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Something else caught his eye.
Movement.
“Somebody help! Please!”
Joel took off into the woods. It was her—he would know her shape with his eyes closed and her voice even if he couldn’t hear.
He spotted the outline of her body through the trees. If she was runningawayfrom the road, Lavigne was somewhere nearby.
He could tell she was at the end of her rope; he was closing in too fast, and she fell and got right back up on wobbly, exhausted legs.
“Eesh!”
She came to an abrupt stop. “Joel?”
“Ayesha!”
She turned.
Their eyes met.
Then she started running toward him.
Bullets whizzed by, penetrating the tree trunks and kicking up dust and leaves from the ground. Joel mentally mapped which direction they were coming from and placed himself between Ayesha and each shot. It didn’t matter where on him the shot landed, even if it was fatal. As long as she didn’t get it.
They collided.
Ayesha grabbed his head and dragged it down.
Something exploded in a trunk behind her.
He faced where the shot had come from, making sure his entire body covered hers, and spotted Lavigne, bloodied and unsteady, aiming a gun in his direction.
A shot hit Lavigne in the shoulder from Adrían’s gun. Lavigne jerked slightly, his arm fell, but then he regained his balance.
He raised the gun again.
Joel walked toward him. “Stay here, Eesh. Okay, babe?”
Lavigne’s trigger finger twitched.
Joel caught the axe Giorgio tossed right before Giorgio sliced the gun-wielding hand clean off Lavigne’s wrist.
Joel spun the axe and kept his gaze locked with Lavigne’s. He wanted to be the last thing the motherfucker saw. The motherfucker who killed Curtis, putting Ayesha through pain she never should have had to endure. And, if not for Curtis, the motherfucker would have killed the whole team. Gage, Dez, Julien, Giorgio, Mike—all of them, gone.
Then, the motherfuckerhurt his child.
Hischildren.
His wife.
On the last spin, Joel gripped the axe and swung, swiping it across Lavigne’s neck. After a few stunned seconds, Lavigne’s body went one way, and his head went the other, rolling before it came to a standstill.
“Lattimore.” Giorgio looked over, a smile on his face that showed up less frequently than Halley’s comet. “Beautiful.”
Adrían walked up. “I haven’t known you long, but this is about the third or fourth decapitation I’ve seen you do. Maybe I should stop teasing you about Ayesha.”
Joel faced Ayesha and finally allowed himself to take in her appearance. How bruised she was, how swollen.
