Page 33 of Rough Road

Grier looked over the top of his hiding spot then dropped down when a shot whizzed past his ear. Fuck. They could certainly use a few extra Demons. “We should fall back.” When she lifted her brows at him, he fired wildly over the top of the crate without standing. “It means—”

“I know what it means.” She snapped the words at him. “We can’t leave her here.”

No, they couldn’t. But they also couldn’t stay where they were while the place filled up with more guns, locked and loaded, aiming at them. Fiona glared at Grier as he motioned her toward the opening the truck had ripped through the wall.

“I’m not leaving her.”

Which meant Grier wasn’t leaving either. It also meant they needed to get somewhere safer, somewhere they could regroup. He checked the clip in his gun. Shit. They needed to regroup somewhere with shells for a couple of .38s.

Thank God for technology. He ripped off a text to Sage then covered his head with his arms and moved toward Fiona. He followed her to the other side of the truck and around toward the front.

Nothing good was going to come of this, but he stayed close to her. He would die to protect her, but as he tried to move in front of her, she switched direction, veered away, as if her anger wasn’t singularly for the people who’d taken Mia. Not that he could blame her. She’d had some rough days of late

They hadn’t been shot at for a few seconds and Fiona’s step grew more confident. But they were hundreds of miles from help. Fiona stepped out into the open and looked around as if they hadn’t just taken heavy fire. With her gun at her side, she moved as if she didn’t give a damn what happened to her. She could have as easily been window shopping at the mall for all the consideration she gave for her safety. Hamilton dying had broken something inside her.

They moved further into the room and she kicked one of the bodies. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, and probably not that old. Just a kid following the orders of a guy who was his idol. Fuck. He’d been that kid once.

“This is the driver of the truck.” She nodded to the other body. Another kid. His acne hadn’t even cleared up. “That’s his buddy.” With a growl, she drew her foot back and slammed it into his head. Once. Twice. Again. She’d earned this rage, this fury.

Grier looked up. High ceiling. No catwalks. No dangling chains. This looked like nothing more than a storage facility. The floors were concrete and dirty, windows high on the walls were jagged with broken glass. Debris in corners. Paint peeling. A heavy metal door leading further into the building. And of course, Fiona bee-lined for it. Grier’s gut churned. Whatever waited behind that door wouldn’t be sunshine and flowers. Still, she turned the knob. The metal ground against the floor as she tugged it open.

The smell in this place had to be toxic, a mixture of chemicals, exhaust fumes, and sweat. She walked ahead of him onto a carpeted floor, an office portion of the building, her back pressed against the wall, although there was nothing to provide cover if anyone burst out from whatever hiding space they’d chosen. The space between them widened as she hurried now, and Grier widened his steps to catch her. She had no fear, opening doors and poking her head inside. Each time, Grier’s heart stopped until she pulled it closed and moved to the next.

They made it to the end of the hallway and another door. She put her hand on the knob and looked back at Grier. She didn’t need his permission, probably would have gone in without it, but he gave her a nod. She pushed it open. More metal scratching on concrete, this time a hail of gunfire came with it. She kept her back against the wall and called out. “Mia, if you can hear me, it’s Fiona. I’m going to save you.”

Grier waited. More shots. At least two shooters by the number. They knew nothing about the room, could only guess the number of people in there, would be sitting ducks with the small amount of firepower between them. But when he grabbed her elbow, she shook him off and walked in. She shot twice as Grier rounded the corner behind her. Now they had to find Mia.

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Fiona stared at Sage and Mia, the way he touched her, and looked at her, the way he cared. He could try to hide behind a blankness in his face, but his eyes said everything. She’d felt that way about Grier. Probably still did once she got past all the other stuff, the grief, the anger, even the disbelief.

Grier stood beside her. She could hear his still unsettled breathing, feel his body shaking as he took her hand. He, too, watched Sage with Mia. “You need to get her somewhere safe. They aren’t going to stop coming for her.”

Sage nodded to Fiona. “Or her.”

Grier gave her hand a squeeze, and she wanted to pull away because even that slight touch made her want to lean on his strength.

Instead, she lifted her head. “I can handle myself.” Although, she hadn’t managed to think of the second and third gun in her backpack before she climbed in and drove the truck through the warehouse. That could have been a costly mistake. Especially if there had been more than four Omens in the warehouse, but since there had been just the four, everything had turned out fine.

“You going to sleep with your guns on you?” Fiona shrugged at Sage’s flip question, and Sage glanced at Grier. “Then you, my friend, should sleep with your eyes open.”

“Yeah. I got that feeling, too.” He shielded his anger behind a smile, but Fiona could still feel it.

Mia leaned into Sage and winced with each step as he helped her out of the clubhouse. And Grier waited until they were alone before he dropped Fiona’s hand and spun to stare at her. “We need to talk.”

No, they didn’t. They needed to find a way to put an end to this. “Talking” could wait.

She turned and walked toward her office. Of course he followed, stomping in and slamming the door shut behind him. He thought she wanted privacy, but she wanted silence. Not that he had the power to give it to her. Not unless he could crawl into her mind and find a way to duct tape her thoughts into submission.

She wheeled to face him. Maybe if they got this part of the day over with, they could move on and get to work on the important stuff.

He clamped his mouth shut, and since he was the one who “needed” this chat, she waited. Finally, he sighed. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

“They had Mia.”

“The woman you wanted to kill a few hours earlier.”

Valid point. But he hadn’t accounted for the fact that Fiona knew firsthand what Mia would suffer in that warehouse. “She wasn’t there by choice.”