Chapter Six
Grit was already moving before the glass finished falling, years of combat reflexes taking over before his brain caught up. He grabbed Bethany around the waist and threw them both to the floor as more rounds punched through the walls, turning drywall into confetti.
"Stay down!"
She didn't argue. Smart woman.
He crawled to the front window, keeping below the sightline, and risked a glance through a gap in the curtains. Headlights. Multiple vehicles. Figures moving in the darkness with the coordinated precision of men who'd done this before.
Eight. Maybe more.
Professional muscle. The kind you hired when you wanted a message delivered in blood.
"How did they find us?" Bethany's voice was steady, but he could hear the fear underneath. She was pressed against the kitchen cabinets, making herself small.
"Doesn't matter." He pulled his phone, sent a single text to Titan: North compromised. Eight plus. Need backup now. "What matters is we hold until help arrives."
"And if help doesn't arrive?"
He met her eyes across the darkened room. "Then we hold anyway."
Another volley of gunfire raked the front of the house. They were testing defenses, probing for weak points. The reinforced windows held, but they wouldn't hold forever.
Grit grabbed the shotgun from the hall closet—the one every safehouse kept loaded—and pressed it into Bethany's hands.
"You know how to use this?"
"Point and pull the trigger?"
"Close enough." He positioned her in the corner of the kitchen, behind the heavy refrigerator that would stop most rounds. "Anyone comes through that window or that door, you shoot. Don't hesitate. Don't aim for legs. Center mass."
"Grit—"
"I need to hold the front." He grabbed her chin, tilted her face up so she couldn't look away. "You hold this position. You don't move. You don't come after me no matter what you hear. Understand?"
Her jaw tightened, but she nodded. "Understand."
He wanted to say something else. Wanted to tell her that if this went sideways, meeting her had been the best thing that happened to him in years. But there wasn't time for sentiment, and she didn't need words—she needed him to keep the wolves away from her door.
He moved to the front of the house.
They hit the door thirty seconds later.
The first man through caught a bullet in the chest and dropped. The second dove left, firing wild, and Grit put him down with two rounds that turned his face into something unrecognizable.
But they kept coming.
He'd been right about the numbers—at least eight, maybe ten, and they were coordinating. Three at the front door, keeping him pinned. Others circling, looking for other entry points.
The kitchen window.
He'd left her alone.
Grit fired twice more, dropping another attacker, then scrambled back from the entryway as return fire chewed through the doorframe. He needed to move. Needed to get to Bethany before someone else did.
A body crashed through the side window—the one in the hallway, the one he'd thought was secure—and suddenly he was fighting hand-to-hand.
The man was big, fast, knew how to throw his weight.
They went down together, rolling across the floor, and Grit felt a knife score across his ribs before he could pin the guy's arm.
He drove his forehead into the attacker's nose, felt cartilage crunch, used the moment of shock to get his hands around the man's throat.
Three seconds. Four. The body went limp.
He didn't stop to check if the man was dead. Just grabbed his fallen pistol and kept moving.
The kitchen.
Bethany was still there, still in position, the shotgun leveled at the window with hands that weren't shaking at all. But someone was outside—he could see the shadow, the silhouette trying to find an angle.
Marsh.
He recognized the shape, the way the man moved. Kenny Marsh, Hoyt's favorite attack dog, the one who'd reached for Bethany's food truck window like he owned her. The one who'd promised that Hoyt would hear about her defiance.
Marsh was trying to flank. Trying to get to the kitchen window while his men kept Grit busy at the front.
Not a chance in hell.
Grit hit the back door at a dead run.
Marsh saw him coming too late. He spun, gun coming up, but Grit was already inside his reach, driving a shoulder into his chest that sent them both crashing into the dead grass of the backyard.
They fought like animals. No technique, no strategy—just two men trying to kill each other with whatever they had. Marsh got a hand around Grit's throat. Grit drove a knee into his kidney. They rolled, grappled, each trying to gain the advantage that would end this.
"Should've minded your own business," Marsh snarled, blood running from a cut above his eye. "She's just a food truck bitch. Not worth dying for."
Grit's answer was a right hook that cracked two of Marsh's teeth.
