Wyatt fired again.
The second round tore the gun from Akilov’s hand. It hit the snow. He screamed, curving around his ruined hand.
Wyatt held the sight picture.
One second.
Two.
Akilov wasn’t moving.
Jen.
Face down in the snow.
Not moving.
Fifteen feet and every step cost him.
His boots punched through crusted ice, everything else fading between him and her.
He fell to his knees beside her.
“Jen.”
He reached for her with both hands and pain engulfed the broken one. Blinding. Something tore at his throat, but he swallowed it whole. He gathered her up anyway. Slid his arm under her shoulders and turned her, pulling her against his chest.
Her face was puffy. Blood matted her hair on the left side, and the cut on her cheek had opened wider, dark against her skin. Her left eye was almost shut, the bruise already spreading in deep shades of red and black. Snow dusted her hair.
His hands moved on instinct—fingers along her jaw, checking for fractures. Gentle pressure on her ribs. Searching for the wound he was terrified he’d find—the one that meant he’d been too slow, too far, too late.
Bruising. Cuts. Swelling. No penetration.
She was breathing.
Her eyes opened. Focused. Found him.
Alive.
Air slammed back into his lungs hard enough to hurt.
He closed his eyes, and for a second he just held her, his forehead pressed to hers. Her skin was freezing, slick with blood, and nothing had ever felt better.
“Wyatt—” Her voice cracked. Her hands came up and grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, pulling at him as if she needed toconfirm he was solid. “Are you okay? Your hand, oh my God, your hand, you’re bleeding, are you?—”
She was checking him. She was lying in the snow with a smashed face and torn hands, and she was checking him.
His throat worked hard. “I’m okay.” His words were wrecked and barely there. “I’m okay.”
“He was going to—” A sob broke through, hard and sudden, and her face crumpled. She pressed into his chest, and her whole body shook, tremors shuddering through her. “He was going to kill you. I saw it. I couldn’t?—”
“You saved me.” He muttered the words into her hair. “You saved me.”
She sobbed harder. Her bloodied fingers dug into his shirt, and he pulled her tighter against him, his broken hand incandescent. But he held on because the pain of holding her was nothing compared to those seconds when she’d been face down in the snow and he hadn’t known if she was alive.
He pressed his mouth to her temple. Tasted blood and snow, and salt. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
“Wyatt.” The way she said it shattered something in him he knew would never reset.
