Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Lars shoved Grace through the security gate with one hand clamped around the back of her neck.
His thumb pressed hard beneath her ear, forcing her head down and her body forward.
The pistol stayed jammed against her ribs.
Every step jarred her shoulder where he’d wrenched it in the server room.
Blood from her cheek had dried tacky at the corner of her mouth until the salt air off the water loosened it again.
The dock waited below them, bright in the full sunlight.
Two fast boats rocked against the floating pier.
Beyond them, the water lay deceptively calm, a hard blue sheet broken by reef and sun glare.
The compound behind them had gone loud in pieces.
Short bursts of gunfire. Shouted commands.
A door slamming somewhere. Then the alarms again, rising and falling as if the whole island was breathing wrong.
Lars’s grip tightened each time another sound reached them.
The loss of control.
“Get in the boat,” he said.
Grace didn’t move.
His hand shoved at the back of her neck, bending her forward until the dock blurred beneath her feet. “Grace.”
She knew that tone. Quiet. Warning. The one that had once emptied her lungs faster than shouting ever could. Her knees shook, but they stayed locked.
“You can drag me onto it.” Her voice came out rough from fear and the pressure of his hand. “You can shoot me on it. You can throw me off it. But I’m not rebuilding anything for you.”
Lars turned her sharply enough that pain flashed down her spine.
His face was close. Too close. Sweat had broken through the polished mask, dampening the hair at his temples. A thin line of blood had dried near his hairline, and his shirt collar sat crooked against his throat. Small things. Human things. Damage showing through the suit.
He’d hate that.
“You always mistake endurance for power,” he said. “It’s tedious.”
The pistol dug harder into her side. Grace kept her mouth shut. A sound came from the path above the dock.
Lars’s head tilted slightly, not enough to turn away from her, but enough that she felt the shift in his attention.
“Let her go, Lars.” Magnus’s voice sliced through the air.
Air caught under her ribs. Her fingers curled against her palms. She couldn’t turn all the way with Lars’s hand on her neck, but she saw Magnus from the corner of her eye as he came through the gate.
Rifle up. Steps measured. Face streaked with dust and sweat, one sleeve darkened at the cuff. His gaze hit her and scanned her cheek, Lars’s hand at her neck, and the pistol against her ribs.
His mouth tightened.
The rifle didn’t waver.
Lars pulled her back against him and shifted the gun so the muzzle pressed higher, meaner, into the soft space beneath her ribs. “Not another step.”
Magnus slowed, but he didn’t stop.
Grace’s breath came too fast. Too shallow. She fought to quiet it.
“I don’t need her whole to rebuild what she destroyed,” Lars said. “You take one more step, and I start taking her apart.”
Magnus’s eyes stayed on Grace’s face for one beat longer.
Then they moved to Lars.
“You’re already a man with nothing.”
Lars’s fingers tightened at the back of her neck. Magnus came another step down the path. His boots landed softly on the gravel, each step deliberate enough that Lars had to keep watching him.
“Your money’s not going to save you. Your friends are trying to save themselves. Whatever Grace opened is already out of your reach.”
Grace felt Lars breathe in against her back.
His hand shifted. Thumb easing from beneath her ear as he adjusted his grip on her collar.
“Do you think I’m afraid of you?” Lars asked.
“No.” Magnus’s voice was level. “I think you’re out of options.”
Something moved behind Magnus.
Grace didn’t dare turn her head. She caught it from the edge of her vision—the gatepost, a shadow breaking from it, the narrow black line of a rifle coming up.
The gun pressed harder into her ribs.
“You’re not going to take her from me,” Lars said. “She belongs to me.”
Magnus stopped then.
Close enough that Grace could see the muscle jumping once in his jaw. Close enough to see the blood on his knuckles where he gripped the rifle.
“No,” he said. “She never did.”
Lars went rigid against her side, and his fingers dug into her collar until the fabric pulled tight across her throat.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then Lars’s arm shifted.
The muzzle left her ribs and swept outward, his body turning, his grip dragging her with him. Magnus was in front of them. Exposed. Too close.
She dropped.
Her weight tore against Lars’s hold, fabric biting into the front of her throat as she twisted hard toward the dock. The shot cracked above her, close enough that heat and sound slammed through her skull at the same time.
Magnus jerked sideways and went down.
A second shot answered from the path.
Lars’s grip vanished.
Grace hit the dock on one hip, breath punching from her lungs. Wood shuddered beneath her as something heavy collapsed behind her. The pistol clattered once, then splashed into the water.
She didn’t look back.
