Chapter 32
“And this job . . . why are you doing it?” I asked, even though Briggs was sure the Wreckers were behind every piece of this and were giving one last, wounded show of force after how we’d come after them last fall. I just needed to keep him talking until that pressure on my neck lessened.
Needed to give myself more time until I could grab my gun, and was once again grateful I’d chambered a round before Gray had ever driven into my complex.
“Now, Mallory . . .” Davis crooned in a voice so soft, so menacing, and so unlike the one I’d become accustomed to over the months, that it had a chill spreading over my skin, even before the blade angled deeper, “you still haven’t answered what gave me away.”
“Your eyes,” I answered steadily, even as my stomach twisted at the feel of what he was doing.
He hummed in consideration, the grip on my jaw tightening until it felt like he was trying to break it before he suddenly relaxed his hold.
My head dropped down instinctively, but I caught myself a split second before registering the too-smooth feel of steel through flesh and blood pouring out even faster than before.
I allowed myself one more moment of panic, one harsh pitch of my chest, before forcing that numbing calm to seep through my veins.
I’d encountered and survived unspeakable horrors overseas.
I’d fought in battles no one should’ve survived, though most of our team somehow had.
Even with all my resentment toward it, I’d been reluctantly grateful for my dad’s endless training because it’d prepared me for every one of those moments.
I knew with every steady beat of my heart that all his training, and all my brothers’ mockery, had been for this moment.
A moment where I might have failed initially, but blood streaming down my neck and a weapon millimeters from taking my life weren’t enough to rattle me or make me react rashly.
“This job?” Davis began as the hand at my jaw cradled me almost tenderly, his thumb trailing across my lips in a move that had far too many memories flashing through my mind. “I just go where I’m sent and do what I’m told. But from what I’ve heard, your boss offended some people he shouldn’t have.”
I forced a bored, contemplative sound. “So, you’re saying someone got their feelings hurt and sent a nobody to watch me.”
Given the way the blade twitched against my neck, slicing in a downward motion, I’d hit a nerve. “I wouldn’t be here if that last one were the case.”
With a steeling breath, I prayed I wasn’t wrong about my earlier assessment before saying, “Then why did they send someone to make sure you were doing your job?”
Long seconds passed before Davis spoke, irritation and amazement lacing his tone. “Now, what gave that away?”
“Well, when you’re sloppy . . .” I trailed off, letting the words hang in the air before taunting, “Might as well invite your friend out to play too.”
“He’s watching for when your husband reappears,” he said as if he already knew Gray would.
If only he knew Gray was just feet away, anxiously waiting for the door to unlock, most likely straining to hear any noise.
Another hum rolled up my throat. “I don’t need my husband to fight my battles. I can take care of the two of you.”
Now . . . I could now. Because he’d snapped me back to myself, and I was ready to take them both, the way I should’ve from the moment he’d shut the door behind us.
Dark excitement wrapped around Davis’ voice when he muttered, “Good.” The blade slid away from its precarious position on my neck, leaving a fiery sting in its razor-sharp wake, as he used the grip on my jaw to tilt my head until I was looking into his eyes. “Because I was hoping you’d fight more.”
“And I was hoping you’d make this hard,” I whispered as I unholstered my gun and fired it into his stomach before he had the chance to react.
His roar of agony drowned out the strained curse that ripped from me as I turned, already firing two more into Davis’ chest as he simultaneously clutched at his stomach and swiped for my shirt.
And then there was silence as he slumped to my kitchen floor.
That ominous, weighted silence that was suddenly crushing my chest.
I took a step toward my room, gun raised, but staggered back instead and stumbled into my pantry door just as Gray appeared, gun drawn and stare searching for any remaining threats as he demanded, “What happened?”
We probably alerted the neighbors . . .
A wheezed cough tumbled from me instead as I pushed from the door, only to fall back against it.
And it hurt.
But it shouldn’t have.
It was just a door.
And that weight on my chest . . . it was so heavy. Heavier than it had been. Heavier than it should’ve been.
My free hand trembled as I reached for my neck, wondering if Davis had cut deeper than I realized. But before I even made it there, my hand fell to my chest. To the pain there as I struggled to take in a breath.
“Mallory,” Gray demanded as his eyes snapped to mine and widened with fear that was thick enough to break through that ominous silence and coat my shaky limbs. “Mallory.” The last was said on a horrified whisper just as a gurgled cough clawed its way up my throat.
“No, no, no,” he breathed as he rushed over to me, gun holstered and phone at his ear before his hands were racing everywhere and somehow nowhere.
Briefly smearing the blood on my neck before hovering over my body as he rapidly searched for the larger problem.
Because there was a larger problem.
I could feel it in the way each strained breath felt so sharp, so heavy, so pained. I could sense it in the panic seeping through Gray’s words as he relayed information to a dispatcher, when Gray was always cool and calm in these situations. I just couldn’t understand it.
I couldn’t understand how everything had gone so wrong, when my head had finally been clear, and I’d been confident in my timing of taking control of the situation. I’d known each step, each action, each—
The other man.
“Gray.” His name was a wheeze as I pushed myself from the pantry door, just to have another bubbly cough wrench from my too-tight lungs. Something warm and wet trickled past my lips and seemed to freeze Gray before he was moving again.
