way I figured most people did the moment before they died.
It was her.
Bea.
My Little Shadow, the woman who noticed me and studied me too much. The sunshiny girl who followed me around like a second shadow.
There she lay.
Broken and folded into the wrecked car like a savagely opened present.
I sucked in a deep breath that tasted of ash and rain, then decided my course of action.
The car was going to blow.
I’d rigged it that way.
And there was no way in fucking hell or heaven, any conceivable destiny on earth that I’d let this broken angel die like a criminal in the street.
My boots landed with a clamour on the hood of the car as I jumped up to extract her, almost drowning out a faint whimper.
Thank fuck, she was alive.
“Priest,” she said, her voice so light, so sweet it unraveled like torn silk.
My heart punched against my ribs, but I kept my calm.
She was going to be okay.
I ignored her as she muttered nonsensically while I carefully cut the left wing off her back so I could gently pull her from the windshield. She was boneless in my arms, head lolling, pupils blown wide open with an obvious concussion, but she was breathing.
I listened to her breath stutter wetly through her bloody lips as I slid off the hood and made my way quickly away from the car, my arms immovable so I wouldn’t jostle her battered body. When I gauged we were far enough from the wreck, I dropped to my knees and curled my torso over her prone form seconds before the Camaro burped one last, rattling gasp and then tore into pieces from the force of the explosion.
I could feel the heat of it break like a wave against my leather-clad back.
“You saved me,” Bea whispered, one hand reaching for my face, the bones in her index finger broken and spliced through the skin.
“No,” I protested, giving myself one pristine moment to listen to her breath, to feel her in my arms in a way I never would again. “I did this to you.”
A moment later, she was out like a light. I shifted her body onto the grass, then looked up just as Wrath stalked toward me, gun out and face fierce with a grimace.
“What a fuckin’ shitshow,” he grunted as he knelt beside me, his eyes running over Bea. “Fucking, fuck.”
“I’m going to kill them all,” I vowed as I moved a clump of bloody hair out of Bea’s face and then shucked my leather jacket to put it under her head. “Every last Walsh and every single one of their associates.”
“Priest, man…” Wrath tried to reason with me, but I couldn’t hear him.
I was singularly focused on one thing.
Revenge.
Which is why I heard the cough and responded to it before Wrath could do anything to stop me.
Brett Walsh.
Somehow the cockroach had crawled from the wreck, or been thrown far enough to escape the flames that now leapt from the metal, as orange as the charred paint peeling off the exterior. His skin was all blood and abrasion. Even from a distance, I could tell there was something impaled in his belly, that soft place that meant a long, painful death if it wasn’t treated.
He deserved that, but I wasn’t willing to give it to him.
Unthinking, unfeeling, cold and programmed by violence, I was up and stalking toward him. My Karambit blade slid from the sleeve of my hoodie into my palm. It felt good to wrap my fingers around it as I approached the sick fuck who’d put Bea in danger.
Who’d put her in the path of me.
I knelt casually over his broken, dying body and stared into his face.
One eye was swollen shut, but the other was clear, black with panic.
“Help me,” he gurgled.
There was a large piece of metal, probably cast off from the door, in his left side, and his ribs were crushed from the impact against the steering wheel.
He was dying.
I ignored his squeal of pain as I stood, taking his foot with me as I went.
Then I ignored his howl of outrage as I dragged him over to where Wrath was tending to Bea. My brother watched me without judgment as I dropped the piece of shit to the ground at her feet. I squeezed his face in my hands and forced him to look at her.
“You see this?” I demanded coldly, my knife at his throat, already deep but keeping the blood at bay by sheer pressure. “You