My stomach heaved, and I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see him, the slack face and the sightless, staring eyes. The bullet hole in his skull, oozing blood. I didn’t even remember pulling the trigger. The moment I’d seen him through the attic opening, aiming his gun at Garret, I’d reacted. Without thinking, just as I had in the St. George
compound—quick and lethal, almost instinctive. Now, because of me, a man was dead. I’d become a killer, an assassin, just like Talon wanted.

Lilith would’ve been proud.

“Where are we going?” Garret’s voice echoed beside me, calm and composed. He didn’t sound remotely anxious or freaked out, as if being targeted by snipers, breaking into a house and taking out two fully armed soldiers was a perfectly normal day for him. Business as usual. For a moment, I resented his perfect composure. I’d just killed a man, one of his former brothers in arms; you would think he’d be slightly upset by that.

“Downtown,” Riley answered without looking back. He sat in the front seat, both hands on the wheel, and drove like he rode a motorcycle: fast and with purpose. Beside him, Wes hunched over his laptop, not looking up when Riley took a corner without slowing down, making the wheels screech. “Near the Strip. I have a friend there who can hide us.”

“And the vehicle?” Garret looked out the back window, maybe searching for flashing lights. “I assume the original owner isn’t going to be happy about us hot-wiring his car.”

Wes snickered. “Hot-wire a car,” he scoffed. “Please. Is that how you do things, St. George? How very primitive.” He tapped two fingers against his skull. “Modern cars these days have lovely computerized brains that you can turn on with a phone. Makes them fairly easy to hack into, if you know what you’re doing.”

Great, I thought, crossing my arms. The gun dropped onto the seat beside me. I didn’t want to look at it, much less touch it anymore. So now we’re murderers and car thieves.

A soft click made me look up. Garret had reached over and taken the pistol from where it lay between us, then smoothly flicked on the safety. He turned the weapon around and offered it to me again, his gray eyes solemn as they met mine.

“You had no choice,” he said, holding my gaze. “Those soldiers would’ve killed us both if they could. There was no other option, you did what you had to do.”