Page 100 of Two Chambered Heart

Jason tossed his gun towards the man’s leather boots. He was in cargo pants and a matching cargo jacket. Jason realized he’d seen the man walk in earlier, but he’d been too distracted by Corey and the fucking card game and his own fucking trauma to notice that the man had never come back into the café from the bathrooms.

The gun landed close to him, but just far enough that the man had to reach a foot out to kick it further away. And with his focus shifting forward with his movement, the pressure on the knife loosened. Corey didn’t wait. She reared her head back, smashing the back of her head into his face, and his nose crunched audibly. The metallic tang of blood filled the air quickly.

The guy dropped the knife to grab his face.

Rookie move. He was untrained. Jason didn’t wait to consider that, his second gun already unleashing a bullet.

He hit his mark; the man crumpling to the floor like a sack of flour, and Corey sprung at Jason. Pulling her to him, his eyes tracked up and downher face, looking for more damage. He found nothing else and released a long breath, his shoulders softening, some of the tension leaving his body even as she kept shaking.

He cared. He cared too damn much.

Her beautiful eyes were still wide and wild, looking up at him.

“Still think you want to catch the bad guys?”

She shuddered. “He said nothing to me. He overtook me so quickly that I didn’t know what was happening. And then the knife. I wasn’t prepared. After all this training, I still failed.”

“No. You got yourself out of this situation. If you hadn’t hit him, I wouldn’t have been able to take the shot.” A tear was tracking down her face, and he wiped it away.

“He told me he’d kill me if I screamed. I didn’t think you’d know to come.”

“I’ll always come for you.”

"Jason, I was scared. Like, really scared."

He’d been too, for her, as if she hadn’t seen it on his face earlier. He let her touch him, let her stroke her fingers along his skin. He shivered, and it wasn’t from revulsion. She was the only one he could tolerate touch from now.

The slamming of the bathroom door broke their tender moment. Two more men, dressed similarly to the dead one on the floor, fought each other to get into the bathroom.

“Seriously? Who are these idiots?” Jason shot each one of them in the head with the gun still in his hand before they even made it through the doorway.

Kayden came in right after them, and the sounds of all hell breaking loose in the café finally breached Jason’s panic. Now that he had his hands on Corey, the rest of the world was coming back into focus, like cracking the surface after a long dive.

“We have to go. There’s a price on Corey’s head.” Kayden was frantic. “I cleared four in the café. They’re a gang of hired mercenaries, and more are coming for back up. One called it in before I could kill him.”

“Well, they’re really shit at it. Whoever hired them should ask for their money back.” Jason said, kicking the arm in his way and stepping over the rest of the body to get out of the bathroom, pulling a shell-shocked Corey behind him.

Kayden led them through the kitchens and out the back door, his phone already in his hand. “Archie, we’ve been compromised. There are mercenaries contracted to take in Corey as ransom for me and Jason.”

“It’s fucking Kreig.” Jason yelled to be heard through the phone. “Fuck, or Wilkinson, or fucking both of them! I knew I needed to get a read on him at the gala.”

“Jase, shut the fuck up. Stop spiraling. We need to get home, and then we can debrief.”

Kayden flipped the phone to speaker. “Arch, we walked here. I don’t want them tracing us back to the condo.”

“Take a cab to the penthouse. I’ll route its GPS, make it circle the city first. Go one block south and two blocks west. Keep me on the line.”

Jason and Kayden walked at a brisk pace, not risking the scene it would make if they started sprinting. All three of them were in boots, jeans and leather jackets.

Corey didn’t say a word as they dragged her around downtown and hailed a taxi. Kayden still had the phone in his hand, taking it off speaker as they got in the car. Jason’s blood was a roiling cauldron of horror and thrill. As worried as he was for Corey’s safety, Jason also loved the comfort and adrenaline of a good kill. It was the blood lust that kept him going after all these years.

And he’d just added three more bodies to his long, long list.

Chapter thirty-three

- Corey -

Baby, I need you to go to your room.”

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