Page 78 of Fast Kill

Taylor didn’t answer, just reached for Logan. His chest felt like it had been ripped wide open when she tucked her hands around his ribs and leaned into him. “Thanks,” he murmured.

A vehicle approached. An ambulance. Lights flashing but no siren. “Ambulance is here,” he told her softly. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

“I’m not hurt,” she mumbled, leaning her full weight against him now. As though she didn’t have the strength left to hold herself up. And he was totally okay with that because it meant he could carry her for a little longer.

With Jamie’s help he lifted her and somehow got to his feet, this time the white-hot agony in his knee sharp enough to have him hissing a breath between his teeth. He wasn’t letting Taylor go. He’d carry her no matter how much it hurt.

Clenching his jaw, he started for the ambulance and realized his eight teammates had gathered in a fanned-out line behind him, forming a human wall between Taylor and Wainright’s body. Shielding her because she was one of their own, and because of what she meant to him.

Damn, he loved each and every one of those bastards.

Partway to the paramedics, Taylor let out a shaky moan. “I think he was going to let me go,” she whispered. “After he got to the boat.” She swallowed audibly. “And I killed him.”

Logan stopped walking, a fierce ache stabbing through the center of his chest. “You did what had to be done. And I’ve never seen anything so brave in my entire life.”

She raised her head and leaned back a bit to gaze up at him with heartbroken, drenched hazel eyes. So beautiful and precious to him, even in her misery. “Did I have to?”

Oh, honey.He nodded. “Yes. He wasn’t going to be taken alive.”

He watched the certainty of that hit home. Some of the guilt bled out of her expression. She lowered her eyes. “No. He wasn’t.”

No.

“I thought I’d hit you by accident,” she said, her voice so quiet it barely carried to him. “That first time.”

He’d been almost as surprised as Wainright when that first shot had gone off. “But you didn’t.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “That’s the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life. I was more scared then than when he had the gun to my head,” she said, sounding almost stunned by the revelation. “I was more afraid of losing you than dying.” She lifted her head once more to gaze up at him, her heart in her eyes. “Because finally meeting someone as amazing as you after all this time spent protecting myself from every other man, losing you would be worse than dying.”

Oh, Christ. His heart clenched, then turned over in his chest and it suddenly hurt to breathe. He had to swallow twice before he could get his voice to work, and started limping toward the ambulance again. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

And he’d felt the exact same way when he’d seen Wainright holding that gun to her head.

****

Taylor stood under the spray of Logan’s shower for a long time, until the water began to cool. After spending hours at the hospital and getting the all clear from the doctor, they had finally discharged her.

Logan had needed seventeen stitches in the back of his left upper arm, along with a handful of bandages to close the shallow parts of the cut Dillon had given him, and was back to using his crutches. His knee was purple and blue all over, as bad as ever from the fight with Dillon.

Instead of being allowed to go back home or to Logan’s place, they’d both had to go to headquarters to give statements, then sit through debriefings and talk to an agency shrink. Taylor had an appointment with her day after tomorrow. She sure had a lot to talk about.

Dillon was gone. Fingerprints confirmed that the two men who had kidnapped her wereVenenosicarios, both of whom had worked exclusively for him until sometime within the past few days. In typical, sick cartel logic, his own men had been sent to kill him once they’d killed her.

Taylor shivered. She’d scrubbed herself clean and the heat of the water had helped with some of the stiffness but everything still ached and her bruises were tender.

With a heavy sigh, she shut off the water, toweled off, then wrapped herself up in the robe Charlie had brought over for her earlier. After brushing her teeth and blowing her hair dry, she felt a little more human. For a moment she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror above the sink, the heavy weight of exhaustion pulling at her.

It showed. Her face was pale, her eyes bruised underneath. As tired as she was, however, she was glad Logan had asked her to come back here with him. She didn’t want to be alone and it scared her how badly she wanted to be with him.

But she wasn’t the only one who was traumatized by the past few days. Charlie had gone and picked up Nimbus at the apartment for her, and brought him here. He was curled up under a chair in the corner of the bathroom next to his litter box, food and water dishes, watching her with huge, unblinking green eyes. He would be too scared to leave the bathroom for another couple of days yet.

She got the impression that Logan wasn’t exactly a cat lover from the past few days at the apartment, but he’d been insistent that Nimbus come here to be with her. He was stealing more of her heart with each passing hour it seemed, and after today she couldn’t imagine life without him. A few weeks ago that would have scared her to death. Not now.

Crouching down in front of the chair, she reached out an arm to scratch her little fur baby under the chin but Nimbus didn’t move or purr. “I know, buddy, you hate all this uncertainty and moving around as much as I do. But it’s only for a little while. We’ll be able to go home soon.”

She hoped. She needed her own space back, the home she’d made, and the sense of independence and normalcy it gave her.

More than any of that, she needed Logan.

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