Ransom (The Unchained Omegaverse #1) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,22

expect his protection as long as it took to get his story out to the world. After that—

After that would have to wait. Right now, Gretchen had her hands full just trying to make it to sundown alive.

Ransom was already striding toward the men's abandoned jeep, and Gretchen jogged to keep up. When he surprised her by getting in the driver's seat, she kept her mouth shut. She's seen the alpha's handiwork up close twice now, and it didn't strike her as a good idea to get in an argument over who was the more experienced driver.

So she climbed in the passenger seat, strapped on her seatbelt, and turned her face away from the bloodbath.

Five dead—six if she counted the one still inside her car. The fact that all of them had been tasked with killing her didn't make it any easier to look at their remains.

If her mother was still alive, she'd be so disappointed in her daughter's weak resolve. Not only had "Mad Dog" Conrad covered worse massacres, she'd interviewed warlords, documented mass graves, and nearly been hit by carpet bombs—never once backing down. "When you're covering a story, there's no room for fear," she used to say. "You just have to turn off your emotions until you get the job done."

If Gretchen had an 'off' switch for her emotions, she'd be more than happy to use it. But thinking of her mother made her realize she had to gather some hard evidence of what had taken place here. So she forced herself to swivel back around and pulled out her phone.

Her hands were shaking so hard that it took several tries to snap a few photographs of the scene, and by the time she was done, Ransom was already gunning the engine. The gears made a terrible grinding sound as he forced the jeep into reverse. A second later, she was slammed against the dashboard when he made the sudden transition to first.

"Shit." Ransom didn't look at her, making it seem as though he was apologizing to the car. "It's been a while since I've driven."

"I could…" Gretchen started, but the sentence died on her lips as Ransom shifted gears with a frown of concentration. Then he put his foot on the gas, and the vehicle shot forward.

Gretchen was impressed that he could drive a manual transmission at all since he'd only been seventeen when he'd been dragged to Fulmer's facility. Given that he hadn't touched a car since then, the skill came back to him at lighting speed. After only a minute or two, he had mastered the vehicle's handling and was pushing it over the rough terrain at a speed that bordered on reckless.

Gretchen braced her arms against the dash as the vehicle bounced wildly. Ransom didn't seem to be making any effort to miss the ruts and hillocks, slamming down hard on the former after taking the latter too fast. By the time they reached the road, every bone in her body felt as though it had taken a beating.

But at least the jeep seemed to have been designed to take it. Once they were on the somewhat more solid ground of the dirt road, Gretchen twisted in her seat to check behind them and saw no one in pursuit. She didn't doubt for a second that as soon as the next round of reinforcements discovered they were gone, Fulmer would send every available vehicle after them, but Ransom seemed to have bought them a little time.

Which meant that Gretchen could take a breath.

But she'd barely turned back around when Ransom floored the gas at the crest of a slight rise, and the SUV caught some serious air, then slammed down again with such force that the breath was knocked out of her chest. But the military-grade jeep didn't seem to mind, and Ransom appeared positively giddy, like a kid on a dirt bike landing his first jump.

It was the first time she'd ever seen an alpha grin, even in pictures—and the effect was dazzling, lighting up his face in a much too gorgeous and all too human way. So much so that, for a moment, Gretchen almost forgot they were fighting for survival.

One look in the side mirror brought reality rushing back. The smoking ruin of the mysterious facility might be receding behind them, but she was running for her life with a stranger who'd killed six armed men without breaking a sweat.

For a moment there, he had been…well, just a guy. A