Just as she saw the gun in his hand, her butt smacked against the side of the car as Pax balanced her weight. Keys jangled and the world spun around her, the clear blue sky whizzing by, as her feet finally hit the ground.
Pax kept a steady hand on her arm as he reached for the door handle. “We’re done with the nonsense, right?”
Whatever that meant. She nodded, trying to look obedient and terrified, though that last one wasn’t much of a stretch for her limited acting skills. If the blood pounding in her ears and wild flip-flopping of her stomach were any indication, she registered pretty high on the terror scale.
He ducked his head and stared straight into her eyes. “Kelsey?”
“Fine, yes.” She just needed him to shift an inch or two to the side, move a little out of the way, and she was out of there.
With a click, the door opened. He pulled it toward him with slow precision, coaxing her into the small space he created. Inch by inch she crept closer to being penned in and vulnerable.
No way was this happening a second time. The first scarred her, left her sleep tortured and her trust in tatters for years. The seventeen-year-old version of her made a vow never to go back to that dark place, to fight no matter what, and she intended to honor that promise.
Angling her body, she turned to get a better position and set her weight so she could spring off her back leg and race down the alley to the open street beyond. She launched and miscalculated the opening. Her hip banged off the edge of the door.
Red lights danced in front of her eyes and her leg went numb. Then the pain came roaring on, pulsing and knee-buckling in its intensity. Her mouth dropped open to yelp but no sound escaped.
He threw the door open wide and put his hands on the sides of her waist in a gentle touch that somehow managed to hold her upright. Concern showed in his narrowed eyes. “Are you okay?”
“That hurt like a—”
“I bet.”
He touched his fingers against the throbbing spot on the side of her leg. The rubbing eased the burning enough for her concentration to rev up again. She pushed out all sense of comfort and lowered her head, getting him to look down.
With her hands on his arm, she shoved with all her strength and bolted. She heard him swear as his body thudded against the side of the car. But she was gone. She sprinted down the alley, glancing around for any sign of life or a place to duck and hide. The wind whipped around her as footsteps thudded behind her, growing louder with each step.
“Kelsey, stop!” Pax’s husky voice, fueled with fury, bounced off the brick walls, magnifying the sound.
She saw the bright light at the far end of the alley and headed for it. Thirty feet away, half the distance between the SUV and freedom, a shadow moved in. She opened her mouth to scream for help as she heard the skid of stones and felt a muscled arm band around her waist. The smell she associated with Pax—a mix of citrus and pine—fell over her.
She tried to wrestle away from him until she saw the familiar black suit on the stranger at the end of the alley. And the gun he held in his hand.
“Get down.” The heat of Pax’s body enveloped her the second before his words sank in.
The air rushed out of her and her footing failed. Pax’s legs tangled with hers as his body wrapped around hers from behind. His weight pummeled into her and they both dropped through the air. She raised her hands and closed her eyes, waiting for her face to smack against the hard pavement and hoping her fingers could somehow minimize the painful blow.
Noise thundered around her until she couldn’t tell the sounds of her screaming from the other shouts filling the air. Her legs took flight behind her. One minute she saw the ground racing up and the next they twisted and she landed with a hard smack against Pax’s chest. He grunted and swore as his hand curled around her head and his body absorbed most of the impact.
They’d barely landed when he rolled and tucked her under him. In a continuous move, he came up over top of her and swung out his arm. One, two bangs boomed above her. She smelled a faint scent of burning and heard people yelling at the end of the alley for someone to call 911.
Pax’s hand dropped and his body grew limp, pressing deeper against her. “Got him,” he whispered.
In her head the whole scene took an hour, but she guessed it was less than a minute in real time. She let her head drop against the ground as she watched a puff of white cloud shift as it skimmed the blue sky. It took another second for her breathing to return to normal and her heart to stop knocking against the inside wall of her chest.
Her head fell to the side and she glanced back at the SUV. Joel lay stretched out on the seat with his hands still fixed on the gun with the weapon aimed. That fast, she remembered the suited man, and her gaze flipped back to the opening to the street where people now gathered. A man was down with a gun visible by his hand.
When she looked up again, Pax loomed over her, staring down. “I had to.”
She tried to raise her hand and put her palm against his cheek, but her arms suddenly weighed a ton each. “You shot him.”
Pax winced as if she’d struck him. “He was going for you.”
She didn’t understand the look of pain in his eyes. Who he really was and why he’d walked into her life were still parts of a greater mystery, but this time she didn’t doubt his protection.
Maybe it was intuition or adrenaline, or just the shock of so much violence on the quaint streets of Annapolis. “Right.”
His eyes narrowed as he struggled to sit up and help her do the same. “This is about your brother.”
“I … wait, what?” Of all the things she expected him to say, that wasn’t even on the list. “What are you talking about?”
“Your brother ticked off the wrong people and now someone wants to bring you in to flush Sean out.”
The words pelted her. They scrambled and unscrambled, but she couldn’t put them together in any logical way in her brain.
“Talk later. We need to get out of here.” A shadow fell over them. Joel bent over with his hands on his knees. His voice wobbled a bit on each word. “Ben’s handling things out front, but the police are coming and we need to be gone.”
She nodded because she had no idea what to say. This, like so much in her life, was about the men in it. First her dad, now Sean. Their choices. Their actions.
Pax grimaced as he stood up and stretched his legs. When he reached down to her, this time she grabbed his hand and jumped to her feet. Standing in front of him, her fingers speared through his, an odd calm blanketed her. They weren’t out of danger and none of what had happened made sense, but for the first time since Pax walked through her door this morning, a sense of safety radiated through her.
He gave her hand a squeeze. “No more running.”
“I don’t trust you, but I’m not stupid. You always go with the guy who saved your life.”
“Smart woman.”
But she wasn’t ready to turn to mush and follow every order he threw out. “I want answers.”
“Then get in the car.”
BRYCE KINGSTON BALANCED his palms against the sill and looked out his office window. His fingers tapped against the glass as he watched the steady lines of traffic move in each direction and with amazing slowness on the highway sixteen floors below.
After a quick glance at his watch, he shook his head with a harsh laugh. Never mind the hour of the day, barely lunchtime and nowhere near rush hour. The close-in proximity of Tysons Corner, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., meant cars idled and passengers baked in the