He’d never moved so fast in his life: In the rear entrance. Back down the dark hall. Around the base of the stairs and then up the steps three at a time, his hand grabbing at the balustrade and hauling his weight up.
Fourth landing now—and he remembered how he’d left her with the gun.
“It’s me,” he said before he jumped into the open doorway. “Rio? Don’t shoot, it’s me—”
“I’m here,” was the weak response.
Lucan all but flew into the shitty apartment, expecting to see the woman slumped on the floor. She was not. Her head was listing to the side, but other than that, she was precisely where he’d arranged her, like a rag doll abandoned by its maker.
God, she looked bad.
Yet her eyes were shining fiercely, and that nine millimeter was angled right where it needed to be.
Her body might have been failing her; her will was not.
As he rushed over to her, time fell into a crawl. It seemed like a hundred years until he was kneeling by her side again, and the sight of her so battered and bruised was etched into his mind, indelible. From her matted short hair, to the blood that stained her sliced-open fleece and shirt, to the ligature marks around her pale throat, she was nothing like the woman he had met the night before.
And to think he’d almost ignored that sound he’d heard, that prickle of awareness that he’d had out in front of the building as he’d been about to leave.
If he’d been even ten minutes later or had taken off . . . she’d have been hurt in ways that were intolerable to consider.
That bloody, naked corpse over in the corner hadn’t paid enough.
“Let’s go,” he choked out.
When he went to take the gun from her, she shook her head. “I’ll cover us. You just carry me out of here, and I’ll shoot anything in our way.”
Her voice was stronger than it had been, and he took a moment to respect the warrior that was just under her skin. Then he slung the pack her attacker had brought with him onto his shoulder, scooped her up—and grimaced as she gasped and grunted in pain. As he marched them into the light of the stairwell, he glared across at the mangled body.
Out in the common landing, he had to give her credit. Despite her condition, she kept that weapon pointed right in front of them. The job required both her hands, but he knew that she wasn’t going to drop the weight.
She was going to protect them . . . as he did his very best to save her life.
It went without saying that if Luke hadn’t shown up when he did, Rio would have been dead by now.
That was the thought that she used to distract herself from the waves of burning agony that lightning’d through her muscles and bones. The trip down the stairs was incredibly painful, each rushing step a jarring reminder of everything she had been through.
So Luke had saved her three times, as it turned out.
Maybe she was a cat, though. And still had six left.
When he bottomed out by the front door, Luke paused and turned left, turned right. Courtesy of her iron grip on the gun, the muzzle swung around to both of the open apartments. No one came out of the darkness on either side.
“We’re going out the back door,” he said.
And then the pain started up again as his long strides carried them both down a narrow hallway that had sheets of vinyl wallpaper peeling off from the ceiling and trash scattered to the sides of the corridor, a Litter Sea parted by those who had created the problem.
The back door had a small window set about five feet up from the floor, the opaque glass crisscrossed with chicken wire. Luke kicked the thing open—and right outside was an old two-door Cutlass sedan. Navy blue. With a pinstripe.
He went around and unlocked the passenger side with a key, the old-fashioned way. Then he had to tilt her down so he could pull the handle, and there was a metal-on-metal squeak as he opened things.
“I’ll be as careful as I can—”
“Just drop me in there so we can go.”
Rio tried not to pass out as he set her in the seat, but her body was as limber as a brick wall—and felt just as liable to break apart under sufficient pressure. As her lips peeled off her front teeth, she closed her eyes and leaned out, in case she threw up.
Maybe that drug was still in her system.
She felt the gun get taken from her hands, and she was more than fine with letting it go. Breathing in and out of her open mouth, she tried to focus on something to keep herself conscious . . . keep herself alive—
That cologne of his. She trained all her attention on the way that Luke smelled—and whether it was the placebo effect or there actually was some kind of magic in whatever he’d aftershave’d himself with . . . eventually, she was able to bring herself back from the brink.