collapsed.
I was already moving, caught her before she hit the ground. “Let’s go,” I said, repeating her sentiment.
Laila nodded. “Car’s this way.”
The car turned out to be an armored vehicle, the engine idling, with Olive behind the wheel. When she saw us coming, she got out, helped me get Ava into the backseat. Doors slammed, Ryker started driving, and Laila got on her phone, calling into headquarters.
But I wasn’t paying attention to that.
My gaze was on Ava.
On Olive and her somber expression.
On the growing pile of blood-soaked bandages filling the floor of the vehicle as we drove.
Ava was so, so pale.
There was so much blood on her skin, on the seat, on her clothing, on the dressings.
And clearly not enough in her.
The days that followed were some of the worst of my life.
Ava was a woman who could go very still, waiting for hours to get the perfect shot. But even when she was motionless, there was still so much life in her, prickling beneath the surface.
Now . . . she was quiet.
No spark.
No life.
Just a slender, pale woman hooked up to too many machines.
And she slept on. Never rising from unconsciousness as the hours passed—not as Ryker drove like the hounds of hell were behind us as Laila directed him to a KTS safe clinic, not as Ava was stabilized and wheeled aboard a KTS plane, not as she arrived at KTS headquarters and was brought directly to the clinic where Olive watched over her until Laila had pulled the doctor away.
Olive had been dead on her feet, nearly unconscious herself as she watched every monitor, checked every stitch and bandage, ran herself ragged with every change in blood pressure and pulse.
It wasn’t until Laila pointed out that her fatigue might risk Ava’s recovery that Olive had finally left the room.
And I had stayed.
Maybe from the outside nothing between me and Ava had changed.
We were still teammates, still agents who sometimes put our lives on the line, who were occasionally seriously injured in the line of fire.
Maybe people would think a handful of kisses and some conversations didn’t change anything.
But it was more than just kisses and words.
It was whispered memories in a dark cell, a bond forming when shit got scary. It was her being so willing to sacrifice herself when she’d kicked ass to get me out of the warehouse safely several weeks before. It was pain in her clear brown eyes after she’d taken the shot to kill her father. It was a sliver of light in a claustrophobic space, a glimpse of a life that hadn’t broken her but would have shattered so many other people before.
It was her limping forward with a broken ankle and a stab wound in her side.
It was . . . Ava.
I’d seen inside the carefully built walls, and I had so much fucking respect for the woman.
But she was still and silent . . . and it killed me to see her like that.
A soft knock on the door had me glancing up, and it spoke to how tired I was that I hadn’t heard it open.
Laila stood on the threshold and took one look at me before pointing down the hall. “Shut-eye. Now.”
“Lai—”
“That’s wasn’t a suggestion,” she said.
“You’re giving me orders now?” I asked.
Technically, she was the team leader, of course, but it wasn’t a common thing for her to outright tell us to do something. Usually, we worked within loose parameters Laila laid out, discussed and came up with a plan of action together. She didn’t order us around . . . unless we were at risk of hurting someone or . . . ourselves.