Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 34715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
We push through the service door into the alley. Cool air hits us. I keep her close to the wall, my body shielding hers as I scan rooftops and parked cars. The black SUV from earlier is creeping past the mouth of the alley. I shove her behind a dumpster, pull my pistol, and fire two suppressed rounds into the front tire. Rubber explodes. The SUV swerves, slams into a parked delivery van. Horns blare. People scatter.
Anniston squeaks. “You have a gun. Of course you have a gun.”
I holster it, and grab her hand again. “Your place. Now. You grab clothes, essentials, whatever you need for a few days. Then we disappear.”
She doesn’t argue. She runs with me, breathing hard, her fingers tight around mine. We cut through two more alleys, emerge onto a side street, and hail a cab with my free hand. I give the driver her address. She rattles it off too, voice shaking but clear.
Fifteen minutes later we’re in her apartment, a small but bright one-bedroom on the fifteenth floor with a view of the river. She moves like a whirlwind now, yanking open drawers, shoving leggings, hoodies, underwear, and a toothbrush into a duffel. I stand by the window, blinds half-closed, watching the street below. Two men in dark jackets are already loitering near the building entrance. Not subtle.
“Hurry,” I tell her.
She zips the bag, slings it over her shoulder, and stops in front of me. Her eyes are still stunned, but there’s a fire in them now. “You’re really here to protect me? This whole time. It was a mission.”
I meet her gaze. “It started as a mission. The part where I liked walking with you, listening to you talk about soup disasters? That was real.”
She blinks hard, then nods once, like she’s filing that away for later. “Okay. Fine. Later. Right now we run?”
We run.
I get her out through the service elevator, down to the underground parking garage. My rented black truck is waiting two levels down. I load her bag, buckle her in, and peel out onto the service road. In the rearview I see the two men sprinting toward a sedan.
I take the next corner hard, tires squealing. Anniston grips the door handle, but she doesn’t scream. She just looks at me, cheeks still pink, hair a mess, and says, “So where exactly are we going, Banks Hawthorne?”
“Somewhere safe,” I answer, eyes on the road, already mapping the route out of Halo City. “Somewhere they won’t find us tonight. And tomorrow we start figuring out who wants you dead and why they’re willing to send knives into broad daylight to make it happen.”
She settles back against the seat, exhales a shaky breath, and for the first time since the attack her voice goes soft again. “You saved my life in under thirty seconds. I think I owe you more than a new shirt.”
I glance over. She’s watching me with those big eyes, half terrified, half something warmer. I like it more than I should.
“You owe me nothing,” I say. “But you’re going to let me keep you alive. Deal?”
She smiles, small and shaky but real. “Deal.”
I hit the highway ramp, city lights shrinking in the mirror, and feel the mission shift under my feet. Anniston Wells is no longer just an assignment.
She’s mine to protect.
And I’m not letting them touch her again.
FOUR
ANNISTON
I sit in the passenger seat of Banks’s truck, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs that I’m half convinced it’s trying to stage a full escape. The highway stretches out in front of us like an endless gray ribbon under the bright afternoon sun, the glittering skyline of Halo City shrinking smaller and smaller in the side mirror until the towering glass buildings look like a toy city someone is slowly packing away.
My overstuffed duffel bag is squished between my feet, the strap digging into my ankle, but I can’t bring myself to move it. My hands won’t stop shaking no matter how hard I press them together in my lap, fingers laced so tightly the knuckles turn white.
Banks drives like he was born doing exactly this: calm, focused, completely in control. One hand rests on the steering wheel with relaxed confidence, the other occasionally reaches out to tap the glowing screen on the dashboard, rerouting us onto smaller roads without a single wasted motion. His profile is lit by the sun, highlighting that sharp jawline and the faint cut on his sleeve where the knife had grazed him. He looks like a man who has done this a hundred times before, extracting people from danger like it’s just another Tuesday. I, on the other hand, look like a woman who just watched someone try to stab her in a high-end boutique and is now seriously questioning every single life choice that led her to this moment. My pencil skirt is wrinkled, my blouse still has faint vanilla oat milk stains, and my hair’s a wild mess from running through alleys.