Page 33 of Heart of Stone

I wasn’t even to the door when she came flying out, face white and pupils blown from fear. She didn’t say a word, just jerked up the edge of my shirt, looking for bullet wounds that weren’t even there. Instead, she found my Kevlar vest, and the deformed bullets wedged in it.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “I thought they’d killed you,”

She was on the verge of hyperventilating, and I couldn’t blame her. This was clearly not a woman familiar with violence and bloodshed, and she thought she had seen the one familiar face she knew get shot twice right in her driveway. If I hadn’t been wearing body armor, there would have been four of them to take her. It wouldn’t have even been a struggle.

I didn’t want to think about it.

“Come on, sweetheart,” I coaxed, wrapping an arm around her heaving shoulders. “Let’s get you inside.”

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” she panted. “It’s not safe!”

“It’s safer inside than it is out here. Come on.”

Feeling the fear radiating off her body made my chest tight, and not just from the bullets. It was only by lucky chance that I was here when the Syndicate arrived, and had she been alone, God knows what would have happened to her. Now, there was no way for me to keep her in the dark about what was going on, and I was fairly certain that she wasn’t lying to me, either. The shock, uncertainty, and terror in her eyes were authentic.

Inside the house, I meant to lead her to her living room and have her sit on the sofa, but her legs seemed to give up the ghost as soon as we crossed the threshold. I had no choice but to help her sink to the ground, where she hid her face in her hands, and instead of crying, just breathed.

“Good girl,” I murmured, rubbing a hand up and down her back. “Just inhale, and exhale. You’re alright. They’re gone.”

“There are teeth in my driveway!” she wailed. “Human teeth!”

“You could, I don’t know, put them under your pillow or something?” I teased, but apparently that was the wrong thing to say.

Her head popped out of her hands and she glared at me, amber eyes glistening with tears. “Shut UP Gunner!” she spat. “This is all your fault, anyway! None of that would have happened if you hadn’t been here.”

I barked a laugh. “Are you nuts? Sweetheart, they were here foryou.I promise I’ll fill you in completely later, but for right now, I’ll give you a little tidbit. My informant, the one who first put you on my radar, told me Trevor had stashed something stupidly valuable with you, Rachel. My source is sure that he put it directly into your hands. Now, I don’t think that’s true, but if there is even a kernel of reality in the statement, you need to tell me right now.”

Her expression went blank for a few seconds before she shook her head once. “No. He never did, Gunner, I swear.”

I exhaled in relief. “Good. But if I was under the impression that you had this valuable thing, it’s a safe bet to think that those bad guys out there thought the same. They’re thinking that it’s either with you or somewhere in the house. I’m a wild card, but you were the sure-fire target.”

She wrapped her arms around her stomach, looking distraught, and I couldn’t help but brush her hair out of her eyes and behind her shoulder. She was folded in on herself, and I don’t like that. Especially not in this woman, who demanded that I, a man more than twice her size, have manners in her home. Not this woman whose first thought after a kidnapping attempt was to check me for injuries.

I grazed her tear-stained cheek with my thumb. “Hey. We’re going to figure this out, okay? But I need you to stay with me. Don’t shut down, Rachel. Can you do that for me?”

She swallowed, and her eyes locked onto mine, afraid but determined. “Yes.”

Chapter Fourteen

Rachel

After half a year of feeling relatively normal, the atomic bomb of insanity that had overtaken my life in the past forty-eight hours was out of control. For example, I met a man five or so hours ago, and now he’s the only thing holding me semi-upright as I weep on the floor in the foyer.

Oh, and the man had been shot, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest. How are either of those two things normal!?

Gunner was the one who just destroyed a team of four men and sent them running for the hills. He should have been the one having the floor meltdown. Instead, he was as calm as I’ve ever seen a person, talking to me like I was a frightened animal, and because I’d waved goodbye to any sense of normalcy in my life, I let him. It was nice to be comforted.

I wanted him to wrap me in his arms, but we weren’t even acquaintances. Somehow, I knew being held by Gunner Stone would make anyone feel safe, and right now, I needed to feel safe more than anything in the world. I’d never feltless safein my life.

I didn’t know what I was saying to him, just blubbering about teeth on the pavement and never getting a full night's sleep again. He asked me to hold it together, and I would. I just needed … a few minutes of hysteria. Just a little indulgence.

“We’ve got to get up now,” Gunner rumbled. “Time is of the essence. If we don’t get out of here, I’m afraid there’s going to be more trouble, and the bulletproof vest isn’t going to fool them again.”

“Get out of here? Where are we going?”

Gunner’s face softened, and he did that little thumb-swipe on my cheek again. “I know you aren’t going to like this, and trust me, I can see why you wouldn’t, but you need to come with me. This has just changed from something that I have the luxury of time to fix, to a problem that needs to be taken care of as fast as possible.” He blew out a breath, preparing for an argument.

His words didn’t scare me as much as he thought they did. How could I not trust this man who was ready to take a bullet for me? Hell, he took a bullet for me already.

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