Magnus was on the gravel where the path met the dock, one hand pressed hard to his side beneath the edge of his vest. Blood slipped between his fingers and darkened his shirt.
Grace scrambled toward him.
Her palms hit gravel, and her knees followed. Pain sparked up both legs, but she kept moving until she reached him and dropped beside his hip.
“Magnus.”
His eyes opened, unfocused at first. Then they found her, and something in his face eased.
Which made no sense. He was the one on the ground. He was the one with blood spreading under his hand.
“Hey,” he said.
Her hands shook as she pressed over his. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t sound normal.”
His gaze shifted over her face, then lower. His expression changed.
“Grace.”
“No. You don’t get to worry about me right now.”
“You’re bleeding.”
The laugh that broke out of her wasn’t a laugh at all. “You have a hole in you.”
“I noticed.”
“Magnus.”
His mouth moved like he was trying for a smile and didn’t quite have the strength. “Just saying.”
“Well, don’t.
She dragged her focus away from his face and down to her hands. Blood was already warm beneath her fingers.
Too much of it.
Not enough to be catastrophic, maybe. She didn’t know. She knew code and locked doors and how to disappear.
She did not know how to hold Magnus together.
A bigger hand came over hers.
Gunnar dropped to one knee on the other side of Magnus with Oliver half behind him, one small hand still fisted in the back of Gunnar’s shirt. Grace saw Oliver and lost the ability to breathe.
He stood there barefoot in pajama pants, his face red from crying, alive and staring at her like he wasn’t sure she was real.
“Mom?”
Grace made a sound she couldn’t control.
Oliver surged toward her, but Davis intercepted him before he could climb over Magnus to get there.
“Careful, bud.” Davis’s arm stayed firm around Oliver’s middle, gentle but unmovable. “Gunnar’s helping your dad.”
Davis walked Oliver around Magnus’s legs and the spread of medical supplies, then let him go.
Oliver hit Grace hard enough to nearly knock her sideways.
“I’m here,” she said, and the words shook so badly she barely recognized them. “I’m right here, baby.”
Gunnar peeled Grace’s blood-slick hands away and pressed folded gauze where they’d been. She hadn’t seen him open the kit, but it was already beside his knee, wrappers split, supplies lined up on the gravel.
His expression gave nothing away. Whatever he felt about her, about Magnus, about any of it, had been shoved behind the work in front of him.
Magnus sucked in a breath when Gunnar pressed down.
Oliver jerked against Grace immediately. “Dad?”
“Hey, bud.” Gunnar pointed toward Magnus’s side while keeping steady pressure on the wound. “See where this is?”
Oliver nodded against Grace’s shoulder, small fingers twisted tightly in the fabric of her shirt.
“Nothing important there. Hurts like the dickens, bleeds a lot, makes grown men act dramatic, but he’s gonna be okay.”
“I am not acting dramatic,” Magnus said through clenched teeth.
Grace almost laughed.
Magnus was pale from blood loss and lying on gravel with a bullet hole in his side, and somehow, he still sounded offended.
Gunnar didn’t even glance up from the bandage. “You got shot and immediately fell over in front of everybody.”
“I was creating a distraction.”
Oliver made a small choking sound that took Grace a second to realize was the beginning of a laugh. Relief hit her so hard she had to bow her head briefly against his hair.
He was laughing.
Not much. Not fully. But enough that the terror was finally loosening its grip on him.
Gunnar taped the dressing down and checked the exit wound with quick, practiced movements. Magnus’s jaw tightened, but he stayed still beneath Gunnar’s hands.
“Through-and-through,” Gunnar said. “Missed nothing worth arguing with God about.”
“Excellent news.”
“You’re fine.”
“I know I’m fine.”
“You’re whining like you’re dying.”
“I’ve been shot.”
Davis’s voice carried over from the dock. “To be fair, getting shot does suck.”
“You cried worse than this,” Gunnar called back.
“I was shot twice.”
“Overachiever.”
Grace looked between them.
Magnus bled into Gunnar’s hands while Gunnar insulted him automatically. Davis contributed from somewhere near the boats. Nobody panicked. Nobody treated Magnus like he was dying.
Oliver lifted his head enough to look at Magnus again. “Dad?”
Magnus reached over carefully and caught the back of Oliver’s pajama shirt between his fingers. “Buddy, I’m okay. Promise.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Magnus glanced toward Grace briefly before looking back at Oliver. “Worth it anyway.”
Gunnar snorted softly while securing the final bandage. “Getting shot usually isn’t.”
