I didn’t have a chance to argue. No one else was here to help yet. The driver of the van looked like he was about to pass out as he continued to pull the second man out the window with him. Blood dripped down his brow, proving that he’d taken a brutal hit to the head.
Carina leaned around me, standing just enough to fire over the van. I rose too, alarmedandamazed that she was able to keep her cool even like this.
I fired at the driver of the car aiming at Dean. She fired at the men in the truck who shot at me.
It was a loud, chaotic exchange of gunfire made more destructive when Dean sped past and aimed his gun at the men in the truck.
He smashed it into the side of it. Glass and metal were crushed in a deafening thud of impact. Smoke billowed up. But the rapid report of gunfire was a constant drone through it all.
“Get down,” I told Carina, reaching for her before the scene would be cleared enough to see.
As we both lowered, I spotted one of the men running around the van and aiming for us.
No.
Hell no.
I dove in front of her, firing, but my aim was off as I was hit in the arm and side.
She screamed, not in panic but in curses as she shot at the man too.
He dropped, killed by her bullet, and she clawed at my shirt to pull me closer.
“Maksim. Are…”
I gritted my teeth, fighting through the sharp stabs of pain that struck me like lightning bolts. Rising up on my side, I shook my head and checked that she hadn’t been hurt.
“Stay with me.”
She cursed, focused on me as we hid behind the upturned van. Among all the gunfire on the other side of it, she was concentrating on me. Spewing out too-fast Spanish in a profanity-laced litany, she scolded me sternly.
“Stay withyou? You stay withme. You’re hit. Fuck, you’re bleeding. You need to?—”
As she fussed over me, trying to push my shirt over my wound, I twisted around her to fire at another man trying to reach her.
No one would get to her.
No one was touching my wife.
Not to harm her.
Not to threaten her.
Not to capture her.
A fierce streak of possessiveness overtook me, turning my vision red and making my heart hammer like a freight train. I shook and vibrated with pure fury to kill and slay anyone who dared to target her. Like a wild animal unleashed and feral to kill, I staggered to stand and keep firing at the men on the other side of the van.
She didn’t sit. She clung to me, pressing her hand over my wound, unafraid of blood. Determined to keep me from bleeding out, she supported me as I killed as many of as that I could.
To protect her.
To saveus.
Dean ran back toward the back of the van, shouting into his phone on speaker. He’d need to be the one to call for backupbecause I wasn’t lowering my gun until I could be sure that every one of them was down.
We were trapped, stuck on the other side of this van.
Without as much of a second thought, I fired indiscriminately at those shooting at us.
