Behind him, Akilov groaned.
The sound was indistinct, guttural, the sound of a man clawing back toward consciousness. Snow crunched as he shifted.
Every system came back online.
Wyatt eased Jen down, his hand on her cheek for one second. “Don’t move.”
Akilov was on his side, one hand pressed to the wound in his thigh, and despite his shattered arm, reaching toward his weapon in the snow.
Wyatt kicked it away. It skittered across the snow crust and disappeared into the dark.
Akilov looked up. He was breathing hard, his jaw clenched, but there was something behind that eye—not surrender. Recognition. One professional acknowledging another.
Wyatt raised the pistol.
He could kill him. Right now. A round through the skull and it would be over. This man had come to his home. Broken in. Put his hands on Jen. Dragged her through glass and darkness and hit her hard enough to close her eye.
Every fiber of him wanted it. The SEAL wanted it. The part of him built for this—trained, honed, sharpened into a weapon that existed for moments precisely like this one—wanted to pull the trigger and watch the light leave.
Jen was behind him. Breathing. Alive. Watching.
He flipped the gun in his hand and drove the butt into Akilov’s temple.
The impact was clean and precise. One strike. Akilov’s head snapped sideways and his body went limp, crumpling into the snow.
Wyatt stood over him for a moment. His breath fogged in the cold. His wrecked hand hung at his side.
He turned and walked back to Jen.
She was sitting up, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking. He crouched in front of her, cupped her face in his hands—broken one and all. The blood. The bruises. Her swollen eye. Tear tracks cut through the grime on her cheeks.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
He helped her up. Her legs buckled on the first try, and he caught her. On the second, she made it, leaning hard into him. He slid his arm under her knees and lifted her.
His right hand throbbed with a sick, grinding heat, and his ribs ached where he’d taken hits in the kitchen. His shoulder wasstiffening from a blow he didn’t remember receiving. None of it mattered.
None of it even came close to mattering.
She curled into him, her face pressed against his neck, her breath warm on his skin. Her fingers hooked into the collar of his shirt and held on.
He stood in the snow holding her while the silence settled around them and the mountains watched, and for one long, suspended moment, there was nothing else.
Sirens broke the hush. Distant at first, then closer. Headlights cut through the dark, bouncing over the access road, throwing long yellow beams across the snow.
Tires ground over ice.
Ryder’s beaten truck. Caleb vaulted out before the truck stopped. Vest on. Weapon up. Moving fast.
The truck skidded to a halt.
A second later, Ryder was right behind him, rifle raised, covering the opposite angle.
Their attention swung to him. Standing in the snow. Jen in his arms.
Ryder lowered his weapon. He glanced at the house. At Akilov, bloodied in the snow.
