Chapter 25

The gun went off and Gabe thought, Oh shit.

Only he never felt the impact of a second bullet ripping another hole in his body. He felt blood trickling from the one already in his side, but no new damage that he could tell.

In the silence that descended on the room, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. The adrenaline surge burned off, leaving him muddled and shaky, and for a long second, he couldn’t figure out where the gunshot had come from. Or where it had gone.

Across the room, Liam’s eyes widened in shock and pain as a spot of red bloomed on his chest. His gun fell from his hand. With blood bubbling from his mouth, he took two lurching steps toward Audrey—who held Mena’s gun in a perfect stance, ready and willing to fire again.

Gabe circled the desk and caught Liam around the middle, tackling him to the carpet. He went down easily, already half-unconscious, and choked on blood as his eyes rolled back into his head.

“Did I kill him?” Audrey whispered.

Yeah, she probably had, but Gabe wasn’t about to tell her that. Hearing the telltale wheeze of a sucking chest wound, he pushed himself upright and stared down at Liam’s graying complexion. Audrey had gotten the bastard square in the lung.

He looked up. Her complexion matched Liam’s, except without the blue cast of approaching death.

“I had to. He gave me no choice. I had to. I had to.” She still held the gun clenched in her shaking hands.

Gabe swore and shoved Liam up onto his injured side to protect his good lung from filling with blood. The guy deserved to rot for the rest of eternity in the innermost layer of Hell, but Audrey wasn’t going to be the one to send him there. The guilt of killing a man would crush her.

Liam moaned in pain.

“Shut up.” Ignoring his own wounds, he stripped out of his jacket and made a compress. “Audrey, honey, snap out of it and search the desk. Find me something plastic or something else I can use to seal the wound. Scissors, tape.”

She blinked and finally lowered the gun. “Wh—what? Why?” She looked at Mena’s corpse in the desk chair, then at Liam, struggling to breathe and spilling blood onto the expensive Aubusson rug.

“We need to leave!”

“He’ll die if we do.”

“I don’t care.” Color rushed back into her cheeks. She hurried to his side and tried to tug him to his feet. “Better him than you. You’re bleeding everywhere. You need medical attention. Let’s go!”

Gabe grabbed Liam’s gun and lumbered to his feet. Shit, he was weak as a kitten from blood loss, and getting weaker. Still, he met her stare, wanting her to understand. “If we leave and he dies, you’ll have killed him. Are you prepared to live with that?”

Her chin hitched up. “I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if I wasn’t.”

So strong. He flicked away one of the tears he didn’t think she was even aware were running down her cheeks. “I wish I could have gotten to it first.”

“But you didn’t. I did, and then did what I had to do to keep us both alive.”

A harsh, wet coughing fit wracked Liam’s body, attracting their attention.

Audrey looked down at him, and the color drained from her face again. Gabe caught her chin in his blood-stained hands and guided her gaze back to him. “You’re not okay with this.”

“No.” She firmed up her trembling lips. “But you were right. Sometimes, with people like him, violence is the only option. Now, let’s go beforesomeone comes looking for one of them.”

God, he adored her. He gripped that stubborn chin tighter and lifted it, giving her a quick, hard kiss. “All right. We’re outta here.”

Grasping her hand, he pulled her toward the door, but his legs went out from under him after the first step. One minute, he was on his feet, and the next, his hands and knees. His mouth felt like cotton and tasted like blood, and his visual acuity was way off. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head.

Oh, fuck. He was crashing. He’d pushed himself too far for too long.

“Dammit,” Audrey muttered under her breath and looped his arm around her slender shoulders. She tried to lift him back onto his feet. “You’re losing too much blood.”

He shoved away her helping hands. “Go.”

“Are you insane?”

He released a huff of laughter. “Only around you, honey.”

“This isn’t a time to joke.” She yanked hard on his shirt and managed only to tear it. “C’mon, Gabriel. Move.”

He tried, but his head suddenly weighed a hundred pounds, each of his limbs at least a couple thousand a piece. He collapsed and, hard as he fought it, consciousness became nothing but a good memory…

Until her palm connected smartly with his cheek. He jolted awake to find her in his face, eyes sparking with fear-fueled anger.

“Don’t you dare do this to me, sailor,” she said through her teeth as tears choked every heated word. “I killed a man for you, and you are not going to make me leave you behind. You are goingto pick your sorry ass off this floor and get us to safety.”

