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She might be unconscious. She might be dead.
Panic surged through me, sweeping away all sense of strategy. Time slowed, my breath caught. She couldn’t be...
“Kennedy!” I sprinted towards her, every other thought obliterated by the need to reach her, to see her eyes open and meet mine.
“Get down!” Greyson’s sharp voice jolted me from my tunnel vision.
His hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanking me sideways with a force that sent us sprawling. The world tilted wildly, a blur of shadows and light.
A split second later, the crack of gunfire ripped through the air where I’d been standing.
“Ah!” Greyson’s grunt was right next to me, muffled by the chaos, but unmistakably pained.
Scrambling to my knees, I blinked to clear the disorientation, only to freeze.
Sunny stood behind Kennedy using her as a shield, the barrel of his gun pressing coldly against her temple.
“One wrong move and she’s dead.”
From my position on the floor, I could see Kennedy more clearly now. Her wrists were free, no bindings to hold her—except for whatever cocktail of drugs they’d pumped into her system. The slight droop of her eyelids, the limpness of her posture...
She was drugged. What if those drugs destroyed her fledgling memories?
An unexpected thought jolted through me. What if someone had purposefully caused her amnesia with drugs?
“Greyson, you okay?” I whispered harshly, eyes locked on Kennedy, searching for any sign of consciousness.
“Been better,” he muttered through clenched teeth, his hand pressed to his shoulder where a dark stain was spreading across his t-shirt from underneath his bulletproof vest. But even bleeding, his gaze was fixed on Sunny.
Greyson was calculating, waiting for an opening.
“Good,” I answered, because both of us had to keep moving. Greyson got to his feet, letting out a hiss of pain; blood splattered onto the floor from his shoulder.
“Let’s talk this out, Sunny. Man to man,” Greyson called out, his voice steady despite his blood loss. He took a measured step forward, hands raised in a gesture of peace.
No one who knew Greyson would buy that gesture.
I kept low, my heart hammering against my ribs as I edged to the side, desperate for a clear line of sight. Right now, Kennedy was in the crossfire.
Sunny’s head turned sharply at the sound of my movement, and his finger tensed on the trigger. Bullets seared past me, but I lunged desperately and managed to dive behind an old piece of machinery. The bullets slammed into the metal instead before coming to an abrupt halt.
How many rounds had Sunny just fired? I tried to count them, hoping he’d run out of rounds soon.
Greyson had lunged forward in a burst of speed while Sunny was distracted. He grappled with Sunny, who let out a startled curse, their struggle a blur. It was impossible to take out Sunny without risking Greyson too..
“Kennedy!” I yelled, but the words were useless. She couldn’t hear me, couldn’t respond. All she could do was be the silent center of this deadly tug of war.
“Damn it, Greyson!” Sunny spat as he dragged Kennedy back, her body a ragdoll in his ruthless grip.
His arm locked around her neck, gun pressed to her temple with a cold finality that froze my insides. “The only way she’s getting out of here is with me!”
The air felt thick with the scent of gunpowder. Rain had begun to pound on the roof of the factory, deafening every other sound.
I held back, muscles coiled tight, knowing that one wrong move could end everything we’d fought so hard to reclaim.
Blood continued to seep through the fabric of Greyson’s shirt, dark even through the monochrome filter of my night vision goggles. He seemed not to notice, his focus locked on Sunny as if the injury were nothing more than a nuisance.
We backed off slowly, step by measured step, creating the space that Sunny demanded with Kennedy held tight against him. She stumbled alongside him as she slowly regained consciousness, then her wide eyes were taking in the chaos in front of her. When her gaze locked on mine, time stopped. Fear radiated from her in waves.
