Page 63 of It's Always Been You

“Stay here,” he ordered. A car screeched to a halt behind them. Car doors slammed.

“Travis . . . I can help.”

“No, you stay here,” he whispered fiercely.

Before she could reply, an assault rifle sprayed their car with bullets from the rear.

Travis cursed again and kicked out the rest of their shattered windshield. Caitlin immediately heard several gunshotsas Travis fired into the car that crashed into them. He dragged her out. “Hide between the two cars.”

It was then that Caitlin saw the occupant of the car in front of them. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel. A single bullet hole through the windshield took him down. Travis also shot out the headlights of the car and plunged them into darkness.

The light from the full moon was bright, and as Travis faced her, she found herself staring into the eyes of a stranger. The eyes of a killer. She had never seen this expression on his face before. Caitlin could only comprehend that this was the “zone” he disappeared to when he was on a mission. He looked frightening, stripped of emotion with only one intent in mind—eliminating the threat.

Bullets battered their position, ricocheting off the cars and kicking up dirt.

Travis returned fire as Caitlin took out her phone to call 911. After giving their location, she called Nate.

“Caitlin?”

“We got ambushed.”

“Fuck, where are you guys?”

“On Route 7, maybe . . . around thirty minutes from the Beltway.”

“En route. I can track Travis’s phone.”

Nate disconnected.

Caitlin scrambled down the ditch.

“Caitlin!” Travis shouted at her through the din of gunfire.

Caitlin felt completely in control as she motioned for Travis tozip it, and pointed four fingers forward indicating for him to continue keeping their attackers occupied. She ignored the expletives that escaped his mouth as she kept to the shadows, moving closer to the sound of rapid fire.

She spotted the man holding the assault rifle and promptly shot his leg from under him. The man howled in pain, hisbody dropping to the ground. His cohorts instinctively shifted their ire on her and raked her position with a fury of lead. Fortunately, the ditch was deep enough to provide sufficient cover. Divots of dirt were raining down on her when she heard a furious roar, several gunshots and then the smacking of flesh.

What the hell?

She peered above the line of the ditch and watched Travis go head-to-head with the remaining two assailants. There was another man on the ground groaning. She scrambled out of hiding, kicked the weapons of the fallen men out of their reach and aimed the Sig at them, warning them not to try anything. By this time, another man had fallen to his knees, his hands over his nose. Their remaining attacker was no match for Travis as he methodically took him down with a series of elbow strikes, finishing him off with a head butt.

“You okay?” Travis was breathing hard, but his voice was still steady.

Caitlin nodded. Her body was flooded with adrenalin and that was when she realized she hadn’t blacked out. She was definitely cured of the BSK serum. Travis must have had the same thought at the same time she did, because he nodded reverently, his expression transforming to a more familiar one.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

They were going to be okay.

Someone wants my wife dead.Someone’s still after her. The realization was like acid burning through his brain. His eyes were blurry with rage as he tried to ignore the ringing in his ears. Anger was not going to help at the moment.

He had his arms around his woman, holding her tightly. He watched the police lead the man with the least injuries into their cruiser. He was the tallest one, and from the NESTfootage, he was their leader—Pavlo Milekhin—husband of Komarov’s sister, Olga.

He kissed the top of Caitlin’s head and told her to stay put. He headed toward their handcuffed assailant.

“Sir, you need to back off.” A uniform intercepted Travis.

Pavlo sneered at him. “We’ll get your wife some other day.”

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