Chapter 47

47

Abe wrenched the wheel, sending the car careening across the lawn in a fishtailing mess of torn grass and mud.

“Abe.” Stress edged Zak’s voice. “Hostiles on my east flank. I’m pinned down—can’t get near the house.”

“Copy. Working on it.” Abe spun the car, seeking his teammate, a cluster of rounds chewing up the ground only inches from the hood.

He spotted the problem. Dark weapon barrels protruding from a timber-framed garden house, all aimed at the approach to the mansion and preventing Zak from obtaining access.

Abe gunned the engine, lining up his shot for the garden house’s back wall. A direct hit would collapse the entire structure. He floored it, bracing himself against the car seat.

The car hit hard. Brick and timber exploded outward as he plowed through, rocketing out the other side in a shower of debris. In his rear-view mirror, dark figures dove through windows to escape the collapsing structure.

Ahead, the driveway was clear. A vehicle with police lights flashing sped toward the mansion’s entrance. Through the chaos, Abe glimpsed Zak leaping from the police car and taking the front steps in long strides.

Grim satisfaction pulsed through him as he spun the battered car in a shower of gravel. Enough playing around . Freya was up there with that monster. He aimed his makeshift battering ram straight at the mansion’s French doors, pressed the accelerator to the floor, and braced for impact.

The car devoured the distance in seconds before exploding through the doors in a thunderstorm of glass and splintered wood. Shards nipped his face in a million tiny bites, but adrenaline narrowed his world to a single purpose—get to Freya before Korolov could hurt her.

Metal buckled as the car slammed sideways into a wall, the impact prizing a grunt from him. A shudder escaped him, his head filled with the hiss of a ruptured engine and the tick of cooling metal.

He was in what had been an elegant dining room. A massive oak table lay on its side, surrounded by the carcasses of expensive chairs. The driver’s door was jammed, so he squeezed out the shattered window, ignoring the painful scratch of lacerated metal and glass against his legs.

His boots crunched glass as his feet found the solidity of the floor. His vision swam and blood obscured one eye. He wiped it clean with his sleeve, shook his head, breathing slow.

A woman’s sharp cry rang out, abruptly cut short.

His jaw bunched, his foggy head clearing. Duchess.

“Advancing up the main stairs,” Zak huffed over comms.

“Fox, sitrep.” Abe checked his weapon for damage as he limped to the hall entranceway, pressing his body against the doorframe as he listened for movement.

Nothing.

More worryingly, nothing from Fox either. What the hell was going on?

Across the hall, there was an opening. Bare wood stairs and whitewashed plaster. Servants’ stairs.

He hurried across the hall and swung his weapon into the entrance, sweeping the nose of his gun up, scanning the landings above for signs of life.

No movement.

He bounded up the stairs, legs on fire, every second feeling like another moment Freya might not have. He slowed at the approach to the first landing, every nerve buzzing as he trained his weapon on the closed door. Three steps to cross the exposed space?—

The door exploded outward.

Abe fired.

The impact threw the man backwards, his suit blossoming red where the bullet had torn through his thigh. He collapsed against the doorframe, blood streaming between his fingers, his shriek echoing through the stairwell.

One less to worry about .

Without breaking stride, Abe charged to the next floor. Somewhere above, the woman he loved needed him.