Page 156 of No Good Fight

My fingers scrape uselessly against the floor.

Then Preston is above me again, breathing hard and no longer pretending he is anything except the man I always knew lived underneath everything else.

“This is what you made me do.”

33

ALEX

The door somewhere down the hall crashes open hard enough to send the sound through the walls.

Preston freezes above me.

For a second, neither of us moves. I’m still curled partly against the concrete where he left me, one arm wrapped around my ribs and the other braced uselessly against the floor. My ears are ringing from the last hit, and every breath catches somewhere painful before I can pull enough air into my lungs.

Then another sound reaches us. Fast footsteps. More than one set, spreading through the building instead of coming from the same direction.

Preston turns toward the hallway.

I don’t know who is out there yet, but the change in him tells me he does.

His hand disappears beneath the back of his shirt.

Gun.

I try to push myself up, but my arm gives before I get more than a few inches off the floor. “Preston⁠—”

He never gets the weapon clear.

Ryder comes through the doorway and hits him with enough force to carry them both out of my line of sight.

The impact sends Preston into the opposite wall with a crash that makes me flinch. Something metal clatters across the concrete. Ryder doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. I hear another hit, Preston swearing, shoes scraping for traction as the two of them slam into something I can’t see from where I’m lying.

Voices break through the building behind them.

“Gun!”

“I see it.”

“Back room!”

I recognize Remy somewhere in the noise, then Logan, though I can’t make out everything they’re saying. Boots pound past the doorway while somebody else moves in the direction Mrs. Vance’s voice came from earlier.

Ryder found me.

Relief hits so suddenly that my eyes burn.

I knew he would follow the trail. I knew he would understand why I left the phone, why I didn’t shut the cameras off, why his truck would be sitting where I abandoned it. I knew all of that when I left his bed.

I also thought he’d be too late to save me from my nightmare.

Knowing it and hearing him on the other side of this room are two completely different things.

I try to turn my head toward the fight, but the movement makes the ceiling slide sideways above me. My stomach rolls, and I close my eyes long enough to keep myself from throwing up.

Hands touch my shoulders.

I react before I know who they belong to.