Page 108 of Velvet Vaughn

The single word slammed into her, relief and terror tangled together so tightly she couldn’t separate them. It took everything she had to steady herself. “On my mark.” She eased the hatch open another inch, gauging the drop below, the distance, the angle.

“Copy.”

She counted three heartbeats, widened the gap in the floor enough to fit through, and dropped.

The fall lasted less than a second, but it felt suspended and weightless. The room rushed up to meet her in a blur of motion. She hit the floor already moving, weapon up, catching the nearer guard mid-turn with an expression of pure, uncomprehending shock before her strike caught him across the temple hard enough to drop him where he stood. The second man spun toward the sound, hand diving for his own weapon. Anja closed the distance before he cleared the holster, driving her shoulder into his chest and following it with a blow that folded him over the arm of a chair, unconscious before he hit the floor. She zip-tied them both.

Two down. Five seconds. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Anja!” Remi’s alarmed voice cracked sharp through the comm. “Curtis has a gun. He’s reaching for Leo.”

She whirled around, weapon raised, and found Curtis Lennox hauling Leo upright in front of him, one arm locked hard around Leo’s throat, a pistol barrel digging into Leo’s temple. Leo’s face had gone gray beneath the dried blood and bruising, his eyes finding hers across the room with an expression she never wanted to see on him again as long as she lived.

“Well.” Curtis’s voice had none of its usual warmth left in it. “You, my dear, are a bit of a surprise.”

“Let him go, Curtis.” Anja kept her weapon trained, her voice steadier than she felt. Every muscle in her body screamed at the sight of that gun biting into Leo’s skin. “It’s over. You know that.”

“I know nothing of the kind.” His grip tightened, and Leo hissed. “I’m going to walk out that door, and you’re going to let me, or I put a bullet in the only thing in this room I actually love. Your choice, Anja. I promise you, I’ll make it.”

“You won’t.” She held his eyes, refusing to let a single flicker of doubt show through. “You’ve spent years building something you were too careful and controlled to ever risk on a moment like this one. You don’t throw everything away on a bullet you can’t take back.”

“Even careful men run out of options eventually.” He shrugged. “Watch me.”

“Curtis.” Leo’s voice came out rough, barely more than a whisper, but it cut through the standoff all the same. “Don’t.”

For one endless second, nobody moved, the whole room balanced on whatever Curtis chose to do next. Anja’s finger stayed against the trigger guard, every instinct in her screaming for a shot she didn’t dare take with Leo’s head in the line of fire.

Then Curtis began backing toward the door, dragging Leo with him, his eyes locked on Anja the entire time. She matched his movement step for step, weapon never wavering, not daring to close the distance, not with that pistol pressed against Leo’s head.

He hit the threshold and shoved through it backward. As soon as his shoulders cleared the doorframe, he collided hard with something solid.

Remi.

The gun went off wild, the shot burying itself in the wall as Remi’s hand clamped down over Curtis’s wrist and wrenched the weapon free in one brutal motion, followed half a second later by a vicious elbow strike to his head. Curtis collapsed onto the porch boards in a heap.

“Clear.” Remi’s breath was ragged with exertion.

Leo’s knees buckled the instant Curtis’s arm fell away from his throat, and he crumpled to the floor before Anja had even made it halfway across the room. He landed hard on his side, chest heaving, blood and bruises stark against the morning light spilling through the windows.

“Leo.” She dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering over his battered face, terrified to touch and more terrified not to. “Talk to me. Look at me.”

His glassy, unfocused eyes found hers, and his split lip pulled into something that wanted badly to be a grin and mostly failed.

“You came in through the ceiling.” His voice came out wrecked, disbelieving, threaded with humor even now. “Who does that?”

A laugh tore out of her before she could stop it, half sob and entirely involuntary. She dropped her forehead against his, both shaking and breathing as if they’d just run a marathon instead of surviving the worst day of either of their lives.

“You’re an idiot for walking in there alone,” she managed, her voice cracking around the words as she took out a knife and cut through the bindings around his red, abraded wrists.

“I know.” He shook his hands to wake them. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Just be alive.” She pulled back far enough to look at him properly, every bruise and cut, the dried blood crusted along his jaw and arm. He’d almost certainly torn Remi’s stitch job. She fought the urge to gather him up and never let go. “Can you move? We need to get you out of here.”

“I think so.” He shifted, wincing hard, and she helped him upright, bracing him against her shoulder while he found his balance.

Behind them, near the doorway, Remi slid down the wall to sit heavily on the floor, one hand pressed to his side, his pale face slick with sweat despite the cool morning air drifting in through the open door.

“Remi.” Alarm spiked through Anja’s chest all over again. “Are you hit?”