Looking all around me as if he could make sense of what he was seeing. When he started turning my body, his hands stilled on me a split second before another pained curse rasped from me.
“Gray,” I tried again when he straightened in front of me.
“Don’t talk, baby, just—just try to breathe,” he begged, his voice hitching as he curled a hand around my cheek and dropped his forehead to mine. “Why didn’t you yell?” He brushed a thumb across my lips as if in reminder not to speak, but he needed to know we weren’t alone.
“There’s—”
“I love you,” he said over me. “You’re strong—you’re so strong, Peach, and I need you to be strong now, because you’re the one person I can’t lose.”
The tears gathered in his eyes tore deeper at my chest than the pain already there because I knew what they and his words meant. But it didn’t matter what he’d found on my body, neither of us were going to survive if he didn’t let me warn him.
In the next labored beat of my heart, it hit me like a sledgehammer to my chest—or maybe that was just the crushing weight there—that it wouldn’t just be the two of us who wouldn’t survive.
It’d been difficult to breathe before, but it felt impossible then, as my thoughts went back to the baby that, not even an hour before, I’d wanted nothing to do with—that I’d wanted to get rid of.
Tears blurred my vision and my chest struggled to pitch with a muted sob as I swayed toward the pantry door again.
“No, no,” Gray caught me before I could smack into the surface, then deftly, carefully, switched our positions, so his back was pressed to the door, and I was leaning against his chest. All while I struggled to warn him about the man somewhere in my condo.
“There’s a knife in your back,” he said over me softly, matter-of-factly, even though his features showed his outright terror. “From what I’m hearing and seeing, I think it punctured your lung, which is why I need you to stop talking.”
As he continued, one of his hands slowly moved down my arm until his fingers were curling around where I still loosely gripped my gun.
Once it was in his right hand, he added, “EMS are on the way, and I need you to be the incredible, stubborn woman you are, and stay with me, because I’m not living the rest of my days without our arguments and your cold glares.
I’m not going through life without your quick jabs and dirty way of fighting. I’m not losing my wife. Understand?”
I wanted to scream at him to listen, but each constricted breath only allowed me partial words that were little more than gasps.
Just as I began rasping what I could of the word, “Another,” Gray’s head snapped to the side as he fired three rounds. The heavy sound of a body sagging to the floor followed quickly after.
Gray’s chest heaved against mine, but I knew him too well to know it wasn’t because of the life he’d just taken. It was because he was going against protocol. For me. Again.
He wasn’t clearing my condo, when he needed to. He was holding me against him as his glassy stare shifted everywhere, searching for anything else that might be out of place.
My lips parted to tell him to go, but a blood-filled cough left me instead, prompting his grip on me to tighten as his stare shot back to me. His jaw strained under the pressure he put on it as he quickly searched my face.
“You’re gonna be okay. You’re fine,” he whispered, as if reassuring himself. “I love you.”
“The—”
“Stop talking,” he practically begged, his voice twisting with emotion around the words.
“Baby,” I finally managed to wheeze as tears slipped free. “The baby.” The last had no oxygen behind it and was nearly inaudible, but it was enough to make Gray’s expression crumple before his forehead fell to mine.
“I know,” he breathed, grief apparent in those hushed words, his head subtly shaking against mine. “I know.”
And I felt that grief like a consuming wave. Not just Gray’s, so thick and final, wrapping around me as if he knew there was no way the baby could survive what he was clearly terrified I wouldn’t. But my own.
All over a baby I’d been horrified by the knowledge of when I’d seen those two pink lines.
I would’ve given anything to go back to this morning and have a different reaction. To enjoy that moment with Gray, at least for a few hours.
I would’ve given anything to go back a dozen minutes and yell for Gray, even though I’d been trained to never need anyone but myself.
I would’ve given anything to go back eleven years so I could’ve spent every minute with Gray, rather than pushing him away.
A weak, gurgled sob caught in my chest as the words, “I’m sorry,” tumbled from my lips like a drunken rumble.
“No, don’t do that,” he said through clenched teeth. Lifting his free hand to cradle the uninjured side of my neck, he pleaded, “Just keep breathing for me, Peach. I can’t lose you.”
I felt another hitch of Gray’s chest against mine when sirens could be heard in the distance and briefly wondered why it felt so out of place before forgetting about it altogether.
“Need you to keep your eyes open, baby. They’re almost here.
You’re gonna be okay,” he said as if he’d finally grasped onto the thinnest glimmer of hope.
I struggled to crack open my eyelids, unsure of when I’d even closed them, long enough to see Gray’s expression fall.
The same as it had when he’d first seen me after suddenly appearing in my kitchen.
But this fear? This was different.
This was loss and denial. This was a soul being torn apart, and being unable to prevent it.
“Mallory?” he whispered. Or maybe I just imagined that . . . “No. No, no, no. Mallory, breathe,” Gray shouted as he readjusted his grip on me. I hadn’t imagined that.
I wanted to tell him I was.
I wanted to prove I could.
Only to finally realize why the hitch of Gray’s chest had felt so odd.
Because mine wasn’t moving at all.