Page 83 of Beyond Reason

Xavier dead, bled out on the ground. Xavier with guns pointed at him in this building. Dying alone.

No. This was the only thing I could do.

“Where’s Marshall Lister?”

“Our motel room.” The lie came smoothly. I had less than a minute to get them out of the room before Xavier woke up and gave away what I’d done, so I tilted my head toward the door. “I can show you if you promise not to shoot me.”

“Didn’t you kill two of our best men defending him?” The taller of the pair sounded suspicious, but I shrugged.

“No, he killed them. I was just trying to get information to sell. I’m assuming you’ve looked into me if you’re here. I’m not in it for the violence.”

The faintest sound of someone stirring behind me told me that I had to hurry this up. Why couldn’t people stay knocked out like they did in the movies?

“I know where he put the flash drive.”

That made their eyes light—maybe their boss was done sending their best and brightest to be killed. Or maybe these two were so blinded by accomplishing their mission that they didn’t care if they were being thorough.

Whatever it was, they pointed their guns at me, but jerked their head toward the door.

“Fine, lead the way.”

Their aim was steady, and I was silently cursing myself for leaving the house without being properly armed. I hadn’t been thinking when I’d chased after Xavier… but I was thinking clearly now. Xavier would still try to fight them, and it didn’t matter how good he was—he wasn’t faster than a bullet. And this place… this place had already proven that once.

Maybe it wasn’t logical, or the best solution, but it didn’t matter. I refused to see Xavier on the same damn floor, filled with bullet holes. I couldn’t do it. If there was a way to take them out and go back to him, I would. If there wasn’t… well…

I had a feeling Xavier wasn’t going to forgive me for this, but it was the only thing I could think to do—they wanted him, and I didn’t know what kind of fucked up experiments they would do if they found him.

At least with me, I had no information they could use. No past life they would want.

But I could pretend I knew something.

I could keep Xavier safe this time.

I would keep him safe.

And I didn’t care what it cost—he’d found me in his next life, through death. The least I could do was keep us both alive long enough for him to do it one more time.

Chapter 25

Xavier

Iwas going to kill him. As soon as I saved him, I was going to kill him.

I might have felt better about my little declaration if I wasn’t panicking. I could feel it welling up in my chest, terror unlike anything I’d felt in my entire life, threatening to completely tear away my senses and leave me helpless.

Which was the last thing Axel needed. Maybe he hadn’t explicitly asked me, but I had to assume that he knocked me out and gave himself to the enemy because he knew that out of the two of us, I was more capable of storming some fucked up facility on a rescue mission. It was definitely easy enough to tell myself that, to tell myself that he did it because he wanted me to immediately come after him.

It wasn’t some bravado to assuage any guilt he still had hanging over his head about me dying the first time.

It wasn’t because he probably had just as much trauma, if not more than me, about that fucking room that I’d run off to—he’d found me there, dead and cold on the ground.

He’d found me there, and he didn’t want it to happen again.

Logically, I understood why he’d done what he did.

I was still going to kill him.

As much as I would have liked to immediately chase after the men who took him away, I had no idea what he’d said to them, no idea where he was going to lead them.

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