Page 76 of Deep Cover

The glass walls were scorched black on one side and the ceiling sagged dangerously overhead. She ducked through the open doorway, eyes streaming.

She stopped. Was the smoke playing tricks on her eyes? Was she lacking oxygen?

A figure knelt at the filing cabinets. The person’s back was to her, but he was dressed in full firefighter gear.

Instead of hosing deflagration foam over everything…he was pulling folders out by the fistful and feeding them into a small, contained blaze he’d clearly started himself in a metal trash bin.

Where did he come from?

The fire department couldn’t be here so quickly. No firefighter would be burning evidence instead of putting out the fire.

Unless he was trying to hide something.

She drew her weapon without thought, and her hands were steady despite the roar of her pulse. “FBI! Turn around, hands where I can see them!”

He turned.

The mask obscured his face, making it impossible to ID him.

He didn’t raise his hands.

He raised a gun and fired before she ever processed the threat.

The impact hit her with the force of a truck, punching the air from her lungs, and she was airborne for one endless, silent second before the floor slammed up to meet her.

Pain bloomed white-hot through her shoulder, radiating out in waves that made the burning building around her tilt sideways.

He crossed to her in unhurried steps, gun up. He crouched and ripped the weapon from her weakened grip, then he tossed it aside and leveled his weapon at her forehead.

She should have closed her eyes, but she wasn’t about to make this easier on him. She refused.

If this was the end for her, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of getting her fear as well as her life. She waited, chest heaving. Smoke and heat and pain were the only three things left in this world for her.

She only wished she had more time with Reid.

“I love you,” she tried to say, needing to acknowledge it out loud, but her voice was stolen by the smoke, her throat desiccated.

A shot exploded through the roar of fire.

She flinched, but it was the man who jerked at the impact.

He stumbled back and then turned and bolted through the smoke.

“Ryss!”

Reid’s raw voice cut through everything else.

He was there in an instant, dropping to his knees beside her. “Stay with me. Stay with me. Look at me—”

Her vision started to swim, the edges of the room going soft, but she latched on to his face and held on tight.

She was going to die here. The thought slid into her mind with a distant calm. If she had to go, she was glad—achingly glad—that it was Reid’s face she got to see doing it.

She lifted one trembling hand and cupped his jaw, smearing soot and blood across his stubble.

“I had no choice,” she rasped.

No choice but risking it all to try to stay with the man she loved to the end of the world and back.