Then he had a hand on me and he yanked me to the car as more gunshots were fired. Damian grunted in pain as I felt his body jerk but he still shoved me into his car, coming in after me, slamming the door.

“Drive!” he yelled. The older man was still firing at the car, bullets thudding into the metal even as Damian’s driver put his foot down and the car shot forward, straight at the old, crazy, shooting man.

A bullet penetrated the windshield and the car veered crazily right and slammed into some parked cars, tossing both Damian and me to the side, skidding along them for a while, and coming to a stop when the driver slumped to the right.

And it came to a stop in a way that my door was wedged against cars. No escape except over Damian.

But I didn’t even get that chance and I didn’t because it all happened quickly. In the beat of a heart, the flash of an eye.

Damian pulled a gun out of his jacket just as the door was pulled open and old crazy shooting man leaned in, aimed at Damian, and shot him right in the face.

Right.

In.

The.

Face!

I screamed in sheer terror as Damian collapsed on me and then rolled to the floor.

I stopped screaming and looked at the old crazy shooting man who had the gun aimed at me and my heart and lungs stopped. My heart and lungs stopped but my blood was coursing through my veins. I felt hot everywhere. My scalp was tingling, my palms went instantly wet, my knees were quaking, and I stared right at him and his gun.

“Tessa O’Hara,” he said and I didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even fucking blink. Nothing entered my mind, not his knowing my name, not blood, murder, and mayhem in the parking lot at Park Meadows Mall, nothing except him and his gun. “Brock Lucas’s Tessa O’Hara,” he whispered and that was when I knew him. I knew him. He was the man who called forever ago, the night someone had shot at Brock.

I still didn’t speak. I just kept staring.

“You wanna keep breathing, you’ll come quiet like.”

I wanted to keep breathing.

So in the car with two dead men, I left my phone, my purse, my Mrs. Field’s cookies and the Dillard’s bag with my boys’ swim trunks, and I went quiet like.

* * *

Brock

“Need a second in Cap’s office,” Brock Lucas heard. His eyes went from the computer he was shutting down before going to get his boys to the man standing beside his desk.

Or, that was to say, the men standing by his desk.