Page 199 of Mile High Ruin

Still, I wait.

I hate every second of it, but I wait.

Sloane has dealt with men bothering her before. She doesn’t need me. I know the way she lifts her chin when she’s trying to keep control of a situation she already dislikes.

Still, I wait.

I tell myself that this is exactly why we have men close enough to intervene, that she’s being watched from three directions, that nothing is going to happen to her while I sit here and let the plan work.

Then the man reaches for her bag. She jerks it away sharply and turns on him.

Something inside me goes hard.

He reaches again. She steps back. I’m already leaning forward.

Anton says my name quietly. I ignore him.

The man catches Sloane by the wrist.

Fuck the plan.

I’m out of the car before Anton can say anything else, crossing the street fast enough that one of the drivers coming through the intersection leans on his horn, but the sound barely registers because all I can see is Sloane twisting against the man’s grip while the second one reaches for the strap of her bag and drags her half a step backward.

She drives the heel of her hand toward the first man’s face, forcing him to loosen his grip for a second, but the second uses that opening to pull harder on the bag and nearly takes her off her feet.

I hear her shout, and something inside me turns vicious.

By the time the first man notices me, I’m already close enough to hit him.

My fist catches him across the jaw and sends him sideways into the brick wall beside the alley entrance, and before he can recover I grab the front of his jacket and drive him back into it again, hard enough that his head snaps against the stone and his knees buckle.

The second man lets go of Sloane. He reaches inside his coat, and I turn before he can bring his hand out.

There’s a knife in it.

He swings with more panic than skill, and I catch his wrist, force the blade away from my body, then twist until his fingers fail and the knife drops to the pavement between us.

He tries to hit me with his free hand. I take the blow against my shoulder and answer by driving my fist into his ribs, then again into the side of his face when he folds forward.

He goes down.

The first man pushes himself away from the wall and comes toward me from behind.

Anton reaches him before I do. There’s a brief struggle, then the man is face down on the pavement with Anton’s knee between his shoulders while he curses and tries to pull one arm free.

I barely look at him.

My attention has already gone back to Sloane. She’s standing against the wall where they dragged her, breathing too quickly, one hand wrapped around the strap of her bag and the other pressed against the front of her coat as though she’s holding herself together by force.

For months, I imagined seeing her again.

In some versions, I dragged her into a car before she could speak.

In others, I demanded Mila’s location before I allowed myself to ask anything else.

Sometimes I imagined her lying convincingly enough that I would almost believe her.

Sometimes I imagined hating her.