Page 59 of The Scout

19

ISABEL

The world tilted. The sky spun. The wreckage of the Bentley blurred in my peripheral vision, nothing but twisted steel and shattered glass. Everything hurt.

Smoke choked the air, the scent thick, acrid, laced with the sharp tang of burning oil. My head throbbed. I could hear voices—low, steady, controlled—but my mind was struggling to keep up.

I blinked hard, my lashes damp, my vision struggling to focus. Everything felt distant, like I wasn’t quite inside my own body. My limbs were heavy, sluggish, every movement met with resistance, as if I were trapped underwater, fighting to break the surface.

And yet—I wasn’t in the car anymore.

I was being held.

Warm, solid, unyielding arms wrapped around me, keeping me pressed against a broad chest. A steady heartbeat pounded beneath my cheek, an anchor in the chaos. The scent of him—smoke, sweat, and somethingunmistakably Ryker—cut through the haze, grounding me in a way nothing else could.

I tried to shift, to move, but his grip only tightened.

I had never experienced anything like this before. Never been in an accident, never had my body thrown like a ragdoll, never felt the disorienting, crushing weight of adrenaline flooding my system all at once. My world had always been safe, controlled, predictable. Even when Will joined the military, even when I knew he was doing things he couldn’t talk about, he kept it away from me.

He never let me see the violence.

Never let me hold a gun, other than the old hunting rifle Dad had kept locked away in the garage.

Never let me worry about the darker corners of the world he lived in.

But now?

Now I was drowning in them.

“Stay still, baby,” Ryker murmured, his voice rough, gravel and steel, thick with something dark. Not pain. Not relief. Something lethal.

I barely had time to process his words before?—

Boots.

The sharp, deliberate crunch of footsteps on gravel.

Relief flickered—brief, instinctive. Help. Someone had seen the wreck, had stopped, was coming to check if we were okay. Maybe an off-duty paramedic, maybe a bystander with a phone already in hand, calling 9-1-1. Maybe this nightmare would be over soon.

But then—Ryker’s body went rigid.

Every muscle in his frame locked down, his grip on me tightening, his breathing shifting from controlled to something colder. Sharpened.

It was then that I realized—the footsteps were not paramedics. Not good Samaritans stopping to help.

No.

Something in my gut coiled, awareness slicing through the fog like a blade.

This wasn’t a rescue. This was an ambush. Right here in Downtown Charleston. My, God.

My breath caught, my body tensing, but Ryker was already ahead of me.

His grip around me shifted, one arm still cradling me protectively, the other moving with controlled precision—reaching for something.

Then—a shadow fell over us.

“You two look like shit.”

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