Page 88 of Wings
"Nobody!" The indignation in her voice was perfect. "I drove myself. Jesus, Alex, paranoid much? Not everything is about you."
But his instincts, honed by months of stealing from killers, weren't buying it. I could see it in the way his weight shifted, the way his eyes kept scanning even while he focused on her. The animal part of him that knew predators circled in darkness.
The flashlight beam swept closer. Fifteen feet. Ten. The prospect would round the cart in seconds, and then—
"Fifteen seconds," Dex whispered.
I made the calculation in an instant. Fifteen seconds was too long to stay hidden once they raised the alarm. But if Kiara could give me ten, maybe twelve . . .
Through the shadows, I caught her eye again. The tiniest nod from her, message received without words. My brilliant girl, already three steps ahead.
"You know what?" She pushed off from the workbench, stumbling toward the exit with renewed drunk determination. "Fuck this. Fuck you. I came here to make peace and you're acting like—"
"Stop her," Alex barked at the closer prospect, who abandoned his search to intercept.
Eight feet from my position, the flashlight beam moving away. I breathed silent relief into the darkness.
"Ten seconds," Dex counted down.
But Kiara had run out of room to maneuver. The prospect had cornered her. "Let me go!"
"Five seconds."
Alex stalked toward them, everything about to collapse into violence. His paranoia had won, overriding any lingering emotion for the woman he'd claimed to love. His hand cleared leather, gun not quite pointing at anyone but ready.
"Three . . . two . . . one . . . We're good! Data secured!"
I was moving before conscious thought engaged. The back door crashed against its frame as Kiara burst through the shop's side entrance, the prospect with the beard right on her heels. His hand reached for her hair, fingers almost tangling in the dark strands.
Not fucking happening.
I changed trajectory like a fighter jet pulling Gs, intercepting him with a clothesline that would've made my high school football coach proud. The impact sent shock waves up my arm but dropped him like a sack of cement. His head bounced off the asphalt with a wet crack that said he wouldn't be getting up soon.
"Go!" The command ripped from my throat as Kiara's eyes went wide seeing me. Smart girl didn't need to be told twice—she sprinted past me toward Thor's truck.
The back door of the shop exploded open, Alex silhouetted against the fluorescent glare with his gun already drawn. For a moment that lasted forever my brother and I locked eyes across twenty feet of broken asphalt and bad decisions.
Recognition hit him in stages. He looked at my clothes, my body, and finally, my face under the streetlight's sickly glow.
"Gabe?" The name came out strangled, disbelieving. His gun hand wavered, caught between pointing at his brother and pointing at a threat. "What the fuck are you—"
"Data transfer complete," Dex's voice cut through the moment with surgical precision. "We're good."
I didn't wait to see which way Alex's internal war would tip. Love versus paranoia, brotherhood versus betrayal—that calculation could happen after we were gone. I turned and ran, tactical retreat executed with the same precision as the infiltration.
Behind me, Alex's voice rose in a cocktail of rage and something that might have been grief. "You fucking—GABE! You piece of shit! You took her, now you're taking this?"
The first shot cracked through the night as I reached the van, Tank already gunning the engine. The bullet sparked off the reinforced rear door—wide right, emotional shooting instead of aimed. More followed as I dove through the open side door, Tank peeling out before I even got it closed.
"Phoenix is secure," Thor's voice rumbled through the earpiece, professional calm over what had to be his own adrenaline spike. "Little shaken but unharmed. En route to shop three."
I allowed myself one moment—forehead pressed against the van's ridged floor, breathing like I'd run miles instead of yards.
"You solid?" Dex had closed his laptop, the data already uploaded to secure servers, backed up in triplicate, ready to be anonymously delivered to the Serpents' leadership.
"Yeah." I pushed myself up, found my seat as Tank took corners at speeds that threatened physics. "The data?"
"Beautiful." His grin held the sharp edge of a job well done. "Your brother's been very naughty. Skimming nearly twenty percent off the top, sometimes more. Keeping two sets of books through different wallet addresses. The Serpents are going to shit themselves when they see this."
