“Okay,” I said. I wished I could peek out the window, see the house for myself, but I also didn’t want to risk a bullet between the eyes. I didn’t know if I’d be fast enough, especially now that the shooter knew where we were, and maybe had his crosshairs trained right at me. “So we know where the sniper is. What now?”

Garret drew away from the window, face grim. “Wait here,” he said. “Stay inside, I’ll try to get close enough to take him out.”

“What? You’re not doing this alone.” He ignored me as he sidled past, keeping close to the walls, and I grabbed the back of his shirt. “What if there’s more than one?” I insisted as he turned in my grasp, his face stony. “What if he has a partner and you get hurt, or shot? There’ll be no one around to help. You need someone watching your back, at least.”

“Firebrand,” Riley warned in a no-way-in-hell voice, and I turned to glare at him, too.

“What?” I demanded, still keeping a tight hold of Garret’s shirt. “I can do this. I’ve been trained to do this. Lilith taught me herself, or did you forget that I was supposed to be a Talon assassin?” He took a breath to argue, and I raised my chin. “I seem to remember sneaking into a heavily armed St. George base a few nights ago and doing just fine.”

“Until you got shot!” Riley made as if to stalk forward, then jerked back, away from the window. His eyes glowed angrily as they met mine. “This isn’t a normal bullet, Firebrand,” he said. “This isn’t something you can recover from. You get hit in the head with a sniper round, you don’t have a head anymore.”

“I won’t get shot.”

“You can’t know that!”

“Ember.” A strong hand closed over mine, gently prying me loose. I turned back to meet Garret’s steely eyes, gazing down at me. His face was expressionless, and for a moment, I didn’t know if he would tell me to stay behind or not. Which was too bad, because I was coming with him whether he liked it or not. But then he gave a small sigh and released my hand, his gaze flicking out the window.

“We’ll have to move fast,” he said, scanning the street like he was planning the best route to the sniper perch. “Stay low, keep your head down and don’t stop moving. A moving target is much harder to hit. We’ll have to circle around, and we’ll stay in cover as much as we can, but don’t panic if you’re shot at. And don’t freeze, no matter what. The sniper will likely have a partner guarding his back, too, so we’ll probably have to deal with more than one. Do you have a weapon?”