29. Viktor

[ 29 ]

VIKTOR

They had duped us.

Cam and Jake.

Tricked Alexei with ghost screens and fake hacks and sent us hurtling in the wrong direction, to the smallest fight while they’d run headlong into the worst.

I had never been so angry, but as Ranger went down and he did not get up, there was nothing in my soul but raw panic.

Saint got to him first.

I skidded to a stop beside them and pushed him away, easing Ranger onto his back.

His face was hidden by his mask. I ripped it off and held his head in my bloodied hands. His eyes rolled. I was losing him.

Cam reached us. “Is he hit?”

I did not know. Saint searched Ranger’s body. I scanned his head and neck and found the gash above his ear and the swelling forming beneath it. “Here. Impact, not bullet.”

“Fuck.” Cam called Ranger’s name. Tapped his face. “Get the van.”

Saint melted away. In my peripheral, I was faintly aware of Jake and Alexei dashing between bodies, but I did not care.

I bent low over Ranger, checking his pulse, his breathing. “Asher. Wake up.”

Ranger groaned, retching. We rolled him, but he did not vomit.

And he did not wake up.

“He needs help.” Cam stated the obvious. “He’s had two concussions this year already.”

I remembered the bruises he’d brought to the island. I remembered his blood, more than a year ago, that he’d spilt at this very port and carried back to my Leeds flat.

Significant blows.

I was no doctor, but I did not need to be to grasp what that meant for Ranger.

He retched again, body jerking.

“Asher.” I rubbed his chest. “Breathe.”

He took a shallow inhale.

It wasn’t enough. I put my lips to his ear. “Breathe, so I can tell you I love you.”

Ranger kept breathing, but he did not wake, and he seemed to fall deeper into unconsciousness with every second that passed. As if God himself was ripping him away from me.

Saint returned with the van.

Cam lifted Ranger from the ground and carried him to the open doors, laying him down in the back.

I moved to follow.

Alexei restrained me. “Net. You stay.”

I fought him, but Jake betrayed me again, swiping the gun from my waistband and hauling me away from the van, away from Ranger, working against me with Alexei.

“You have to.” Jake gripped my face. “We need you here to clear the scene before it gets light. Stick to the plan.”

The plan that had always earmarked Cam, the least experienced at sanitising crime scenes, to drive any wounded of our own to safety. A plan that had cemented the possibility of Ranger being hurt into my soul, and yet somehow, shock still tore through me.

Grief.

Horror.

Because I knew Jake was right.

“He gets it.” Cam called from the van. “Let him go.”

Jake and Alexei released me.

I ran back to the van. Cam had dressed the wound on Ranger’s head and covered it, concealing the blood.

So much blood.

But it wasn’t the gore of the injury that festered dread in my gut. It was Ranger’s blank face and his utter silence.

I kissed his temple, my wrecked voice a hoarse whisper. “You die, I die. That is the only way it happens. I love you.”

We ran out of time.

I slid from the van and shut the doors as Cam dashed for the driver’s seat.

The window was open. He met my gaze as he threw the van in gear. “Brother, I’ll do everything and anything to get him help. I promise. Nothing is more important to me than making this right.”

Another man, I might not have believed, but Cam O’Brian’s greatest weapon had always been his honesty—his humility—and I had to let him go.

I stepped back and he sped away, taking Ranger and my heart with him, and I would never understand how I did not fall to my knees and scream.