Page 47 of Crush (Deadly Hearts 1)

ChapterTwenty-Five

Declan

“You absolute fucker,” Ruby hisses at me, hobbling over to help Ramsey up.

She’s been hit in the thigh, but it hasn’t slowed her down.

“He was mine.”

“Too bad,” I hiss back, grabbing her arm and helping her to move forward.

She drags her arm back and fixes me with a glare so fierce, I fall in love with her all over again. It’s not hard. I’ve loved her since the first time I laid eyes on her back in New York when her father first assigned me to watch her when she was eighteen. Right after the incident that made her who she is today. I hate that I wasn’t there for her then, but I can be now, and she needs to know that she isn’t alone.

Not anymore.

I will never leave her alone ever again.

I pull her back, probably rougher than I anticipated and sweep her up into my arms. She growls at me, her eyes flashing, but I give her a bright smile that seems to melt her cold heart.

“Sorry, Princess, but you are not walking out of here.”

“Damn you,” she says, struggling in my grasp, but she is weakened by the rush of adrenaline and the blood loss that isn’t severe but is enough to cause me concern. However, we need to move. We have to get out of here immediately.

Layton silently takes charge of helping Ramsey to the door, while I carry Ruby out to the waiting vehicle.

“Wait,” she says. “What about him?” She indicates with her head back to the warehouse.

“Not a problem,” I say and place her down, popping the boot of the SUV rummaging around in my own bag of tricks.

“You’re going to blow it?” she asks.

“Wait,” Ramsey says. “What about everyone inside?”

“The two who aren’t dead will have scarpered the second Ruby’s back was turned,” I point out.

Ruby nods in agreement. “We have to get rid of the DB, as well as our involvement. If the other two haven’t left already they will as soon as this place lights up. Grenade?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Smacks too much of terrorism. Adds an extra layer of filth. We do this the old-fashioned way.” She gives me a searching look, but I’m not revealing my misspent youth to her right now. Maybe one day. I haul a bottle of cheap vodka out of the bag and hand it to her. “Do you want the honors?”

“Oh, you bet I do,” she says darkly and takes it, holding her hand out for the ignitor. I hand her a cloth which she douses in the vodka and then stuffs it into the top of the bottle. I hand her a lighter and she turns back to the warehouse.

“Get in,” I say. “We’ll make it a drive by.”

She snorts and nods, climbing into the SUV front passenger side while Layton helps Ramsey into the back. I climb in and circle the car back around. I open the sunroof and she giggles. She stands up and sticks her head and body through the opening, so she can throw the lit bottle straight through the open door of the warehouse.

I look up at her and with a grin of pure delight, she flicks the Zippo open and lights it, holding the open flame to the alcohol doused cloth. She gets her gun ready and throws the bottle. We watch it sail through the air and she aims and fires, hitting the target with an accuracy that my sniper’s eye appreciates. She quickly sits back down, favoring her injured leg and I slam on the accelerator and speed off as the warehouse goes up in a burst of flames, burning away any evidence of us, albeit leaving a dead burning body in the middle of it. D.I. Smith will have his work cut out for him, but at least Ruby will be safe.

I pull off my dark gray tie and hand it to her.

“Thanks,” she mutters, dropping the gun in the footwell and wrapping the tie around her wound.

I give her a concerned look, but she brushes it off. “I’m fine,” she says.

I nod accepting that. I know she is harder than she looks, but I have to trust that she would ask for help if she needed it.

“We need to switch out,” I murmur and head to the overpass where one of my men, someone I know from the old neighborhood, has left a uniform hatchback that looks like a thousand other cars in this city. We pile out of the SUV and into the sedan. The SUV will be taken care of.

“Where to?” I ask, knowing she will say her home, but needing to give her that control.

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