I don’t remember crossing the distance.
I just know the shopping cart hits the side of a parked car hard enough to fold metal. Someone screams near the store entrance. Hammer barks for them to get inside. My fist slams into the SUV door, once, twice, three times, until pain splits across my knuckles and the door buckles inward. Hands grab me.
Shadow.
Hammer.
Cain from behind.
I throw one off. Not sure which.
“Cobra!” Logan’s voice cracks across the lot.
I turn toward him, chest heaving, hands bloody again, but this time the blood is mine. “They took her.” The words don’t sound like words. They sound like a verdict.
Logan steps closer, palms open but not soft. “I know.”
“They took her.”
“I know.”
I move toward the road. No thought. No plan. Just direction. They left somewhere. They are somewhere. They took her somewhere.Find the road. Find the car. Find the men. Peel the world open until she falls out.
Cain grabs my arm.
I swing.
He ducks it, barely, and drives his shoulder into me, trying to shove me back against the SUV. Shadow gets in from the other side. Hammer locks onto my other arm. They’re strong. All of them. Not enough. I slam back, breaking the hold halfway.
Joker appears in front of me. Still. Calm. “Not like this,” he says.
I look at him, and for once there is nothing funny in his face. Nothing amused. Nothing cruel. Just understanding so dark it almost looks like mercy. “Move.”
“No.”
I lunge.
He doesn’t move fast enough because he isn’t trying to avoid me. He’s trying to stop me.
Bad choice.
My hand locks around his cut and drives him back into the side of the SUV. Cain and Shadow hit me from behind again, both of them this time. Hammer gets an arm around my throat, not choking fully, but enough to limit movement.
“Cobra!” Logan roars. “Stand the fuck down!”
No.
No standing down.
No waiting.
No strategy.
No church.
No chain of command.
No president.
