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"Jasper got out of the truck and told me to go."
"Did you?"
It hurt to answer him. "Yes."
"Good girl. Are you heading toward the city?"
"I'm facing that direction," she confirmed.
"Okay. This is what I need you to do. We've had a breach. Jasper's house has been compromised, and so has your apartment. The city isn't safe. I want you to turn the truck around and drive back to Avalon. Loki and Liam are here waiting for you. I'm getting in my truck right now, and I'm on my way."
But that meant she'd have to drive past Jasper. Maybe she'd see him lying dead in the road or worse, have to leave him again. No, she couldn't do it again. If he was alive and needed help, there was no way she could just sail past him to safety.
She heard the growl of an engine starting up. "Anarchy, you do not stop for anything. Understand me? Anything. You keep your foot pressed to the gas pedal and you don't stop until you're back at Avalon."
"Yes, Master Atticus. I understand."
"Clever girl. I need to make some calls, so I have to leave you. I'll be with Jasper in ten minutes." The line went dead, and she went numb inside.
The darkness outside was eerie, even with the headlights blazing a path out ahead of her. The road was quiet, the stars were out, and she was very, very alone. Silence hummed inside the truck, setting her nerves singing to the same frequency. It was freaking her out.
"Get some balls, Campbell," she muttered. "Grandma would be loading up the shotgun right about now."
Hell yes, she would. Grandma had been a tough cookie, and nothing ever seemed to faze her. She'd have been loading the damn gun, strapping on the ammo belt, and painting her cheeks with black stripes. That spark of can-do attitude hadn't stopped with her, Anarchy told herself in disgust. It had passed into her daughter, into her fucking granddaughter.
The same granddaughter currently acting like a helpless female.
"I am nothelpless." Baring her teeth, Archie flexed her hands. "I am a freaking Campbell!"
She pulled the seat belt across her chest and snapped it into place. Wiggled her sore butt deeper into the driver's seat. A quick double pump of her foot on the accelerator produced a satisfying vroom-vroom. With her brain in productive mode rather than panicked, she spun the truck in a U-turn and piled on the speed, heading back toward Jasper.
She covered ground quickly, but as she neared where she thought she'd left him, Archie remembered what the twins had done last time. That flash of movement in this godforsaken darkness, the terrible bump of the tires going over something big enough to almost wrench the wheel from Jasper's grasp. Applying the brakes more carefully, she slowed to almost a stop and cut off the headlights completely, crawling the truck carefully along the road.
This time, it wouldn't be her caught by surprise.
It took her longer to find them than she thought it would. The dark was throwing off her gauge, but soon enough, she saw the headlights of the car still parked in the same spot. She saw a lump in the road, figured it was whatever they'd thrown at her and Jasper. It looked horribly like...a body.
A sick anger rose in her swiftly. They'd thrown a dead man in front of them? Did they have norespect for the dead?
Another man was rolling around on the floor, while Jasper—she knew it was Jasper by the shock of white hair illuminated by the headlights—ran at a third. Hope lifted in her chest, filled her with joy.
He was alive.
A gasp strangled in her throat as she watched him leap, saw him crash feet first into the other man and send him flying back. Her lover hit the ground hard and...just stayed there. She willed him to get up, to get back on his feet, but he didn't move. Had he knocked himself out? Was he hurt so badly he couldn't move?
The questions made her dizzy before a warning shout bounced around the truck. The twin Jasper had taken down was standing up, albeit slowly and unsteadily. The shout morphed into a scream when she saw the knife gleam in his hand.
She was only thirty, maybe forty feet away, yet too far to help. As the twin seemed to shake off the hit Jasper had dealt, he stood in the middle of the road and stretched as though nothing could stop him from finishing the job he'd been assigned.
Over my dead body, she thought.
Without considering the consequences of what she was doing, Anarchy punched her foot to the gas, pressing the pedal flat to the floor. The engine howled but responded with a lurch of speed that hurtled her through the dark. Faster, faster, faster.
She pushed herself back into her seat as the man spun, startled. Her hands clutched the steering wheel in the ten and two position, the tendons standing out from her skin. There was a dumbfounded look on his face that turned quickly to horror as she bore down on him, her eyes wide open and locked on his as she snarled.
The impact hit her a second later. The driver's side of the Navigator's hood hit the asshole and, for an instant, folded him over the front of the SUV. She swore she heard bones breaking. She knew his head bounced off the metal, that he screamed as she drove through him, then over him as the tires repeated that sickly bump-bump.
For several long seconds, she forgot how to do anything.
