Chapter 27 #2
“Maybe not,” Noah said. “But I understand what they’re like. I trust them, Imogen, and you can, too.”
She looked at Hawk. At Gator. At me.
Then she straightened her spine and lifted her chin, and I saw the woman who spent two weeks collecting evidence under Anton Corvane’s roof without him knowing.
“Okay,” she said.
We went downstairs.
He was in the front hallway when we came down, still in his travel clothes, his bag dropped at the foot of the stairs.
His guards flanked him on both sides. He looked up and took in the five of us.
He looked at Imogen first, then the bag in Gator’s hand, then Hawk and me, and then his eyes found Noah and stopped.
Something changed in his face. Not surprise exactly. Recognition, and underneath it, something uglier, like a man looking at something he felt entitled to but couldn’t have.
“You,” he said. Not to Imogen. To Noah.
Noah held his gaze without flinching. I watched him do it and felt something tight and proud move through my chest.
“Mr. Corvane,” Noah said. Calm. Like they were meeting at a function.
Corvane’s jaw tightened. “You did this. This is because of you.”
“No,” Noah said. “This is because of you. I just gave her a number to call.”
The silence that followed was the kind that preceded something.
“Imogen,” he said coldly.
“Anton.” Her voice was steadier than I expected. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.” She took one step forward and then stopped, and I could see what it cost her.
He knew from personal experience that every instinct she had was telling her to step back, to make herself smaller, to manage his reaction the way she’d learned to manage him, but he didn’t step back.
“I’m leaving, and I’m taking everything I found on your hard drive. ”
His face went through something else then. His eyes moved to the portfolio in her arms, and I saw him understand exactly what was in it, and I saw him decide something.
He lunged for her, which I hadn’t anticipated.
I’d been prepared for him to tell his guards to take her or to come after one of us, but instead, he went after Imogen.
It happened in the space between one breath and the next.
I was moving, Hawk was moving, Gator was already cutting right, and my amazing, brave wild card came from the side.
Noah moved without hesitation, no calculation, no pause; he just moved, putting himself between Corvane and Imogen and pushing her hard to the right. She stumbled against the wall, and I heard the breath go out of her, but she stayed up. Corvane’s hands found Noah instead.
He had Noah by the collar and the arm and wrenched him around. I was three steps away, and those three steps felt like three miles.
“Hawk.” My voice was flat through the earpiece.
“I don’t have a shot. Imogen’s in my line.”
“Gator.”
“Noah’s in my way. I can’t.”
Corvane had Noah’s back against his chest, one arm across his throat, his eyes wide and desperate. This was a man, a predator, who’d never tasted fear, and there was nothing as dangerous as a cornered predator.
“Back up,” he said. “All of you. Imogen, toss me that folder or I—”
Noah dropped his weight.
I saw it happen. It was the move I’d taught him in the gym.
The thing we’d drilled until it was muscle memory.
He dropped, fast and sudden, driving his elbow back, and turned into it the way I’d shown him.
Corvane’s grip broke exactly the way I’d told him it would, and Noah twisted away. I was already moving—
The shot was loud in the hallway.
It happened so fast that, for a second, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
Imogen had the gun in both hands, her feet planted, her eyes on Anton Corvane.
He was looking down at himself like he didn’t understand what had happened as blood spread across his chest. Then he went down, and the hallway went very quiet.
None of us had known she had a gun. None of us had seen her reach into her bag, and none of us had seen her raise the weapon, but she had.
She was still holding the gun when I got to her. Her hands were shaking. Her eyes were fixed on the place where Corvane lay bleeding out on the floor in front of us.
“Imogen.” I kept my voice level. “Give me the gun.”
She looked at me. Then she looked at the gun in her hands as if she wasn’t entirely sure how it had gotten there. She held it out, and I took it.
“Is he—” she started.
I looked back over my shoulder at Hawk. He was holding a gun on both Corvane’s guards while Gator kneeled over him. He looked up at me and shook his head. Imogen put her hand over her mouth like she was holding in her panic as tears streamed down her face.
Both guards were standing in the entryway, staring in shock at a woman they not only knew but had protected with something on their faces that looked a little like respect.
“One at a time, both of you put your weapons on the ground and then kick them my direction,” Hawk said. Not loudly. Just absolutely.
They looked at him. They looked at me. They looked at Gator, who was still crouched beside Corvane, but neither of them argued. They both did as instructed, and Gator zip-tied their hands while Hawk called Wolfe.
He picked up right away, like he was waiting for our call. He probably was. Hawk put him on speaker.
“We have a situation,” Hawk said. “Corvane came back early. He’s down. Imogen is okay. Noah is okay.” He paused. “We need Chance here ASAP.”
We could hear the murmurs of him talking to someone who was in the room with him, and then he was back.
“Chance can be there in under two hours. He’s sending someone named Michael Troy to secure the scene.
Keep Imogen inside and stay with her, don’t let her talk to anyone until I get there, and don’t let anyone touch the documents. ”
“Copy,” Hawk said.
Noah was standing in the middle of the hallway with his arms loose at his sides, looking at the place where Corvane’s body lay crumpled on the floor. I crossed to him and put my hands on his face and made him look at me.
“You okay?” I asked.
He looked at me for a moment. Then something in his expression shifted, coming back from wherever he’d been. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You remembered what I taught you.”
“You made me drill it often enough.” The corner of his mouth moved slightly. “Apparently, it works.”
“Apparently it does.” I looked at him for another moment, at his steady eyes and his steady hands. At the man he’d become between a basement and a flower shop and a hallway in Ashford Grove. “You scared me, baby boy, but you were so brave.”
He closed his eyes and nodded.
I tipped his head up to look at me. “I love you.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, Daddy. I didn’t think, I just—”
“I know. We’ll talk about it later. For now, I’m going to need you to stay with Imogen. She needs someone right now, and that someone is you.”
He nodded. Already turning toward her. “I know.”
I watched him go to her and saw the way she looked up when he came close, the way her shoulders dropped until he reached for her and pulled her into a hug. Then I turned back to the work that still needed doing.
Chance was two hours out, but until then, we had a scene to secure.