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I was in a daze as Rogan carried me away from the food truck. Away from danger. Away from certain death at the hands of twoveryinsane fans of Amirah Pratt. But one thought repeated in my head over and over.
They came for me. My heroes came for me.
I wasn’t the damsel-in-distress type. That should be obvious by now. I’ve spent my life taking care ofmyself, without expecting others to come to my rescue. Even when I was living in squalor in a crummy Los Angeles apartment with Maurice, I refused to ask my parents for help. I was the kind of woman who needed to solve her own problems.
But sometimes, a girl needs a little rescuing. I realized that now. Being kidnapped by two crazy stalkers was the perfect time to let someone more qualified take over. And Rogan, Asher, and Brady weredefinitelymore qualified at this sort of thing.
Their names jogged a memory as Rogan put me down by the SUV. “Asher. He was being attacked…”
“He’s okay,” Rogan said.
“You don’t know,” I insisted. I was still weak from the blow to my head, but I tried to sit up. “Isawhim. Ernesto was attacking him with a knife.”
“Everything’s fine, Heather,” Rogan told me calmly. “We’re in control. You’re safe, now.”
Something in his voice soothed me, so I rested my head back against the car. We were parked in the middle of the interstate and people were honking, but Rogan paid them no mind.
“Heather,” he said, eyes boring into mine. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have let you put yourself in danger. I’ll never forgive myself for this.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “And I’m not sure Brady will ever forgive me, either.”
“I forgive you,” I whispered. “It was my idea, after all.”
“That doesn’t mean I had to agree to it. I should know better. It’s my job to make the right call.” Sirens blared in the distance, and Rogan grunted. “Oh,nowthey show up.”
The sirens grew louder as the police approached. Uniformed officers came jogging up moments later, shouting orders at the bystanders and other people I couldn’t see.
“I thought you needed more information before putting out an APB on a food truck,” Rogan said bitterly.
The cop that stopped next to us looked taken aback. “What do you mean? Someone called this in.”
“Wecalled it in,” Rogan replied, “and we were told it wasn’t a priority until we had more evidence of a kidnapping.”
“Don’t know what to tell you, pal. Someone pulled abigstring, because our captain sent an entire army here.”
A helicopter droned above, drifting across my vision as it circled. More sirens announced an additional flurry of police, in our lane and in the westbound lane.
Rogan looked confused by that. “Maybe Amirah used her celebrity status to light a fire under them…”
He trailed off as Brady and Asher approached. Brady had a huge grin on his face, while Asher was grimacing.
“You fucken see that shit?” Brady asked after hugging me. “Ireallyhope a bystander got a video of me jumping across the interstate. I bet it looked sick.”
“You jumped acrossthat?”I asked. The gap looked far too wide to jump.
He tucked his thumbs behind his belt and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Give me a shiny shield and a costume, because I’m pretty much Captain America.”
I turned to Asher and hugged him next. He let out a grunt of pain. “What’s wrong?”
He twisted and showed me his forearm. There was a long gash across the skin, and the shirt was red with blood. “Took a hit.”
“Asher!” I hugged him again, this time avoiding his arm. “That looks really bad…”
“I’ll live. It could have been worse. You are okay, which is the only thing that matters.” He kissed my forehead and squeezed me tighter with one arm.
When he let go, there were bright spots in my vision. I touched the side of my head, which was beginning to ache terribly.
“Heather?” Brady asked. “You all right?”
“She looks pale,” Rogan said.
