“You were so buried in whatever you were doing. Obsessed almost. I watched you for twenty minutes and knew that you must have beenworking on something substantial enough to make waves.”
Another shot. “Great. So you’re a stalker now. Wonderful. Add it to the résumé.”
I take the jab and continue, needing to get this out as I push the SUV harder. “Curiosity got the better of me,” I admit, dodging a burst of return fire that rattles the back of the trunk. “When I started digging, things weren’t lining up, but when that power grid report just happened to appear, it felt too easy.”
She fires again, getting another direct hit and sending the car veering off into a ditch. “And?” she calls over the noise, her hair getting in her face as she’s brutally attacked by the wind.
“Lazarus doesn’t exist, Firecracker,” I say, glancing toward her.
Silence stretches between shots, and she pulls away from the scope before looking at me, her brows furrowed. “What?” she snaps, the thick disbelief in her tone making me break for her.
I let out a sigh, hating being the one who has to deliver this news to her. “He’s a ghost they built for you. There’s no rogue agent or trafficked pathogens. No forty-eight-hour pattern. Just planted intel and staged grid spikes that were designed to draw you out.”
Another SUV barrels closer, headlights blinding in the rearview, but she ignores it, still looking at me as though I’m here to personally destroy her. But she just shakes her head, not wanting to believe it, but the truth is all around us. It’s in the craters left from the bullets on the ridge, it’s in the SUVs storming behind us, and the fear of the unknown she’s feeling in her chest.
She knows it’s true, but she just doesn’t understand why.
“It was your agency,” I finish, delivering the final blow.
Kiara laughs, almost looking relieved. “Shit,” she says, focusing her attention back on the SUVs before abandoning the rifle and switching it out for a handgun from the bag of weapons I’d brought along. “Okay, now I know you’re lying. If you’re trying to get me to betray my agency, you’re gonna have to come up with something better than that.”
A heaviness fills my chest, and as she lets out a few rounds toward the SUVs, I reach out and drop my hand to her thigh, gently squeezing until she looks back at me, and when she does, I just shake my head, letting her see the truth in my stare. “I’m sorry, Firecracker. You were flagged as compromised.”
Her brows furrow, and she turns back to the SUVs, letting off three more shots that each miss their target, rattled by the news. “No, I . . . It couldn’t be. The only person who could have flagged me as compromised would be Milan, and she wouldn’t do that. She’s my best friend.”
“This is on me,” I say, voice tight. “There’s no other explanation. They know, and just as we knew they would, they’ve declared that we’re too great a risk together, and the only way this ends is with us in body bags.”
The words hang between us, and knowing I need to get this out and give her all the information, I go on. “They needed you out in the open. Somewhere isolated. Somewhere clean,” I tell her as abullet pierces through our rear window, shattering the glass. “I was still piecing it together when you boarded that jet, and by the time I’d confirmed it, you were already racing toward a war zone you didn’t know existed.”
“Fuck.”
She goes quiet after that. Not scared, just focused, and it’s as though she needs the kill to clear her head.
Another SUV swings in close, practically kissing our bumper. Close enough that I can see the driver through his windshield. Kiara abandons another gun before digging through the bag, grunting with frustration. “Don’t you carry any decent blades?”
“I—” I let my words fall away. There’s no point arguing it.
There are at least fifteen blades in that bag, and the majority of them cost more than a small house, but sure, none of them are decent.
Kiara clambers into the backseat, not bothered by the broken glass from the rear window that digs into her knees as she braces herself on the seat. Then, finding all the shit that she’d brought with her to this shitshow, she pulls out four beautiful blades and climbs straight back into the passenger seat, one blade already flipping in the air, the hilt landing square in the middle of her palm.
The SUV pulls up alongside us, close enough to ram, and just as I go to do it, Kiara calls out. “Brake,” she demands.
I don’t hesitate, stepping on the brake and watching as her arm rears back. Then, with perfect precision, she snaps her arm forward with incredible force and launches the blade directly through thewindow of the SUV before it plunges deep into the driver’s throat.
I almost laugh.
They wanted sitting ducks, and instead, they got us.
“Well fuck,” I grunt, shaking my head in awe as the SUV jerks, violently swerving across the road before flipping into the desert in a cloud of dust and raging sparks. “You know you always get me worked up when I see you working those fucking blades.”
She ignores my comment, the next blade already flipping in her palm. “Four down. One to go.”
“Baby,” I say, but she ignores me, her jaw setting in a hard line as though she knows exactly what’s coming, and I reach out, gripping her chin and forcing her stare to me, forcing her to hear me. “Firecracker, I don’t give a shit what you have to say about it. I’m done holding back. I fucking love you, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can say to make that stop. So deal with it.”
She stares at me like I’ve just announced that I’m planning to stop the car and propose to her in the middle of the fiery blaze behind us. Then, as seriousness flashes in her eyes, her chest starts to rise and fall with erratic movement. I know she heard me, truly heard me.
“God, I hate you,” she breathes, her heart on her sleeve as bullets crack past the windows. The final SUV is creeping closer, but it no longer matters to either of us.