Yeah, forget adoration. He loved this woman.

“Yes, ma’am.” Weakness plaguing his every movement, he struggled to sit and managed to get upright. Sitting there on his butt, panting and shivering, with sweat dripping off his temples, the realization struck that he couldn’t do this under his own steam.

He looked up at Audrey. So tough, so stubborn, and almost as demanding as he was.

He held out a hand.

She released a huge breath of relief and clasped his palm. “On the count of three, big guy. One, two… up ya go.”

With her help, Gabe hauled himself to his feet. The world spun around him, and he staggered a little. Took a moment to draw a deep breath and regain his bearings. He touched his fingers to the seeping wound in his side.

Messy. A lot of torn flesh and a whole lot of blood, but he didn’t think anything vital had been hit and, with adrenaline coursing through his system, he couldn’t feel the pain. Yet. But that would change real damn fast, and they had to be well away from Mena’s estate when his brain caught on to the fact he was probably bleeding to death.

“We need to bandage you,” Audrey said when his fingers came away smeared red.

“Later.” Nausea threatened to choke him, but he swallowed it down and shuffled to the door. “Search the desk, their pockets. We need money, car keys… hell, an AK-47. Anything that will help us get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay,” Audrey said and moved away from him, back into the room.

As she rummaged through the desk drawers, he cracked the door open enough to peek into the hallway. Two guards stood there with their backs to him. They must have been told to expect gunshots, which played to his advantage and bought him some time to strategize. Too much longer, though, and those guards might start getting antsy.

Gabe quietly shut the door, leaned his forehead against it, and thought back to all of his plans for raiding Mena’s estate. They’d had intel on the servants’ and the guards’ shifts, on the placement of all the cameras and motion sensors. He knew the house, the grounds, and the security system’s strengths and weaknesses like he knew his own name. Escape would have been difficult if he was in prime condition and had his SEAL teammates for backup. Escape while seriously wounded with an untrained woman in tow…

Fuck.

Audrey returned to his side with a roll of Colombian bills. “No keys.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said and shoved the roll into his pants pocket. “We can’t get to the garages from here. Hallway’s guarded.”

“What are we going to do?”

Gabe pushed away from the door and, ignoring his lightheadedness, weaved across the library, out onto the terrace, all the while scanning, searching for an out. Hallway was a no-go unless he took out the guards, but where there were two, there would be more. Could he take them all in his weakened condition? Maybe if he got lucky. Was he willing to risk Audrey’s life like that? No fucking way.

So his only option was the terrace. He leaned over the railing and scanned the ground below. The pool glowed a soft blue-green two stories down, but jumping was out of the question. The terrace overlooked the shallow end, and any miscalculation on his part would send him slamming into the concrete deck. He was already in enough pain and didn’t need to add the possibility of breaking every bone in his body to the equation.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of jumping?” Audrey’s voice trembled in the cool night air as she joined him by the railing.

He gave her a weak smile. “Thought of it, but it’s not an option.”

“What’s that up there?” She pointed to the roof one story above them. He straightened away from the railing and gazed up.

Well, shit. Why didn’t he think of that? They might just have a shot at escaping yet.

“Mena’s helo.” He grinned and grasped Audrey’s face in his hands, planting a hard kiss on her open mouth. “You’re brilliant, honey. Can you climb?”

She gave him a look that said duh and started unbuckling the straps on her high heels. “Can you fly?”

“It’s been a while.”

A shout went up inside the estate, followed by hurried footsteps echoing down the hallway. Their window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

“Good enough for me.” She kicked off her shoes and stood on the balcony railing to grip the edge of the flowered trellis overhead.

The library doors burst open.

“Go!” he hissed, and Audrey didn’t hesitate, scrambling up the wooden lattice and disappearing over the edge of the roof in a flash.

Gabe wasn’t far behind, but his injuries slowed him down. He grunted with each pull, trying to ignore the searing pain radiating from his side.

So much for not feeling it.

His fingers scraped against the rough wood, losing their grip more than once. But he had to keep going.

Audrey was waiting for him.

She needed him.

The thought injected a fresh wave of adrenaline into him, enough to get him the last few feet onto the roof. When he finally hoisted himself over the railing, he found her crouched by the helicopter’s landing skid, her golden hair wild in the wind.

Relief brightened her eyes. “You made it.”

