The barrel of the gun followed Lex as she moved, and Dallas fought to keep his voice lazy. "Lex is right. My only grudge with you at the moment is your shitty taste in where to point your weapon."
"Yeah, except lying to the boss tends to come back and kill a guy." Finn took a long drag from his cigarette before dropping his arm and letting his gun point toward the floor. "But hey, I'm dead anyway. Just don't shoot me before I finish my last smoke, eh?"
Leaving the bastard to Jasper, Dallas crossed the intervening space in three paces and dragged Lex to him. "Jesus Christ, woman, you will be the death of me."
"Jade," she muttered, clutching his arms. "She's already hurting."
He couldn't unlock his arms from around Lex. Not until Finn was gone, maybe not until they were back in their own damn sector. "Doc's here."
"A doctor can't help her," Finn said in a dull voice. He watched Jade tremble on the floor with dark eyes devoid of satisfaction or sympathy, devoid of anything but a numb sort of exhaustion. "I can give her the dose I brought to take the edge off, but she'll be going through this again in two weeks unless you send her off peacefully before that."
Doc knelt next to the woman, tilted her head back, and peered into her eyes. "Is this that shit Fleming's been pushing? The habit-forming additive?"
"Insurance in a bottle." Finn looked away, and Dallas could hear his distaste.
Distaste wasn't enough, not for this. Chilling rage had burned away everything except the need to be touching Lex, to remember she was safe and their enemy was dead. "Give the last dose to the doctor."
The man retrieved a plastic container the size of Dallas's thumb and tossed it to Doc. Dallas waited until the doctor had checked it and nodded before gesturing with his gun. "Time to finish that cigarette."
"Dallas, no." Lex curled her fingers in his shirt. "He could have killed me and Jade and been gone already."
He hesitated, because she was right. Even if Finn hadn't wanted to kill two women, he could have gotten out before Dallas showed up with the cavalry. "So why did you stick around?"
Finn snuffed out his cigarette against the bedpost. "I was hoping to make a deal. You all clear out and pretend you were never here, and the boss and I pin this on Cerys." His gaze tracked over Lex. "It's not entirely a lie."
"No one's gonna believe a junkie whore wiped out a squad of Eden-trained guards," Jasper observed.
Dallas tended to agree, but Finn just laughed and flicked the butt of his cigarette into a pool of Woods's blood. "I've pulled off more complicated frame jobs with zero sleep and tripping on acid. What sort of cushy life do you fuckers live in Four?"
"The kind where we work smarter, not harder."
"Enough," Dallas snapped. "If you wanna stay behind and play with the dead bodies, be my guest. I'm not gonna piss my name on the wall to prove I was here. Doc, the girl?"
The man pocketed the inhaler. "Want to have one of your goons carry her?"
Bren and Cruz had arrived, so Dallas directed Jasper to help the doctor and had Bren cover their retreat so Finn couldn't shoot them in the back. His gaze snagged on Gareth Woods as he turned, and he hesitated, half expecting thwarted rage to roar through him. That kill--that vengeance--should have been his.
The dead didn't matter. Lex did. He swept her up into his arms, surprised when she didn't struggle or protest. Something different rose in his chest as he carried her out of the bloodstained room.
Hope.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dallas's good mood lasted until he got Lex to his room. It had taken too long to get from Five back to Four, especially when Jade had roused just enough to protest at leaving her driver behind. Still riding the buzz of having Lex curled trustingly against his chest, Dallas had ended up being too charitable, and Noelle was currently hovering over a dotty old refugee from a Victorian novel who had earnestly asked if Dallas could use a valet.
A gang leader with a valet. Jesus Christ, he hated Cerys.
At least the new arrivals had somewhat distracted Noelle. Dallas figured he could thank Jasper for that, one way or another. But all of the delays meant that by the time he helped Lex out of her blood-soaked clothes, bruises had begun to form on her body.