They came apart, circling. Marsh had lost his gun in the scramble, but he had a knife now—a nasty serrated thing that gleamed in the moonlight.
"Hoyt's going to burn that truck with her inside it," Marsh said. "Going to make you watch. Going to—"
Headlights. Engines. The cavalry arriving.
Marsh's head turned, just for a second—
And Grit shot him in the chest.
The first round staggered him. The second dropped him to his knees. The third—center mass, execution range—put him on his back in the dirt.
Grit stood over him, breathing hard, blood running from the knife wound across his ribs. Marsh was trying to say something, but his lungs were filling up and the words came out as wet gurgles.
"She's not a bitch." Grit's voice was cold. "She's mine."
Marsh's eyes went wide. Then they went empty.
Maverick and Anvil swept the yard while Grit stumbled back to the kitchen door.
Bethany was exactly where he'd left her, shotgun still raised, pointing at the window where Marsh's shadow had been moments ago. When she saw him, something in her face cracked—relief, fear, fury all tangled together.
"You're bleeding."
"Flesh wound." He sagged against the doorframe. "Marsh?"
"I heard the shots." She lowered the shotgun slowly, like her arms had forgotten how to move. "Is he...?"
"Dead."
She nodded. Once. Sharp. And then she was moving toward him, setting the shotgun aside with the kind of care that said she'd taken his instructions about center mass very seriously.
"Let me see."
"I'm fine—"
"Let me see."
He let her see.
The knife wound was ugly but shallow—Marsh had caught him across the ribs but hadn't gone deep enough to hit anything important. She found a first aid kit in the bathroom, cleaned it with hands that were steady even though her face was pale.
"You killed him," she said quietly. "For me."
"For us." He winced as she applied antiseptic. "He wasn't going to stop. Men like that never stop until someone makes them."
Maverick appeared in the doorway, took in the scene with a quick scan. "Perimeter's clear. Six down, two ran. We've got cleanup crews coming."
"Marsh?"
"Very dead." Maverick's mouth curved. "Nice shooting, prospect. Titan's going to want a full debrief, but that can wait until morning." His eyes moved to Bethany, still bandaging Grit's ribs. "Compound might be safer than a burned safehouse."
"Tomorrow," Grit said. "We move tomorrow."
Maverick nodded and disappeared back into the night.
Bethany finished wrapping the bandage and sat back on her heels. Her hands were stained with his blood. Her eyes were wet, though no tears had fallen.
"He said something to you," she said. "Before you shot him. I heard you answer."
Grit remembered the words. She's just a food truck bitch. Not worth dying for.
And his answer: She's mine.
"He was wrong about you," he said instead. "About all of it."
"What did he say?"
"Doesn't matter. He's dead, and we're not." He reached out, cupped her face with a blood-streaked hand. "You did good. Held your position. Kept that shotgun up."
"I didn't fire."
"Didn't need to. But you would have." He smiled despite the pain. "You would have blown a hole through anyone who came through that window."
"Damn right I would have."
He laughed—a rough, painful sound that made his ribs scream—and pulled her closer. She came willingly, careful of his injuries but not pulling away.
"Hoyt lost his best enforcer tonight," he murmured against her hair. "Over a food truck that wouldn't pay tribute."
"Bet he's pissed."
"Furious." He breathed her in—woodsmoke and fear and something floral that must have been the safehouse soap. "But that's tomorrow's problem."
She lifted her head, met his eyes. "And tonight?"
"Tonight we're alive." He traced his thumb across her cheekbone. "That's enough."
She kissed him.
It was brief—more comfort than passion, more relief than heat—but it hit him like a fist to the chest. When she pulled back, her eyes were clearer than they'd been all night.
"Thank you," she said. "For showing up."
"Always."
The word hung between them, heavy with promise.
Outside, the Sentinels were cleaning up the mess—moving bodies, collecting weapons, erasing evidence of the violence that had torn through this quiet neighborhood. Tomorrow they'd move to the compound, regroup, plan their next move against a man who'd just lost his right hand.
But right now, Grit held the woman he'd killed for and let himself believe that some things were worth fighting for after all.