“Yes, but not without collateral damage.” Aarav mentally calculated the caliber of the bullet and how much energy it would likely have after smashing the car glass. Still plenty to pass through one human and into another.
“Do it.” Jordan gave the order Aarav would have been fine with in any other circumstance.
“Twenty seconds,” Ruby said.
Aarav flipped up the goggles on his mask and whipped his gaze to Cash’s. “Will you hate me if I kill your father?”
Cash’s gloriously bronzed skin turned deathly pale.
“Ten.”
“I can’t do this, Jordan.” Aarav felt like he might be sick.
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of one. Even when that one is you. Or Cash. Or his father.” Jordan didn’t raise his voice. And Aarav knew he was right.
He regretted that he wasn’t actually the cyborg they’d accused him of being so often. He wished he wasn’t swimming in doubt and fear and grief of what he’d lost before he’d even really had it.
“In range. For thirty-seven seconds.”
Aarav flipped the visor back down and was prepared to do his duty. He set the crosshairs perfectly and tracked the car, sure that if he so much as twitched, he would accomplish his mission. He took a deep breath and prepared to do it. Until he imagined having to face Sola and apologize for destroying her dreams and her soul as surely as his own once she got home.
“Twenty seconds.”
He could have taken the shot ten times over by then. And still he didn’t.
Was a chance at love—if Cash even could be convinced he wanted that—worth losing his job, betraying his team, and letting an evil piece of shit continue to wreck untold lives?
“The window is closing in ten…nine…”
“Aarav.” Jordan practically growled. “He was warned.”
James even added quietly, “It’s the right thing to do.”
“Five…four…”
Aarav would never know for sure what he had decided, because just then a warm and familiar hand covered his. The additional weight caused him to relax. His palm lowered a fraction of an inch. And together, they solved a problem for the world.
The bullet flew through the air, true to its course. The driver’s side window of the vehicle shattered and the mixed blood and gore of both occupants splattered the passenger’s side. The car slowed, though not much, before it veered from the road and flew down the embankment, rolling at least twenty times before coming to a stop upside-down, its wheels spinning aimlessly in the air.
The caravan of security team members and other associates from Jay Barber’s enterprise screeched to a halt, making them easy pickings. If being part of Shields had taught Aarav anything, it was that the supply of bad guys willing to fill the shoes the Shields emptied was far greater than that of the heroes.
He funneled his terror and delayed the inevitable—seeing the death of his own dreams in Cash’s eyes—by staying inside his headset. “Permission to clean up?”
“Absolutely.” Jordan nodded. “We’re not going to have a better chance to make a difference than right now.”
Aarav unleashed everything pent up inside him, taking shots with shocking speed and accuracy, even for him. He resented every last one of those bastards who’d put him in this impossible predicament and wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant to take him out had the situation been reversed.
“Damn. Remind me never to piss you off.” Ace grunted as if someone, likely Ruby, had smacked him.
It took less time than brewing his beloved tea. With one final bullet between the shoulder blades of someone trying to escape the repercussions of their heinous decisions, it was over. Then there wasn’t a hint of motion remaining in that cursed valley, unless the shifting drifts of terra cotta colored dust, streaked with rivulets of blood counted.
Aarav ripped off the headset and tossed it aside, his breathing going from measured to ragged as he sucked in uneven breaths.
“We done with this?” Ruby double-checked.
Jordan said, “Yep. Get rid of it.”
Moments later, the DeathBot performed its final task, blowing itself to smithereens so that anyone who came behind couldn’t either injure themselves with it or reverse engineer its technology and sell it to their enemies. Rocks and clouds of dust obliterated the camera feed. The signal glitched before the screen blanked out.