Page 268 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
A barrage of gunshots rang out in the small room.
The bastard flailed and jerked as the bullets hit him one by one, sending him stumbling back until he toppled backward to the floor.
While I stood there gasping.
My ears rang and my head spun.
A blur of confusion.
The only thing I could see was Piper. Piper who climbed to her knees. Tears streamed down her face, and that thing that raged between us since the moment we met billowed between us.
A connection unlike either of us could fathom.
A bond that went far beyond the blue horizon.
One that I knew stretched out into eternity.
It was the only thing that mattered. That she and her son were going to have the life that they deserved.
Freedom.
Safety.
My fingers moved to the wound low on my stomach and pulled them away to the blood that coated them.
The pain was disorienting.
Pulling me toward the nothingness that throbbed around me like a dream.
And I just hoped as I crumpled to my knees that she knew what I felt for her was more than base duty.
More than the penance I’d served.
This woman who was the one who’d shown me this fractured heart could love.
That I was worthy of it.
And Piper had every bit of it.
FIFTY-FOUR
PIPER
“Theo. Oh, God, Theo.”I scrambled for him where he’d fallen facedown on the floor.
Blood poured from his side.
“No, no, no,” I begged as I reached for him.
A commotion happened around me as my spirit wailed in agony.
Otto shouting at the other man who’d come through the door to get onto his stomach and put his hands behind his head.
While panic assailed every one of my senses.
This man who’d become everything. The one who’d found me when I’d been trapped.
When I’d been a prisoner to my mistakes, and he showed me that I didn’t have to be.
