“Sydney, be careful.”
Her fingers tightened around the wheel. “What’s going on?” She began to ease away from the nondescript EOD building.
“Don’t trust him. I know you think you can, but...don’t.”
Gunner. She swallowed. “Slade, why are you saying these things?”
“Because I saw the way h
e was with her.”
Her? Did he mean Sarah Bell?
“You don’t really know him. Not like I do.”
“I—I thought you and Gunner were getting along—”
His rough laugh cut across her words. “Keep your enemies close...” he murmured.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. Saw Gunner’s truck following her. The flash of his headlights lit up her car.
“Gunner isn’t your enemy.”
“He’s yours.”
Her foot pressed down on the brake as she slowed to a stop. The intersection was clear, so she started to accelerate again. “Gunner isn’t my enemy.” He was many things, but not that. Never that.
“You’re blinded by him, just as she was.” He sounded sad now. “Can’t you see him for what he is? I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“He won’t!”
“He was afraid that you’d go back to me. He’s trying to play the hero—”
His words cut out on her. Bad connection. “I can’t hear—”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to die in the fire. Maybe he wanted to save you” —static crackled across his words— “so you’d be grateful. Then he took out the shooter before he could talk. Gunner got you out of the way before the bullet fired—”
She was straining to hear his words.
She lifted her foot to brake as she came up on a curve.
“—he knew the bullet was coming. Playing hero again.”
Her jaw locked. “Gunner isn’t playing anything. Look, I can’t talk now. It’s late and—”
Her brakes weren’t working.
The car wasn’t slowing as it headed into that curve.
Sydney pushed down on the brake again.
Nothing.
She held tight to the wheel and took the curve. She came out with the vehicle pushing too fast. There was another intersection up ahead. A red light shining. She pumped her brakes, trying to get them to work. “I can’t stop.”
“What? Of course you can stop trusting him, you can—”
No. She pumped again. The brake wasn’t working. The pedal was going all the way down to the floor and doing nothing. The light was still red for her. Other cars were whizzing right through the intersection. She was going down a hill. Faster, faster. “I can’t stop! The brakes aren’t working!”