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And with that, he stepped out from the tent, leaving Hayden to ponder that sentiment in silence.
It seemed there was more to his brother than he thought. Perhaps him running from Kayla’s kiss was a good thing.
Would Hayden abandon the mission if it meant keeping Anna safe? It was hard to imagine that scenario, because Anna was just as much a fighter as he was. She could hold her own, and she believed in the cause. She’d never ask him to stop fighting. If anything, she’d demand he continue, because she’d want to fight at his side. They both had many shared enemies, after all.
Was he still efficient in his job? He allowed his mask to slip a few times, sure, but he could still do his job just as well. The true test would be the attack on the compound, taking out Greene once and for all, but he didn’t feel all too worried about that.
Perhaps the mask was never about his job, anyway, and more about his own comfort. His reputation was about his own ego, about ensuring nobody ever looked at him the way Sawyer and Hunter had when he’d woken up after his failed attack on his father. The way they’d eyed him in the months that followed.
As logical as it sounded in his head, now, Hayden felt shaken by that revelation. It was never about the job. It was about his own walls… the ones Anna had pulled down, without him even realizing it was happening.
Sawyer was wrong. Both could exist at once, for all of them, him included. Hopefully one day, he’d see that.
Ben, Jaxon, and William came into the tent, settling down and chatting, mostly amongst each other, though Hayden contributed every so often. After an hour or so, Sawyer came inside, his eyes looking glazed over and his jaw relaxed for once. His pupils were a bit too large. Hayden took note of that, adding it to his piling list of concerns he wanted to address when they were back at their new home.
After a bit more talking, everyone settled in, resting up for the following day’s preparations, likely the last they’d need to make before the attack, which would happen in two or three days. It felt odd not having Anna’s soft body pressing against his, distracting him from his own thoughts.
Hayden found himself struggling to sleep without her. What an interesting problem to have.
Tomorrow, he’d sleep in the snow, just to have her close again, warmth be damned.
? ♥ ?
A scream pierced the night, shocking Anna awake from the sleep she’d finally fallen into. The tent was dark, quiet, the flap blowing ever so slightly. She looked to the bodies around her, all of them still sleeping, except there was an empty spot where Laurie had been.
Another scream came, this one louder, and the six others around her stirred.
Anna was on her feet in a moment, running to the tent’s flap and peering out, expecting to see an animal of some kind that had spooked her or perhaps one of the guys playing a joke. Instead, she saw Laurie pushed against a tree, the man holding her wearing the black and red attire that she’d known so well, thoroughly illuminated by the moonlight’s reflection on the snow.
Before she could run back into the tent, wake the others and find a weapon, she was being grabbed from the side, yanked out of the tent and thrown onto the ground. She ignored the sting of her flesh scraping against the hard snow, looking up to see two men closing in on her.
Waiting, waiting, she sat back, false terror written across her features as one of the men bent over her. She kicked her foot into his groin with all the force she could muster, watching his eyes nearly pop out of his head, either from the shock or the pain. Preferably both. She didn’t waste a moment, jumping to her feet and grabbing his head, driving her knee into it and watching him collapse to the ground.
The other man lunged at her, but she dropped down, twisted around him and knocked out his knees, pulling the baton from his belt and driving it down on the top of his head.
She turned back to the tent, watching the women scatter and grab for weapons, chaos erupting around the formerly quiet camp. She spotted Austin, asleep against a tree with a thin layer of snow covering his legs, a knife driven into his chest and blood pouring out. She ran to him, ignoring the cold and the pain it brought with it.
By the time she got to Austin, a spurt of blood choked from his mouth, his eyes falling shut before she could even look in them.
“Hayden!” she screamed as loudly as she could. Quiet didn’t matter, the enemy was here and they were slaughtering people as everyone else slept. “Mason! Sawyer! Everybody!” Her screams were frantic, desperate to wake everyone as quickly as possible.
Before she realized someone had come up behind her, hands were on her again, pulling her up and pressing her back into a hard body. She dropped down quickly, making herself deadweight and dropping to the ground. She yanked the knife from Austin’s chest, spinning around and slashing it at her attacker.
He went to grab her knife, which she dropped into her other hand before driving it up into his abdomen. Before his body had even fallen, another man was on her, then another, and soon she was being swarmed.
All around her, she heard screams and chaos. Fighting. Even gunshots. But UNR officers just kept coming, kept piling in as if there were an endless supply of them.
For the first time in her life, she felt hope leave her. There may not be any getting out of this for her… all she hoped was that Hayden had made it out okay. He’d avenge her, at least there was that.
A fist drove into her face, knocking her to the ground as stars danced in her vision. Then she was kicked, though she couldn’t tell by who. There were too many. Far too many.
This was not how she wanted to die.
“Anna!”
A spark of hope lit inside of her. “Hayden!” she called back.
Another foot pounded into her side, so hard it knocked all the wind from her lungs.