“Was this time.” Magnus’s eyes flicked toward Grace again. Calm. Certain. “Had to save your future sister-in-law.”
The words hit Grace so hard her breath caught.
Gunnar finally looked up then.
For one second, she saw the old tension still sitting there beneath everything—the vault, the lies, the fear, all the ways she had hurt his brother trying to save her son.
Then Gunnar leaned back on his heels and gave Magnus an unimpressed look.
“Yeah,” Gunnar said. “Probably worth it.”
And then—small enough Oliver wouldn’t notice—he winked at her.
Grace had survived interrogation rooms, black sites, Lars’s hands on the back of her neck, eight years of running, and the collapse of an international empire.
That stupid wink nearly broke her.
Magnus looked at her then, pain tight around his eyes, but the corner of his mouth pulled slightly upward anyway.
Grace pressed her free hand over her mouth, but it didn’t stop the laugh from breaking through. It came out wet and unsteady and too close to crying. Oliver was crying now, silently, his small face crumpling as he leaned into her side.
She pulled him against her carefully, keeping one hand locked in his.
“I thought you were gone,” he whispered into her shirt.
Grace bent over him, cheek resting against his hair. “I know. I’m so sorry, Oliver.”
Astryde stepped into Grace’s line of sight then, rifle still in her hands, face unreadable except for the tightness around her mouth. Behind her, Lars lay on the dock, unmoving, one arm twisted beneath him. Davis stood near the body with his rifle lowered but ready.
Grace’s stomach turned once, hard.
Astryde followed her gaze. “He’s done.”
Two words.
No ceremony.
No explanation.
Grace nodded because anything more might pull her apart.
Bj?rn moved in with his phone in his hand. “We’re not bringing local responders onto this island unless we have no other choice.”
Gunnar didn’t look up from the gauze pressed to Magnus’s side. “Bleeding’s slowing. Pulse is steady. He’s still conscious enough to be annoying, so we’re not at the ‘invite strangers to our secret island disaster’ stage yet.”
“Good,” Bj?rn said. “Don’t let him get there.”
Rafe’s voice came thin through the phone speaker. “That may be the worst medical update I’ve ever been relieved to hear.”
“Yeah, well, we do what we can.” Bj?rn chuckled. “Rafe, can you get me General Paxton?”
Gunnar sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The general isn’t going to like being left in the dark on this.”
“You’re right.” Bj?rn looked out over the water, jaw tight, phone still at his ear. “Rafe, see if June can patch in on the call with us and tame her dad’s feathers we’re about to ruffle.”
A faint, frantic burst of Rafe’s voice crackled through. “Do I look like a family therapist with federal clearance?”
“Today?” Bj?rn said. “Yes.”
Magnus’s shoulders shook once.
Gunnar pressed down on the bandage. “Laugh again, and I’ll make this hurt worse.”
“It already hurts worse.”
“Then I’m doing great.”
Grace looked from one face to another, trying to fit the scene into any shape she understood. Nobody was asking why she had gone with Lars. Nobody was accusing her. Nobody was standing at a careful distance from the mess she had made.
They were already calling in reinforcements Grace hadn’t known existed, moving around her with a competence that didn’t ask her to bleed more proof of loyalty first. She should have been terrified to trust them with the wreckage, but all she felt was relief.
Oliver shifted against Grace and reached one hand toward Magnus.
Magnus caught his fingers carefully, mindful of the bandage Gunnar had secured against his side.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
Oliver looked between them, eyes still swollen from crying. “Are we going home?”
Magnus lifted his gaze to Grace.
She held her breath. The dock still smelled like salt water and gunpowder.
Her cheek throbbed. Magnus’s blood had dried tacky across her hands.
Somewhere behind them, Bj?rn was still on comms with Paxton while Davis and Astryde secured the scene like this was just another operation with cleanup afterward.
But Oliver was here.
Magnus was alive.
And nobody was asking her to leave.
Grace swallowed hard.
Magnus’s thumb brushed once against Oliver’s knuckles before he looked back at him.
“Yeah,” he said, voice roughened by pain and exhaustion. “We’re going home.”
Oliver climbed carefully onto Magnus’s good side and settled against him, one hand fisted in Magnus’s shirt, the other reaching back toward Grace.
Grace swallowed hard against the jagged ache rising in her throat and moved in beside Magnus, curling carefully against his shoulder as she laced her fingers through Oliver’s small hand.
Magnus’s arm came around her automatically, heavy and warm across her back despite the injury, pulling her against his side while Oliver stayed pressed against Magnus’s other side.
None of them let go.