“Get in.” He pointed to the helicopter’s door. She obeyed without question, her dress fluttering around her legs as she climbed aboard. He followed her across the landing pad at a crouch, keeping himself small in case of snipers, each movement sending a fresh wave of agony coursing through his side. When he finally dropped heavily into the pilot’s seat, he had to lean back to catch his breath. But there was no time for recovery. From the sounds of the shouts below, the guards had figured out where they’d gone and would be here in seconds.

He glanced around the cockpit, taking note of the instruments. He wasn’t a pilot but had learned enough to get them off the ground and back down safely. He’d done it once before in Afghanistan, under fire and with lives hanging in the balance. Not so different from their current circumstances. He ran his hands over the console, flipping switches, turning dials. The helicopter roared to life, blades slicing through the air overhead.

“Hang on,” he called.

The helicopter lurched as he pulled back on the stick. His vision swam, and for a moment, he feared he might pass out before they even left the ground. But Audrey’s soft touch on his arm kept him anchored. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus. Any lapse in attention now could mean their lives.

Below them, men burst onto the roof, guns raised. A hailstorm of bullets peppered the side of the helicopter as Gabe jerked the controls back even harder, lifting them higher into the night sky. The gunfire grew fainter, then disappeared completely as they soared above the mansion’s brightly lit grounds.

Audrey shouted something he didn’t hear. He tapped the headsets hanging between them and then slid one over his ears. She hesitated, then followed his lead, slipping on her own set.

“Did we… are we…?” Her voice was shaky in his ear, her grip on his arm a vise.

“We’re clear,” he said, forcing a calm into his tone he didn’t feel, and glanced over at her. Her face was pale in the dim lights from the instruments, her eyes too bright. “You did good back there, Aud. Really good.” He attempted a smile, but it fell flat when a fresh wave of pain ripped through his gut.

She turned away to stare at the shrinking lights beneath them with a hollow expression. She reached up and unclasped the diamond-studded necklace from around her neck, dropping it on the seat as if it were worthless.

“What now?” she asked, and he really didn’t care for the dull note in her voice.

“We need to find somewhere safe to land.”

“Safe?” She scoffed, finally turning her attention back to him. And there it was—the spark of his stubborn, feisty Audrey flaring back to life in her eyes. “Gabe, we just ran from a double homicide and stole a helicopter from one of the most powerful men in Colombia. I don’t think safe is on the menu anymore.”

For the first time that night, he let out a laugh. It was small and pained, but it was nice to feel something other than fear and the increasing throb in his chest. “Safe might not be on the menu, but it’s the only damn thing I’m ordering.”

Her lips twitched in a smile—a weak one, but it was something. But then she looked at the blood-soaked shirt plastered to his chest. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” He grunted as he shifted in his seat to scan the ground below. The Colombian countryside was pitch-black…

Or maybe that was just his vision going dim.

The truth hit him then: he was the furthest thing from fine. He was running on fumes, his body crying for rest it could ill afford to take. The adrenaline that had carried him through their daring escape was rapidly leaving his system, replaced by bone-deep exhaustion, and the pain was intensifying, each beat of his heart sending sharp spikes of agony through his chest.

Fuck.

The helicopter shuddered under his control, responding to the tremors in his hands. He gripped the joystick tighter, battling against the black spots that danced at the corners of his vision. He could see a clearing up ahead—an open field with no immediate signs of civilization. It was as good a place as any. He steered toward the clearing, his muscles screaming in protest as he fought to keep them steady.

Audrey glanced from him to the rapidly approaching ground and back again. Her hand flew out to grip his on the joystick. Her fingers were cold, but they were a tangible anchor he could cling to.

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

There was nothing she could do except…

“Brace,” he said through his teeth.

The helicopter hit the ground harder than he intended. The impact jarred his already injured body, sending a new wave of pain coursing through him. Audrey was thrown forward against her straps, her breath expelled in a shocked gasp. The helicopter skidded, gouging deep furrows into the earth before finally coming to a jarring halt.

Gabe’s grip on consciousness wavered as another wave of pain rolled through him. The world began to blur at the edges, and Audrey’s voice seemed to come to him from a distance, as if through a long tunnel.

“Oh, shit! Gabe! Wake up!” She scrambled to unhook her seatbelt and pressed her hands to his side.

His vision flared white…

Then faded to black.