Protecting Dallas

Maddox looked back at me. Our eyes locked.

“Only if it comes to it,” he said sternly. “Promise?”

I nodded slowly as I checked the magazine on my brother’s weapon.

My lover swore under his breath. “Not good enough. Say it, Dallas.”

“I promise.”

He swept me in and kissed me, pulling me tightly against him. He smelled like war — like iron and leather and fire.

“You’re not just Connor’s sister,” he murmured. “You’re much more than that to us.”

My forehead was pressed against his. Maddox’s gaze was piercing, his irises bright and alive as they bored into mine.

“We’re in love with you Dallas.”

The lump in my throat was back. This time it was the size of a softball. I wanted to speak, but I c

ould barely breathe. There were so many things to say…

“TWO CLICKS,” the radio spat.

He was staring at me like no one had ever stared at me in my life. Looking at me not only as Dallas Winters, but as a woman. A lover.

“We’ll get through this,” Maddox assured me. “All of us.”

Somehow I swallowed past the ball in my throat. “For Connor,” I managed to squeak.

We were lost together in a sea of wind and stars and crisp night air. Pointing our weapons downward with one arm, holding each other with the other.

“For Connor,” Maddox agreed.

Sixty-One

AUSTIN

The column stretched backwards into the night; three trucks, then four, then five. More vehicles than we initially realized.

A lot more.

I watched from my belly, peering over the ridge with my night-owl optics. The vehicles joined the ones already there, the ones that came in from the west. The ones that came from the north too, although that ‘column’ consisted of a single Escalade that arrived before anyone else.

It was funny, how dark everything was. Every car, every truck, every SUV — all of them were painted in black or midnight blue. Like they were telegraphing their own evil, beneath the cover of night.

They can’t possibly think they blend in better.

I laughed at that part. Odds are they probably did. Yet beneath the desert moonlight, each of them stood out like dark ants on a sand-colored hill.

“I HAVE EYES ON DIETZ.”

Maddox’s voice called back to me from the other hill, on the opposite side of the canyon. We’d switched to earpieces now. Everything else was silent, save for the chatter in the valley below.

God, there have to be twenty of them.

I picked through the growing crowd. At least a dozen men had rifles slung. A few others were strapped with sidearms, too. They’d already uncovered the hidden compartment, and were in the process of sliding it open.

“I HAVE DIETZ ALSO,” I murmured back, although there wasn’t that great a need to keep my voice low. With all the talking and arguing going on down there, I could start whistling if I wanted to.