Alpha One (Shadow Agents 1)

Coming from behind her now. Jasper? Finally?

But the van door had closed behind her. The gun had fallen and she’d slammed face-first onto the van’s floor. Her forehead hit hard and pain splintered through her skull.

And she hit—someone. The man in the van. The man who wasn’t moving. She shoved her hands against the van’s metal floorboard even as the vehicle lurched forward. She was tossed back a bit and tires squealed. More gunfire.

The van kept going—racing away.

She lifted her hands, afraid, and touched warm skin. Her hands slid over the man’s body nervously. Wide shoulders. Strong muscles. She touched his neck and felt the thready beat of his pulse.

Her finger smoothed higher. Felt his chin...and the faint scar that raised the skin there.

Logan.

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close and—felt the wetness of his blood on her. “Logan?”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Guerrero’s voice. Her head jerked up. In the darkness, she could make out two men in the front of the van. The driver—and the shadowy form of the man who held a gun on her.

“Told you he was alive,” Guerrero said as the gun’s barrel swung between her and Logan. “And if you want him to stay that way, you hold him tight, and you don’t so much as move until I tell you to do so.”

They were leaving the senator’s mansion, heading down the twisting roads of the swamp. Roads that could take them to a dozen secluded locations.

“This time,” Guerrero promised, “we won’t be interrupted, and if you don’t tell me everything I want to know, then you’ll watch while I slice your lover apart.”

He’d already started slicing.

“He’ll be the one who screams soon, Juliana. You could hardly bear it when you heard the sound of a stranger screaming. Tell me, what will you do when those cries come from someone you love?”

Anything.

And Guerrero, damn him, knew it.

Chapter Eleven

Logan opened his eyes, aware of the pain that throbbed through his body in relentless waves. It was the pain that had forced him to consciousness.

The darkness hit him first. Wherever he was, there were no windows, no fresh air. He was sitting, bound with his arms pulled behind him and tied to the wooden slats in the back of his chair.

He also wasn’t alone. He heard the soft rasps of breath coming too fast. So close to him.

There was a faint beam of light on the floor to the right, just a sliver that came from beneath what Logan suspected to be a door.

He tried to shift in his chair but the pain doubled, knifing through him.

Hell, yeah, he’d been knifed all right—

“Logan?”

He stilled. That was Juliana’s voice, and when he took a breath, he smelled vanilla. Beyond the blood and dust and decay in the room, he smelled her.

No. Gunner should have been keeping her safe. He’d made a dumb move; Logan knew it. He’d seen the body falling and fear had made him reckless for a moment, but Juliana—

“Please, Logan, talk to me. Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m...” He cleared his throat because his voice was no more than a growl. “I’m okay, baby.” A lie, but he would have told her anything right then. He didn’t know how much blood he’d lost; Logan just knew he was too weak.

The cops have been working for Guerrero. He’d figured that little fact out too late. From the sounds of the battle that had echoed in his ears, he knew Jasper had reached that same conclusion.

Too late.