I choke on my spit when Agent Moses informs without remorse, “Tobias is dead.”
I want to call him a liar. I want to tell him I’ll never fall for his tricks again, but there’s too much honesty in his eyes to discount. He’s telling the truth, and the smallest article under the news of his appointment backs up his claims.
Agent Tobias Brahn was killed on duty.
His funeral is later this week.
I am the first to admit I’m not good at thinking on the spot, and it’s showcased in the worst way when the floating of the newspaper to the floor is quickly chased by me smashing my fist into Agent Moses’s nose.
He’s so unprepared for my hit, he sails back with waving arms and a mangled groan. When he collides with the door of Demi’s room, his head’s collision with the super thick wood is the loudest part of his fall. He’s dazed in an instant, and even quicker than that, I rip Demi’s medical chart off the end of her bed, then demand her to put on a coat.
“Hurry,” I instruct before moving toward the corridor to check the coast is clear. Agent Moses is starting to rouse, and his groggy awakening has me eager for more than one hit. I can’t do that and get Demi out of the danger zone at the same time.
She must come first.
Once Demi has her jacket in place and her shoes on, I prop a dazed Agent Moses onto the wall across from the door. He murmurs something about me choosing my battles, but since blood is gushing out of his nose, and his head is all types of woozy, I can’t understand a thing he says.
It’s for the best. I’m so close to killing him, he should count his lucky stars that I don’t want Demi witnessing me taking another man’s life. If she weren’t standing beside me, all bets would be off. That’s how much I despise Agent Moses.
“There are cameras at the end of the hall. Keep your head down and your hair in front of your face.” I tug out the elastic that forever keeps Demi’s hair in place before pushing down on the door handle. I don’t know where we’ll go once we leave here, I barely have funds for a cab fare since I left my gym bag in the cab four days ago. I just know I need to get her as far from here as possible. If Agent Moses is aware she is alive, it will be only a matter of time before her uncle also finds out.
I freeze halfway out the door when Demi says my name in a breathless plea. When I whip around to face her, she balances onto her tippy toes, then plants her lips on mine. Her kiss isn’t a long embrace, nor is it sloppy with a heap of tongue. It’s a perfect kiss full of love and mutual respect. A kiss that exposes I could have killed Agent Moses, and she wouldn’t have looked at me differently. A kiss so passionate, I’d give anything to go back in time to when she mashed her face into my crotch in Saint’s ride. Her life was far from perfect back then, but it was a heap less dangerous than it is now.
“I love you,” Demi whispers over my mouth before she bobs under my arm to move into the corridor.
Once she has her chin balancing on her chest, she commences walking down the eerily quiet space that’s usually a bustling hive of activity.
I take a moment to acknowledge the warning gurgle of my stomach before shadowing Demi’s walk.
We make it to the foyer, where the elevator banks are located before our departure is noticed. Mercifully, it isn’t an armed guard with tattooed guns and a nasty sneer. It’s Nurse Sandy. “Go,” she mouths after straying her eyes away from the direction we just sprinted.
I can’t see what she can see, but if the terror on her face is anything to go by, she’s spotted Agent Moses’s bloody nose and rapidly darkening eyes.
The crash of a medical trolley colliding into someone’s thigh sounds through my ears at the same time the elevator doors snap shut with Demi and me inside. I doubt Nurse Sandy’s interference will slow Agent Moses’s pursuit by much, but I am grateful she put both herself and her position on the line for us.
With my focus more on the stairwell at the side of the elevator than the foyer of the hospital, I don’t realize we’re sprinting straight toward disaster until our burst through the rotating hospital doors has me crashing into one of Col’s goons. It isn’t the man who shoved his gun into Demi’s ribs weeks ago. It’s the one who was sitting in the driver’s seat, smirking like a smug fuck in the rearview mirror when Col forced Demi’s goodbye kiss to land on his mouth instead of his cheek.
“So it is true,” mutters a familiar voice at our right. “The dead do resurrect.”
When Col slides out of the backseat of his Audi, I fist up, ready and willing to go down fighting. I only need to keep him and his goon occupied long enough for Demi to flee like her father did when she was seven. I’m more than capable of doing that. In a sick way, I’m looking forward to it.
Col smirks. “That won’t be necessary. Not evenshewill permit you to throw a punch when she discovers what I have up my sleeve.” He doesn’t need to say Demi’s name for me to know who he’s referencing. The sneer the ‘she’ part of his threat was delivered with is indicative enough.
“No!” Demi squeals when she spots a blonde in the back seat of Col’s town car. Sloane is busted up, crying, and bound. The clothes she’s wearing are designer, but they’ve been put through the wringer, even homeless people would turn their noses up at them.
Demi whacks into me as fiercely as Sloane did Saint weeks ago when I curl my arm around her waist and hoist her away from Sloane before she can get within an inch of her. She calls me names and warns that she’ll never forgive me if I don’t let her go.
She beats into me so viciously, she misses Col advising me that I know where to find him if I want Sloane to finish her studies. “It’ll do you best to show up. Trust me when I say there’s no place for hate in a relationship.” Confident I’ll fall into step before I’d ever disappoint Demi, Col clicks his fingers together two times before he slides back into his Audi, pushing Sloane across the blood-stained leather seat in the process. “Nine o’clock, Ox. Not a second later.”
He doesn’t need to tell me what will happen to Sloane if I don’t show up. She will be dead, and Demi will hate me for eternity. She doesn’t directly say that while fighting to get away from me, but the painful sob she releases when her uncle’s Audi glides down the hill of Mercer Private most certainly reflects that.
Furthermore, she’s already grieving our child. She won’t survive back-to-back losses.
“No,” Demi cries on a sob when Col’s car disappears from view, all but convinced her best friend is dead. “I was supposed to keep her safe. She wasn’t meant to get hurt.”
“It will be okay. I promise I won’t let anything happen to her.”
After locking our eyes, I hit her with the same pleading, despondent look I gave her on the freeway weeks ago. It impacts her more than my words ever could. Her eyes are wide and terrified, but she immediately stops thrashing against me, her energy reserved to free the worry I still see in her eyes. “You can’t fight for him, Maddox. It will destroy you.”
