Page 64 of Bad Situation

I can’t.

I can’t even find my breath.

I hear feet hitting the pavement around me and voices shouting in the distance, adding to the chaos.

Oh, shit.

Where did Eli go?

I make myself roll and use the bumper of his truck to pull myself up, my legs wobbling like jello. But when I see where the commotion is, all the air rushes from my lungs.

Not seeing Eli anywhere, I make myself move and inch around a smoking car that rear-ended another. I have to push my way through a wave of people rushing me—moving away from the chaos as I wade into it.

When I get to the sidewalk, my breath catches.

That’s when the crowd parts and I see him.

Oh, fuck.

Fuck.

And my heart stops.

Chapter 17

Don’t Look Back

Jen

My dad started Montgomery Industries from nothing. From that one drilled well on our property that he refused to outsource, he got into the industry. He had the ranch to fall back on, so every penny he made trading barrels of oil, he reinvested into the company.

Even when purchasing small refineries, he always did things differently—better. Kipp Montgomery is a cowboy at heart. He loves the earth and went above and beyond EPA regulations, paid top dollar to workers on his rigs, and bought shit refineries to turn them around.

In the beginning, he only hired people he knew. His friends, his family, people he trusted to do things the way he’d want them done. My dad has high standards for everything. It made it stressful being one of his kids—he expected perfection, to the point of running Cam and Ellie off, even though no one dares to utter that aloud.

But, in business, it worked. He shoots for the moon in everything he does and it’s paid off.

Patrick Moss grew up with my dad running cattle and training horses. My dad told him he needed an attorney who specialized in mergers and acquisitions so he could keep that in-house and that was all it took. Patrick might have graduated from A&M with a degree in Ag Business, but he went back to law school just for my dad. He’s the uncle I never had. I grew up with his daughter, he was at my graduation, and I interned under him one summer. He was the one I called when some of my college friends and I were arrested for drinking underage. He not only bailed me out, but every one of my friends as well, and took care of my legal shit before saying a word to my dad.

To see him lying on the cold pavement, sprawled, with life seeping from him as fast as the memories spinning in my head, my brain can barely catch up. I can’t think of anything besides him, alive and fierce, taking on the world for my dad, our company, and, most recently, me.

He was here for me, at this moment when shots rang through the air.

I stumble forward and fall next to him, his briefcase at his side has barely fallen out of his grip.

“No,” I choke and put my shaking fingers to his neck, where he’s covered in blood, trying to find a pulse.

Please, let there be a pulse.

My tears are flowing and my trembling hands shake him, move to his face, searching—no, needing—to find a hint of life.

“Patrick,” I call for him and lean closer. “Please. Say something.”

“Jen!”

I whip my head around and, while I didn’t think it was possible for your heart to break with agony and burst with relief at the same time, it does. There he is, the man I was about to introduce to Patrick. He’s alive and stalking toward me with a gun hanging from his hand at his side.

His eyes are darker than normal, examining me with an intensity so deep, I can feel it in my soul.

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