Page 78 of Broken Trust
Kent spun toward him.
“No!” Elin lunged as far as the zip ties allowed. “Don’t touch him! He’s bleeding. Let me help him!”
Fists curled, he took another step toward Liam. As he pulled out a set of handcuffs from his jacket pocket and bound Liam, she could only sit there watching, helpless.
Liam groaned again, and his eyes fluttered, but they didn’t open.
“Kent! Let us help you. You can make a deal now, or you can be hunted by Cipher for the rest of your life. And we both know there’s not a place on earth you can hide from him.”
He didn’t respond to her words. He just yanked the cuffs binding Liam to the leg of the desk. He swept up the weapons and the small earbud that had fallen from Liam’s ear when he hit the floor.
Then he pushed to his feet and walked out.
He just went through the door, steps measured, like he was heading to a meeting on a normal Tuesday morning, leaving her tied to a chair.
And the man she loved with every throb of her heart lying motionless on the floor.
SIXTEEN
The world returned in sharp, jagged pieces.
Cold tile pressed to Mason’s cheek. The metallic tang of blood and stale bite of office coffee filtered into his nose. A steady, savage throb in his chest, each pulse a hammer strike, made him grit his teeth.
He tried to move and pain lit him up, a white flare behind his eyes.
Shot. He’d been shot.
He dragged air through his teeth, took inventory the way he’d done a hundred times in sand and snow and rooms that smelled like this one—cheap disinfectant and fear.
He brought his focus inward. Entry point high on the delt with a burn line across the top of the pec where the muzzle flash kissed him.
No bubbling in his chest, no drowning in his own breath. His arm muscle responded when he told it to, but the joint screamed.
He managed to lift a hand, probing the edges of the wound, and felt wet heat and ragged meat but not lung. Not artery.
“Flesh wound,” he rasped to the floor. His voice sounded like someone had raked it across gravel. “Lucky bastard.”
He’d have another scar, another raised line for Elin to trace someday with careful fingers and that look in her eyes that made his chest tight.
The thought snapped him upright inside. His body was slow to follow.
Elin.
His scattered thoughts gelled into one hard point. Fuck.
He forced his eyes open and blinked as his vision swam. A fluorescent tube in the ceiling light buzzed like a hornet nest above him. The room tilted, then steadied.
He lifted his head. She sat ten feet away, zip-tied to a chair.
Everything inside him went very still, very quiet.
She was alive. Her chest heaved with every breath and she squared her shoulders like she was trying to hold herself still by sheer willpower. The plastic cuffs bit into her wrists, creating an angry red band on her flesh. Her eyes had stayed on his the second he opened them and didn’t let go.
I let my guard down, and now you’re in danger.
She shook her head once. “We’re both in danger.” Her answer sounded calm in that way that said she was well past fear and into survival.
He huffed a breath that turned into a broken laugh. “I said that out loud?”
