33. Alex
ALEX
The door somewhere down the hall crashes open hard enough to send the sound through the walls.
Preston freezes above me.
For a second, neither of us moves. I’m still curled partly against the concrete where he left me, one arm wrapped around my ribs and the other braced uselessly against the floor.
My ears are ringing from the last hit, and every breath catches somewhere painful before I can pull enough air into my lungs.
Then another sound reaches us. Fast footsteps. More than one set, spreading through the building instead of coming from the same direction.
Preston turns toward the hallway.
I don’t know who is out there yet, but the change in him tells me he does.
His hand disappears beneath the back of his shirt.
Gun.
I try to push myself up, but my arm gives before I get more than a few inches off the floor. “Preston—”
He never gets the weapon clear.
Ryder comes through the doorway and hits him with enough force to carry them both out of my line of sight.
The impact sends Preston into the opposite wall with a crash that makes me flinch.
Something metal clatters across the concrete.
Ryder doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
I hear another hit, Preston swearing, shoes scraping for traction as the two of them slam into something I can’t see from where I’m lying.
Voices break through the building behind them.
“Gun!”
“I see it.”
“Back room!”
I recognize Remy somewhere in the noise, then Logan, though I can’t make out everything they’re saying. Boots pound past the doorway while somebody else moves in the direction Mrs. Vance’s voice came from earlier.
Ryder found me.
Relief hits so suddenly that my eyes burn.
I knew he would follow the trail. I knew he would understand why I left the phone, why I didn’t shut the cameras off, why his truck would be sitting where I abandoned it. I knew all of that when I left his bed.
I also thought he’d be too late to save me from my nightmare.
Knowing it and hearing him on the other side of this room are two completely different things.
I try to turn my head toward the fight, but the movement makes the ceiling slide sideways above me. My stomach rolls, and I close my eyes long enough to keep myself from throwing up.
Hands touch my shoulders.
I react before I know who they belong to.
I jerk away and swing one arm badly, managing little more than an awkward shove before the person catches my wrist without tightening around it.
“Alex. Hey, stop. It’s me.”
I know that voice.
I’ve heard it almost every day of my life.
My eyes open again.
Josh drops to his knees beside me, and the expression on my brother’s face is almost enough to scare me more than Preston did. He looks furious and terrified at the same time, his attention moving over me like he can’t decide where he’s allowed to touch without hurting me.
“Josh.”
His eyes close briefly when I say his name. When they open again, he’s already reaching carefully for my neck, fingertips finding my pulse while his other hand steadies my shoulder.
“Yeah, Allycat. I’ve got you.”
Another crash comes from across the room.
Josh looks toward it.
I do too, or try to.
“Don’t move,” Josh tells me, already reaching for my neck to check my pulse.
“Mrs. Vance.”
“Casey’s got her.”
“She’s alive. Preston said he killed her but he didn’t.”
“I know.” His hand stays against my throat while his other one moves carefully along the side of my head. “Stay with me, Allycat.”
A crash behind him pulls my attention away.
Ryder has Preston on the floor.
At first, relief hits so hard I almost stop fighting to stay awake. Ryder found me. He followed exactly the trail I left, and he’s here.
Then he hits Preston again.
Preston isn’t holding the gun anymore. I can see it several feet away near the wall, with Carter moving toward it. Logan is saying something I can’t make out. Remy is coming through the doorway behind them.
Ryder doesn’t seem to hear any of them.
He pulls Preston up by the front of his shirt and drives him back down.
Preston laughs.
The sound is wet and broken, but unmistakably pleased.
“There you are,” he says. “The monster who thinks he’s good enough for her.”
Ryder hits him again.
“Ryder.”
My voice barely exists.
Josh looks over his shoulder and swears.
Remy reaches Ryder first, grabbing his arm before the next punch lands. Ryder jerks away so violently that Remy nearly loses his footing.
“Cook.”
Ryder doesn’t respond.
Preston smiles up at him through blood.
“She knows now.”
Ryder’s fist closes in Preston’s shirt.
“She knows exactly what you are.” Preston’s words are slurring together, but that doesn’t matter.
I understand what Preston is doing before Ryder does. Maybe because Preston spent years doing it to me.
Find the wound. Push until the person gives you the reaction you want. Then point at the reaction and call it proof.
Ryder catches Preston by the front of his shirt and hauls him off the floor so violently that Preston’s feet barely find traction beneath him.
There’s nothing controlled about Ryder anymore.
The man who checks doors twice, who notices exits before he sits down, who can walk into a burning building and somehow make every movement look deliberate is gone.
His knuckles are split, Preston’s blood is smeared across one of his hands, and when he slams him against the wall again, the sound carries through the room hard enough that Josh shifts beside me.
I’ve seen Ryder angry. I’ve seen him frightened and possessive and so tightly wound around protecting me that I wanted to shake him. I’ve even imagined what he might do if he ever got his hands on Preston after everything that happened.
I was wrong.
Ryder isn’t trying to stop him anymore.
Preston can barely stand, and Ryder is still holding him upright by his shirt, dragging him back every time his knees start to buckle. Remy says Ryder’s name from somewhere behind them, sharp enough that I know it’s a warning, but Ryder doesn’t react. His attention never leaves Preston’s face.
Preston notices too.
Blood runs from the corner of his mouth when he smiles.
That smile makes the fear in my chest turn cold.
