I don't waste half a second. I lung across the seat, my arm wrapping around her neck, and yank her down into the footwell. I throw my entire body over hers, pinning her against the floorboards, using my torso as a solid shield between her and the doors.
Two black sedans barrel out from the same cutout, flanking us on the narrow road. Men in gear are leaning out of the windows, their suppressed rifles spitting a relentless hail of lead against our side panels.
"Kieran! Pit the left!" I bellow over the roar of the engine and the screech of the tires.
"Hold on!" Kieran screams.
The Suburban surges forward. Kieran rams the front bumper into the rear quarter panel of the left sedan. The metal screams, sparks showering the windshield as the sedan spins out of control, flipping twice before smashing into the canyon wall in a violent shower of glass and debris.
But the second sedan is right on our bumper. A shooter is climbing through the sunroof, holding a heavy-gauge breaching weapon aimed directly at our rear tires.
I need to end this. Now.
"Keep it steady!" I tell Kieran.
I scramble back just enough to reach the hidden gun box between the seats. I rip it open, grabbing the customized Benelli shotgun. I hit the electronic release for the rear tailgate window. The glass drops six inches.
I roll onto my back, the hard floorboards digging into my spine, and poke the barrel through the gap. The wind howled through the cabin, howling like a demon.
I take one breath. One alignment.
BOOM.
The heavy slug punches straight through the windshield of the trailing sedan, exploding the driver’s head in a spray of red. The car veers sharply to the right, plunging over the unprotected edge of the canyon road and tumbling into the rocky ravine below.
Silence hits the car, broken only by the ragged breathing of three people and the heavy hum of the engine.
I drop the shotgun onto the seat. I’m covered in plaster dust, the copper smell of spent casings thick in my nose. My heart is hammering a brutal rhythm against my ribs. I look down into the footwell.
Atara is staring up at me.
Her face is flushed, her hair a wild halo of dark curls against the rubber matting, and her eyes, Jesus, her eyes. They are bright, wide, and absolutely alive, glowing with a fierce, high-octane adrenaline that makes my breath catch in my throat. She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time, her chest heaving against my chest, her body trembling with the sheer, raw electricity of survival.
They flick past my shoulder to the ruined glass, to the smear of red on the windshield where a man's head used to be, and I watch the horror of it roll through her. The recoil. The understanding that the man who did that is the same one whose body is the only thing between her and the road. Then her eyes come back to me, and she doesn't pull away. Her fingers are fisted in my shirt, holding on, even as the rest of her flinches from what those same hands just did. Bright. Wide. Awake. Two things are at war on one face, and she can't make either of them win.
I've had people look at me with fear. I've had them look at me with hunger. I have never seen both at once, in the same breath, on someone who understands exactly what she's holding on to.
God help me, the lust still hits like a freight train, a dark, violent urge to rip that cream dress open right here, amid the dust and the smell of gunpowder, and drive myself into her until we both forget the sound of the bullets.
I force myself to pull back, climbing onto the leather seat, my hands shaking with a mix of rage and unadulterated adrenaline.
"Kieran," I say, my voice a low, vibrating snarl. "Turn the car around. We’re going back to the compound."
"Boss, what about the Senator?"
"Tell him we’re rescheduled," I growl. "And tell Echo to get a cleanup crew to the pass. I want to know who owned those cars before the metal is cold."
"Copy that."
I turn to Atara. She’s slowly climbing out of the footwell, shaking the dust from her sundress. She sits on the leather, her breathing still ragged, her lips parted and wet.
"You could have died," I say, the words coming out like heavy stones. I’m so furious I can barely see straight. The thought of a bullet tearing through that soft skin, of her becoming a body on the asphalt, makes a cold, sickening terror claw at my gut. "You could have been erased because you don’t fucking listen to instructions."
"I was frozen!" she shouts back, her voice cracking with the leftover adrenaline. She glares at me, her cheeks bright red. "And I wouldn't have been in that car if you hadn't dragged me out of my room! I would have been safe inside the compound, doing a puzzle with your daughter! This is your war, Lorcan. Not mine."
"It became yours the second Silas saw you," I snap, leaning over the space between us, my face inches from hers. "Never again,Atara. You don't question an order when the glass breaks. You don't talk back when I tell you to move."
"You don't fucking own me," she whispers. Her eyes are fierce, stubborn, and entirely unyielding, even after facing a firing squad.
