Page 112 of Zorro

Everly hesitated.

Then Bear struck.

One brutal elbow, a low pivot, and he slammed the man into the floor so hard the boards split beneath them. Bear’s boot came down on his throat, and bones cracked.

Bear turned toward her, blood streaking his jaw.

“Go,” he said, voice low, final. Behind him, footsteps hammered as more Black Dawn pounded up the stairs.

Bear was already turning, snatching up his rifle, already moving, bracing for the next fight.

He was fighting for Zorro. For his teammate’s family. For Flint. For the women he’d shielded. For the brothers still clearing rooms and breaching hallways. For the team who had always had his back, and the strangers who didn’t know his name but would owe their lives to it before this day was done.

He was fighting…for her.

She nodded once. Snatched up a second rifle from the fallen man. Then turned.

“With me!” she called, voice sharper than steel. “Now!”

She herded them fast, tight, keeping them tucked into her flank. They ran low, silent, across the pool deck to the exit, away from the chaos and a man who was risking his life into the shadows where survival still waited.

She didn’t look back.

But her heart held onto Bear’s eyes, his solid presence, to everything that she wanted but would be stupid to take.

They dragged Everly to the elevator banks, but they weren’t going anywhere. Migs and Sanchez were already in the control room. They owned the building.

One of the Black Dawn men hissed in frustration, slamming his palm against the panel. “We have to take the stairs,” he snapped in Arabic. “Let’s go. Now.”

They turned Everly roughly, forcing her toward the stairwell, but Zorro stayed in the shadows. His rifle raised, he waited for the moment they slipped, for the second he could break them apart and rip her free.

He tracked them down the hall, silent, predator-smooth.

They moved through the hotel, took a stairwell that led up. His pulse throbbed toward the pool. He followed, waiting until they were up one level before he slipped into the stairwell after them. They were complaining and cursing, their echoes giving Zorro a path to follow.

He heard them exit onto the floor, and he sprinted the last few stairs, checked the hallway before he slipped into it, plastering himself against the wall as Everly and the two men disappeared around a corner.

Zorro’s heart was a live wire as he hugged the corridor’s edge, pulse thudding in his ears. That last flight of stairs had disappeared beneath his boots in a rush of movement, his body electric with tension. Every SEAL instinct was turned outward, scanning, listening, hunting, but beneath it, something deeper burned.

Everly.

She was the reason the air felt hotter, the hallway longer, the blood in his veins surging with a fierceness that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with the woman who had just rounded that corner.

He moved like smoke, body flattening to the wall as her silhouette slipped out of view, bracketed by those Black Dawn thugs. But his gaze locked onto her anyway. It always had.

Even with her back turned, even flanked by danger, she radiated that impossible mix of self-possession and vulnerability. Her shoulders held tension, but not fear, determination. Her stride was purposeful, her body taut, her chin high in a way that cut him open every damn time. She was all angles and fire, a woman who had asked him for a future, couldn’t take his tenderness until he forced her to face him and accept his ultimatum. Give me everything.

But tonight, something about the set of her spine told him she wasn’t just walking beside those men. She was aware he was coming for her, and his heart squeezed

He felt it in his bones, and he wasn’t going to let her down.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, grounding himself to the floor, the wall, the mission, while his gut twisted with a cocktail of protectiveness, fury, and something worse, hope. Hope that he could keep her safe. That he’d made the right call. That if he reached her, if he was fast enough, they would have everything that was just a breath away.

Everly, she made him crazy and careful all at once, and his gaze slipped downward, devouring the details that undid him. The sway of her hips. The soft movement of her hair against the back of her neck. The curve of her bare shoulder visible beneath white lace.

Zorro’s fingers flexed against the stock of his rifle.

He had a job to do, and when it was done, he was going to tell her that he loved her, that she was his, and he was hers, and nothing would stand in their way. He was going to take her body, capture her heart, and dazzle her mind.

---