Chapter 45
Jen hit Akilov’s legs and the shot broke open.
Akilov staggered, his weapon swinging wide, and the window opened like a door kicked in.
Wyatt’s hand was already moving.
Magazine from his back pocket.
Empty dropped.
Fresh mag slammed home.
Rack.
Up.
His broken hand was just noise.
Wyatt exhaled. Fired.
The round punched through Akilov’s thigh, dropping his leg out from under him.
He hit the snow hard—but his hand stayed on the weapon.
Wyatt fired again.
The second round tore the gun from Akilov’s hand. It hit the snow. He screamed, curving around his ruined hand.
Wyatt held the sight picture.
One second.
Two.
Akilov wasn’t moving.
Jen.
Face down in the snow.
Not moving.
Fifteen feet and every step cost him.
His boots punched through crusted ice, everything else fading between him and her.
He fell to his knees beside her.
“Jen.”
He reached for her with both hands and pain engulfed the broken one. Blinding. Something tore at his throat, but he swallowed it whole. He gathered her up anyway. Slid his arm under her shoulders and turned her, pulling her against his chest.
Her face was puffy. Blood matted her hair on the left side, and the cut on her cheek had opened wider, dark against her skin. Her left eye was almost shut, the bruise already spreading in deep shades of red and black. Snow dusted her hair.
His hands moved on instinct—fingers along her jaw, checking for fractures. Gentle pressure on her ribs. Searching for the wound he was terrified he’d find—the one that meant he’d been too slow, too far, too late.
Bruising. Cuts. Swelling. No penetration.
She was breathing.
Her eyes opened. Focused. Found him.
Alive.
Air slammed back into his lungs hard enough to hurt.
He closed his eyes, and for a second he just held her, his forehead pressed to hers. Her skin was freezing, slick with blood, and nothing had ever felt better.
“Wyatt—” Her voice cracked. Her hands came up and grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, pulling at him as if she needed to confirm he was solid. “Are you okay? Your hand, oh my God, your hand, you’re bleeding, are you—”
She was checking him. She was lying in the snow with a smashed face and torn hands, and she was checking him.
His throat worked hard. “I’m okay.” His words were wrecked and barely there. “I’m okay.”
“He was going to—” A sob broke through, hard and sudden, and her face crumpled. She pressed into his chest, and her whole body shook, tremors shuddering through her. “He was going to kill you. I saw it. I couldn’t—”
“You saved me.” He muttered the words into her hair. “You saved me.”
She sobbed harder. Her bloodied fingers dug into his shirt, and he pulled her tighter against him, his broken hand incandescent. But he held on because the pain of holding her was nothing compared to those seconds when she’d been face down in the snow and he hadn’t known if she was alive.
He pressed his mouth to her temple. Tasted blood and snow, and salt. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
“Wyatt.” The way she said it shattered something in him he knew would never reset.
Behind him, Akilov groaned.
The sound was indistinct, guttural, the sound of a man clawing back toward consciousness. Snow crunched as he shifted.
Every system came back online.
Wyatt eased Jen down, his hand on her cheek for one second. “Don’t move.”
Akilov was on his side, one hand pressed to the wound in his thigh, and despite his shattered arm, reaching toward his weapon in the snow.
Wyatt kicked it away. It skittered across the snow crust and disappeared into the dark.
Akilov looked up. He was breathing hard, his jaw clenched, but there was something behind that eye—not surrender. Recognition. One professional acknowledging another.
Wyatt raised the pistol.
He could kill him. Right now. A round through the skull and it would be over. This man had come to his home. Broken in. Put his hands on Jen. Dragged her through glass and darkness and hit her hard enough to close her eye.
Every fiber of him wanted it. The SEAL wanted it. The part of him built for this—trained, honed, sharpened into a weapon that existed for moments precisely like this one—wanted to pull the trigger and watch the light leave.
Jen was behind him. Breathing. Alive. Watching.
He flipped the gun in his hand and drove the butt into Akilov’s temple.
The impact was clean and precise. One strike. Akilov’s head snapped sideways and his body went limp, crumpling into the snow.
Wyatt stood over him for a moment. His breath fogged in the cold. His wrecked hand hung at his side.
He turned and walked back to Jen.
She was sitting up, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking. He crouched in front of her, cupped her face in his hands—broken one and all. The blood. The bruises. Her swollen eye. Tear tracks cut through the grime on her cheeks.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
He helped her up. Her legs buckled on the first try, and he caught her. On the second, she made it, leaning hard into him. He slid his arm under her knees and lifted her.
His right hand throbbed with a sick, grinding heat, and his ribs ached where he’d taken hits in the kitchen. His shoulder was stiffening from a blow he didn’t remember receiving. None of it mattered.
None of it even came close to mattering.
She curled into him, her face pressed against his neck, her breath warm on his skin. Her fingers hooked into the collar of his shirt and held on.
He stood in the snow holding her while the silence settled around them and the mountains watched, and for one long, suspended moment, there was nothing else.
Sirens broke the hush. Distant at first, then closer. Headlights cut through the dark, bouncing over the access road, throwing long yellow beams across the snow.
Tires ground over ice.
Ryder’s beaten truck. Caleb vaulted out before the truck stopped. Vest on. Weapon up. Moving fast.
The truck skidded to a halt.
A second later, Ryder was right behind him, rifle raised, covering the opposite angle.
Their attention swung to him. Standing in the snow. Jen in his arms.
Ryder lowered his weapon. He glanced at the house. At Akilov, bloodied in the snow.
Wyatt saw the joke forming in his brother’s eyes the way you see weather coming across the valley.
Ryder shook his head. A wry smile tugged at his mouth. “You know, most people just call the cops.”
Wyatt had no words. Caleb joined them, silent. Ryder on one side, Caleb on the other. Shoulder to shoulder. Three brothers in the cold again, breath fogging, saying nothing.
More vehicles arrived. More lights. Sarah’s cruiser slid to a stop, and she was out before the engine died, badge on her belt, command in her voice.
She took one look at Wyatt and for half a second she’d never admit—the sheriff disappeared and his baby sister was standing there, her face stripped bare.
Then she locked it down and started giving orders, deputies splitting across his property to secure the area.
Caleb crossed to Akilov. Checked his pulse. “He’ll live.” Caleb looked at Wyatt. “Unfortunately.”
The sirens wound down, but the lights kept flashing, painting the snow red and blue. Sarah was on the radio, her voice clipped and professional, the crisis contained.
Wyatt stood in the cold with his brothers beside him, Jen in his arms.
The night was finally quiet. Her weight was warm against his chest.
He wasn’t a weapon anymore.
He was hers—and he chose it.