Despite her efforts, her strung-out misery flowed down her cheeks in hot streaks. She couldn’t imagine the amount of pain he was in, yet his concern was entirely focused on her.
She knelt over him and put her mouth against his. “The syringes are locked up, but it’s okay. Matias will find me a good doctor.” She kissed his cracked lips, lingering, savoring the connection. “I have twenty-four hours. Plenty of time.” Not near enough time. But she wouldn’t dwell on that. “Van’s going to carry you. We need to go.”
Tate closed his eyes, his expression contorted in pain. When he refocused on her again, he looked fiercely determined and brutally handsome.
Flattening the hand of his good arm against the floor, he tried to push up. Van was there, lifting and adjusting to position Tate’s body in a fireman’s carry. Though Tate didn’t make a sound, his agony was palpable in the tenseness of his muscles and the creases on his bruised face.
She lost her breath through the grueling process of dragging him to his feet. His back was one massive, open, chewed-up wound. His ribs were broken, and the hole near his elbow slicked his forearm and hand in fresh blood. Moving him without causing extreme pain was impossible.
Sliding behind Van, she cupped Tate’s jaw and kissed his mouth, tasting his torment and love and wetting his lips with promises.
“Netflix, a rescued dog, and a road trip to wine country.” Squatting beneath the droop of his upper body, she kissed him again. “It’s all waiting for us.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—a heartbreaking attempt at a smile.
“Lay out the escape plan.” Van hitched Tate higher on his shoulder, with the guard’s gun held tightly in his hand.
Thank fuck he was strong, because Tate wasn’t a small guy. Carrying him through the compound would be a feat in and of itself.
“There are two ways in and out.” She strode toward the door, trembling violently with nerves. “We’ll take the stairs up, turn right down the hall, and go out the back exit. Less guards.”
She opened the door and peeked down the basement corridor. Other than the dead man, it was empty.
“Since I have the silencer, I’ll do the shooting.” She checked the magazine in Armando’s 9mm. “Five rounds left.”
“When we make it out, what then? Is there gate in the rear?”
When not if. She could’ve hugged Van for his confidence.
“No gate. Just guards. It’s a service entrance. We’ll have to shoot and run.” She rested a hand on Tate’s backside, where he hung over Van’s shoulder. “Can you manage?”
“I’ve got him.” Van gripped the door, opening it wider. “We need to head north. It’s quicker and easier for us to leave the neighborhood than for Matias to fight his way in.”
He gave her the address of the meet spot, which was about a fifteen-minute sprint. Half that if they stole a car.
Her stomach turned to ice as she led him down the hall and into the stairwell. She paused at the bodies long enough to snatch the sawed-off shotgun and holster from the dead guard. She strapped it on her hip and crept up the stairs with Van at her back.
At the top, she met his eyes and whispered, “Don’t let him get hit.”
“I’m more concerned about you,” he whispered back. “He’ll kill me if something happens to you.”
Tate released a low, deep sound in his throat, and her lips quivered in a smile.
She stroked the back of his leg, her chest aching with an outpour of things she wanted to say to him. But this wasn’t the time.
We’ll make it out. Then she would have a lifetime to tell him how much she loved him.
She cracked the door to the main floor and scanned the empty hall through the opening. “Clear.”
They ran. Down the long hall, guns raised, footsteps soft, the sprint zapped the air from her lungs and turned her stomach to lead. Adrenaline soared through her blood, and her hair flicked against her face as she swung her neck side to side to watch their backs and fronts.
A shadow moved across the wall of the intersecting corridor up ahead, and an all-over tremor shook her aim. She locked her elbows and honed in on the approaching threat.
The guard stepped from around the corner and paused in her sights. He gasped, and she fired. The bullet hit his chest, and he dropped just as another man emerged behind him.
This one managed to release a warning bellow and draw his weapon before she shot him in the face.
Fucking shit and damn! The back door was close now, only ten paces away, but the commotion was too loud. Soon, they would be swarmed by armed men.
A glance behind her confirmed Van was on her heels. She grabbed a gun off a dead guard, shoved it into her waistband, and cut the corner.
The din of distant footfalls pounded behind her, intensifying the terror that gripped her neck and shoulders. They were feet away from the exterior door when two more guards entered the hall at the opposite end.
“Go, go, go,” she shouted at Van. “Get outside.”
Breathless and sweaty, she ran past the exit and fired three shots at the men. One guard went down as Van threw open the door and slipped outside with Tate.
The second guard fired back, missing her by inches. Tate’s hoarse roar sounded over the bang of gunfire, and she fired again.
A hollow click stopped her heart. Out of ammo.
The man at the end of the hall had paused to check on his friend. But he was moving now, running toward her with his pistol aimed.
A bullet pelleted the plaster beside her head as she dropped the silencer, drew the short-barrel shotgun, and blasted a huge hole through his chest.
Her ears rang with the explosive noise. She tossed the gun and pulled the pistol from her jeans, needing the 9mm to cover the distance between her and the throng of men tearing around the corner.
She backed through the doorway and into the sunlight, angling around the door jamb and spraying bullets into the chaos inside.
More gunfire ricocheted behind her, spiking her heart rate. She turned and found Van shooting down two approaching men in the alley. He crouched beside the open rear door of a small car. Tate lay face down across the backseat.
“Let’s go.” He scanned the barren street and ran toward the driver’s side.
Can he hot wire that car?
She didn’t have time to ask. More men flooded the corridor. Too many to shoot down. She slammed the steel door shut and hauled ass toward the car. Van bent under the steering wheel and yanked on wires as she pulled Tate’s feet into the backseat with her.
“Hurry!” She closed the door and ducked just as the window exploded in shards of glass. Bullets pinged the side of the car, and the report of gunfire shuddered the air.
“Van!” she shouted, petrified. “Can you do it?”
The car roar
ed to life and jerked forward, slamming her against the seat back and tossing her on top of Tate’s prone body.
Van sped out of the alley, sideswiped another car, and bounced over a curb. Bullets rained down upon them, blowing out the rear window and riddling the metal exterior.
Keeping as low and concealed as possible, she curled up near Tate’s head and rested his cheek on her lap. His lower half hung off the seat, his knees bent on the floorboard at an awkward angle.
“Which way is north?” Van swerved around a pedestrian and hit the gas.
“Left.” She craned her neck to look between the front seats. “Not this street. Turn left at the next one.”
He followed her directions, and as her panting breaths slowed, so did the bullets and yelling behind her, until…nothing.
We lost them.
We escaped.
The glory and relief in getting away settled through her in great shivering waves. She combed a hand through Tate’s hair and bent to rest her lips against his feverish brow as she caught her breath.
But they weren’t out of the woods yet.
“They have motorbikes,” she shouted at Van over the gusts of the wind through the windows. “They’ll catch up.”
He took the corners at high speeds, lurching in and out of traffic, and whipping her around the backseat with the starts and stops of g-force.
The pungency of fuel and burning rubber saturated the cab, and the taste of blood soaked her tongue from her stabbing teeth.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to make it.” She whispered the chant at Tate’s ear.
She didn’t have medicine and probably wouldn’t live through tomorrow, but she had today. She had Tate, and he would survive this. He had to.
His eyes were closed, his lungs laboring for every intake of air. Clots of blood coated his back in a gruesome reminder of the prior night, and beneath the gore lurked a picture carved into flesh and muscle. Through the shimmer of tears blurring her vision, she could make out images. A massive gate opening outward and… Was that a silhouette floating through it?
“We’re close, right?” Van pointed at the motorway that emerged up ahead.