Every single move Nash and I had practiced flew through me in a mad rush, adrenaline spiking in a different way than when I’d tangled with him, but still adrenaline. Before I even thought about it, I’d lost my pumps and flipped her over, forcing her hands to let go of the chains as I straddled her and pounded my fist into her face. The first punch broke her glasses, slicing my knuckles, and the second one caused blood to spurt from her nose. She went still, the blonde wig she’d been wearing sliding off her head and onto the floor, revealing auburn hair she’d shaved to almost nothing. The reflection of the military cut was not lost on me.
She wasn’t dead, but she was knocked out. I scrambled off of her and headed for the door. As I did, I heard movement behind me. She wasn’t knocked out at all. She’d feigned it, and I’d bought it, but I didn’t wait, I just kept my momentum going forward as the door slammed open to reveal a Nash so cold and deadly I wasn’t sure I even knew him.
Fiona was screaming, “Stop, you bitch!”
Nash had his gun raised, and I just kept running to him. As I got close, he fired the gun. Once. The bullet flew through the air near enough to me that the sound registered in my ear. Twice. The next bullet let loose just as I collided with a strong chest and an arm that wrapped around me. He rotated his entire body to put me behind him as he aimed the gun backward for another shot he never took.
I looked back to see the blood spilling from Fiona’s forehead and nose, the maroon color spreading across the chest of her red dress as she fell to the ground with her gun clattering to the floor with her.
Nash
ANGEL
“You're the reason I live
You're the reason I die
You're the reason I give
When I break down and cry.”
Performed by Aerosmith
Written by Child / Tyler
When I got to the upper deck, Tanner was nowhere in sight, only Malone. The man was a monster. Huge. Deadly. I’d had some grudging respect for him right up until this moment.
“What the hell is this?” I asked him.
Malone frowned. “I don’t know. Why the fuck did he call us up here?”
A huge tear formed in my newly pinkened heart. Dani!
I turned to run, hollering over my shoulder, “Get to Brady!”
But he was already running in the opposite direction. I sailed down the steps, using the railing to jump over to the next set and continuing down to the main floor.
My body was in go mode, fluid, fast, with my brain already five steps ahead. When I got to the hallway with the bathrooms and saw the agent lying on the ground, my heart continued to bleed, but my body was too well-trained to react. I’d been taught to focus on the object at the end of my scope while keeping every other sense and space outside that spot on red alert. It’s called situational awareness. Some people say it makes everything slow down, like in a movie when they want to show you every minute detail of what’s happening. I’d had moments when that was true for me, but in my entire career, it had never lasted more than a few seconds.
Now, it pummeled me, making each step I ran take an eternity.
I reached the hallway, barely sparing a glance at the blood pouring from the agent’s head wound as I slammed open the bathroom door. All I could see was Dani running toward me, a montage of every look and every touch she’d ever given me—from teasing, to angry, to sensual—filling my head as I took in the scene with all my senses firing. I lifted my gun at the one trained on Dani’s back as she raced forward, Fiona’s words barely registering as my eye hit the target nanoseconds before I pulled the trigger. And as Dani slid past the bullet into my arms, I pulled again, rotating my body to shield her as I went to shoot the third time, but it wasn’t needed.
Fiona’s shaved head with its bullet wound was tumbling forward, her body following it to the ground as her gun with its silencer fell with a crack that sounded like thunder. She landed next to a blonde wig and Dani’s silver shoes.
I pulled Dani away, lifting her off her bare feet and carrying her as I ran toward the security room we’d claimed as our safe zone earlier in the day. The immediate threat was neutralized, but I was still unable to fight the sense of panic banging against the stillness of my military-trained heart.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” rang in my ear. “Main level, hallway five.”
I didn’t stop as I’d buzzed past a half a dozen agents running in the opposite direction.
“Who has eyes on Tanner?” I demanded as I slammed into the safe room. On the computer screens, the ants buzzed around the hallways and lobby. Inside the theater, everyone was clapping as some pop diva finished a song, the music onstage having disguised the sound in the corridors. All the attendees were still sitting there, smiling and laughing, while I felt like my entire world had almost ended.
I sank onto a chair as the last agent abandoned the room as Malone demanded the theater be searched.
I cradled Dani in my lap. Her arms were wrapped around me tightly, and I finally got to look at her. “Are you―”
My eyes landed on the red welts at her neck. And my eyes filled with water I wouldn’t let spill. I hadn’t been there again.
I’d been seconds too late.
“You saved me, Nash,” she was saying, voice scratchy and harsh, with her hands on my face as tears poured from her gorgeous
