"Look at that," Silas chuckles, his voice wet and rasping. "The King of the West Coast. Walking into a warehouse like he's checking the inventory. I have to hand it to you, Lorcan. You really are a romantic."
Lorcan doesn't look up at him. His eyes stay on me.
"I'm here, Silas," Lorcan says, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that shakes the dust off the beams. "Let them go."
"Oh, we'll get to that," Silas says, walking down the metal stairs, his boots clanging rhythmically. "But first, we have some business to finish."
I look at Lorcan, my heart hammering against my cracked ribs.
Don't do it,I try to tell him with my eyes.Don't play his game.
But Lorcan just holds my gaze, his face still and his hands steady.
34
Lorcan
I see her. That’s all I see.
She’s tied to that rusted metal chair under the single dangling bulb. Her left eye is swollen shut, a dark purple-black knot of bruised flesh. There’s a smear of dried copper on her chin and a fresh trail of blood leaking from her nose onto the collar of her torn knit dress.
They touched her.
The sanity I’ve spent five years keeping behind locked gates simply snaps.
I look at the four enforcers standing between us. They are holding short-barreled rifles, their stances lazy, confident because they think they have a broken man in their sights.
They are dead. They just haven't stopped breathing yet.
The guard closest to me on the left makes the mistake of shifting his weight, and I move before he can raise his barrel. I close the six-foot gap in a fraction of a second, my left hand snapping out to catch the handguard of his rifle, shoving it down as it spits a wild, deafening burst into the dirt.
With my right hand, I drive the heel of my palm upward under his chin. The impact is a dry, solid crack as his neck breaks backward. He’s still falling when I rip the rifle from his grip, swing the stock around, and smash it into the face of the second guard.
The wood of the stock splinters against his nose. Cartilage and bone cave inward in a wet spray of red. He goes down, clawing at his ruined face, and I don't wait for him to hit the floor. I spin, pulling the Glock from the small of my back, and fire three rounds center mass into the third guard before he can clear his holster.
The heavy rounds tear through his chest, punching him backward into a stack of rusted steel drums. He slides down, leaving a thick, dark streak of gore on the metal.
"Kill him!" Silas shrieks, his voice losing all its unhurried, arrogant charm. "Shoot him, you idiot!"
The fourth guard, a thick-necked bastard with a scar across his lip, tries to retreat, swinging his rifle toward my chest. I don't slide. I don't duck. I stride straight into his line of fire, my hand snapping out to catch his wrist.
I twist. The joint pops with a sickening, wet crunch, the bone tearing through the skin at his elbow. He lets out a high, fractured wail. I drive my boot into his knee, snapping the patella backward, and as he folds, I press the barrel of the Glock to his temple and pull the trigger.
My breathing is heavy, the copper smell of spent casings and fresh gore thick in my throat. I feel the blood, none of it mine, splattered across my cheek, warm and sticky in the cold draft.
I take a step toward Atara.
"Stop right there, Lorcan," Silas growls.
He steps out of the dark, sliding his left arm around Atara's neck. His right arm is wrapped in a thick, clean bandage, but he’s holding a heavy black revolver with his left hand, the cold steel of the barrel pressed hard into the soft flesh right below Atara's ear.
My boots freeze on the concrete.
My fingers twitch on the grip of my Glock, the memory of the wetthwipof the bullet, the dark blood spreading across the floor, and the five years of carrying a ghost trying to drag me down into the dark.
But Atara isn't Elara.
She doesn't look at me with the panic of a rat caught in a trap. She doesn't scream or beg me to sign over the papers. Her jaw is set so hard that the muscle in her cheek looks like iron. Her remaining eye is wide, clear, and absolutely furious, glowing with a fierce, stubborn heat that makes my chest heave.