He wants this.
All those photographs. Every comparison he made between them while I was tied to that chair.
The way he kept insisting Ryder watched me the same way he did, controlled me the same way he did, wanted to own me the same way he did.
Preston didn’t bring Ryder here just because he wanted him to see what happened to me.
He wanted Ryder to become part of it.
“Ryder.”
My voice comes out rough enough that I’m not sure anyone hears me over the movement in the room.
Ryder draws Preston away from the wall and drives him back into it.
Josh shifts beside me, taking his hand away from my shoulder as he starts to get up. I catch a fistful of his sleeve before he can.
He looks down at me immediately. “Alex, I need to—”
“Don’t.”
His expression tightens. Across the room, Remy has moved closer to Ryder, but he hasn’t put his hands on him yet. Maybe he sees the same thing I do. Maybe he knows that someone physically dragging Ryder away from Preston isn’t going to solve what’s happening inside him.
I tighten my fingers in Josh’s sleeve. “Please.”
Josh stays beside me.
Preston laughs under his breath.
Ryder’s hand tightens in his shirt.
“There he is,” Preston says, his voice wet around the blood in his mouth. He lifts his head enough to look past Ryder toward me before returning his attention to him. “I told her eventually she’d see you.”
Ryder hits him again.
I flinch before I can stop myself.
Preston’s head snaps sideways, but when he looks back, he’s still smiling.
“Do it.” His voice drops low enough that Ryder has to be the one closest to hear it, but the room has gone quiet around them. “Let her see.”
Ryder grabs him with both hands.
Something about the way he does it makes my stomach twist.
There’s no hesitation left in him.
I know Ryder could kill him.
More terrifyingly, I know Ryder has decided he’s willing to.
“Ryder.”
He doesn’t look at me.
I push myself higher against Josh’s arm, and pain cuts through my ribs hard enough to blur my vision.
Josh reaches for me automatically, trying to keep me from moving, but I shake him off because Ryder is standing ten feet away from me and somehow that distance feels more dangerous than anything Preston has done since I woke up in this building.
“Ryder, look at me.”
His body stills.
Preston sees it happen and gives another quiet laugh. “Go ahead. Look at her.”
Ryder’s head turns.
The expression on his face hurts worse than I’m prepared for.
There’s blood on him that isn’t his, his breathing is hard, and every line of his body is pulled tight around the need to finish what he started. But underneath all of that, I can still see him.
The man who fixed my window and stepped back when I asked for space.
The man who built an absurd security system around his house and still let me decide which cameras stayed on.
The man who has spent this entire relationship wanting to put himself between me and everything dangerous while learning, sometimes painfully, that loving me doesn’t mean deciding for me.
Preston is trying to take that choice away from him now.
And if Ryder kills him like this, Preston gets what he wanted.
Not because Preston will have been right about Ryder. He isn’t. But he will have managed to reach into Ryder and leave something behind.
I refuse to let him have that.
I lift my hand toward Ryder. It shakes so badly that I barely get it away from my body, but his eyes drop to it immediately.
I don’t ask him to spare Preston. I don’t care what Preston deserves.
“Come here.”
Ryder’s gaze comes back to mine.
Preston’s smile falters.
“I need you,” I tell him.
For several seconds, Ryder doesn’t move. His hands stay twisted in Preston’s shirt, and I can see the fight happening in the way his fingers flex against the fabric. Preston tries to say something else, but Ryder doesn’t look at him now.
He’s looking at me and that’s all I need.
“Please, Ryder.”
His grip loosens.
Preston’s expression changes first. The satisfaction disappears from his face when he realizes what is happening, and for the first time since Ryder came through that door, Preston looks genuinely angry.
Ryder releases him.
Preston drops awkwardly against the wall and slides toward the floor, but Ryder doesn’t watch him fall. He turns his back on him completely and crosses the room toward me.
That is the moment Preston loses.
He crosses the distance between us so fast Josh barely has time to move out of the way before Ryder is on his knees beside me. His hands hover for a second because there are too many places I’m hurt and he doesn’t know where he can touch without making something worse.
I catch his wrist and put his palm against my cheek.
He makes a sound I have never heard from him before.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m alive, and I’m here.”
His forehead drops carefully against mine.
Behind him, Remy orders Preston onto his stomach. Carter retrieves the gun near the wall while Logan moves in from the other side. Casey’s voice carries from the adjoining room, telling someone Mrs. Vance is conscious and needs medical help.
Preston laughs again.
Ryder stiffens beneath my hand, but he doesn’t turn around.
That matters.
Preston says something else, too low for me to understand, while Remy tells him to keep his hands where they can be seen.
Ryder stays with me. His thumb moves carefully beneath my eye without touching the swelling there, and I feel the exact second he makes the choice to keep looking at me instead of going back.
A metallic scrape sounds behind him.
Remy shouts.
Ryder starts to turn.
Preston is sitting against the base of the worktable with another gun in his hand. Carter is moving toward him, Remy already reaching for his weapon, but Preston isn’t pointing the gun at any of them.
He’s looking at me.
His face is battered, his breathing ragged, and the smile he gives me is the same one I spent years learning to fear.
“You’ll never escape me now.”
He puts the gun to his head before anyone can reach him. Ryder moves over me at the same instant the shot tears through the room, his body blocking my view while the sound slams through the concrete walls and leaves my ears ringing.