He turns, grabbing a jacket and his car keys. It's all the time I need to make sure the burner phone the FBI agent gave me is tucked into the bottom of my bag before I shoulder it and follow Connor across the loft.
In the elevator, my eyes drop to the gun in his hand, clicking menacingly as he snaps a clip full of bullets into the handle.
Guns.
I don't think I've ever even seen one for real before - well, before that night at the bar.
Part of me suddenly wonders if it's the same one he put against my head that night.
The elevator drops down into the garage, and I can feel my pulse beating faster with every second. I'm in over my head here, in a very big way. This isn't the sexy outlaw fantasy. This isn't the thrill of something dangerous with the dark stranger at the bar.
This is actual danger. This is a real threat, and suddenly, I'm so scared I can barely breathe.
The elevator opens, and he hustles me out by the arm. "This way," he growls. It's not the same growl as the night before - the sort of growl that made me moan for him and shiver in ecstasy.
It's weird that I notice that in this moment, but I do.
We stop behind a pillar about thirty feet from where his car is parked near the loading dock along one wall. Connor glances around, his eyes darting wildly and the gun tight in his hand.
"We're gonna run for the car."
"Run?"
The word sounds like cement coming out of my mouth.
"On three."
I can feel my pulse thudding in my ears.
I'm not ready for this.
"One."
His hand grips my arm, and I can feel my knees start to shake.
"Two."
The brick wall behind us suddenly shatters into dust, and I scream at the peppered popping sound of guns firing that immediately follows.
"Now!"
Connor roars as he yanks me after him, pulling me as he bolts for his car. I scream as he pulls me down behind it, my hands clutching my head as I hear the sound of metal whizzing overhead.
He yanks the passenger side door open, climbing in and pulling me in after him. I'm barely out of the way of closing the door before Connor guns the engine and takes us peeling out of the parking garage.
We go tearing up the ramp and screeching out into the outside parking lot. My eyes go wide at the men who come running out from behind a burned out old car, but Connor suddenly cranks the window down and levels the gun out of it. We peel out, and I'm still screaming as the thing roars in his hand.
We swerve again wildly, the car jerking dangerously from side to side, and suddenly, I snap out of my daze.
"I've got the wheel!"
What?
I have no idea why I say it, or how I even know to lunge across the shifter and grab the wheel out of Connor's hands. He barely nods before he yanks his arm around, both hands now training the gun at men running towards us and dropping them with three thundering shots.
He lurches back in and grabs the wheel in an iron grip. His face is hard and his eyes flash as he peels us out, whipping the Charger past a car-full of more guys with guns and roaring towards the far end of the lot.
"Nice work," he says curtly.
I'm just nodding, half frozen in shock again and starting to shake, when the back windshield shatters. I scream as Connor suddenly shoves my head down, slamming on the gas. We tear out of the old factory parking lot, tires squealing on the sudden change from gravel to pavement as we roar towards the I-90 interstate entrance.
"Where are we going?" I say it quietly, hugging the oversized shirt around myself. After twenty minutes of me shivering in my "going out" clothes on the highway with the wind from the shattered back windshield whipping through the car, Connor ignored my protests and shrugged off his plaid shirt and passed it to me.
The same plaid shirt that smells like him that I'm currently wearing, feeling more and more like this is some sort of high school romance movie cliché - the girl that's way out of her league wearing the big quarterback's shirt to keep warm.
Only, you know, less quarterback, more scary mobster.
Same out-of-her-league girl though.
"A safe place."
"Oh, okay."
I'm barely hanging on and barely keeping it together. I'm in a daze, shaking even with the warmer shirt on.
"Why were those guys-"
"Jesus Christ," he growls. "What's not to understand?"
I break, and suddenly despite every single piece of me telling me not to, I'm sobbing.
Connor swears under his breath, and suddenly we're pulling off the highway, roaring down the exit ramp, blowing through a stop sign and coming to a screeching stop at a gravelly rest area.
"I can't- I mean, I can't-"
I'm hyperventilating, my vision blurring as I suddenly just kick open the door and jump out of the car. I can feel the adrenaline roaring through me, and I'm unsteady on my feet as I go stumbling away from the car, to where I don't even know, I just know I have to get away from it all.
"Sierra-"
"No, just-" I'm shaking my head, waving him off behind me as I stumble on. "I won't tell anyone, I won't- I mean-"
I shriek as he grabs me, whirling with every intention of fighting to the death to get away from him. But when he hauls me against his chest, I break, and instead of fighting, I grab his t-shirt tightly in my hands and sob into his chest.
"I gotcha, sweetheart." His voice rumbles through me, his arm going around me as he strokes my back. "Let it out, I've got you."
He holds me like that for how long I don't know as my breath hitches and the tears bleed hot into the cotton of his shirt.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "Look, I act, and I forget that not everyone knows how to act the same way. I don't - I mean it just doesn't shake me anymore. I just react when I have to."
His arms tighten around me, my breathing slows, and the dark spots swimming in front of my face begin to fade.
Panic attack over.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you."
I pull away from his soaked shirt, my brow furrowed as I look up at him.
"How is this normal to you?"
"It just is."
"How?" I slowly shake my head, biting my lip. "I've watched you shoot people, and get shot at and-"
"Because it's me, sweetheart," he growls. "Because when I was ten, both my parents were gone and I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to lie to teachers and neighbors about where our folks were so CPS wouldn't break up me and my brothers. Because when I was twelve, I got jumped by three older kids in a bad neighborhood and almost bled out from the knife they stuck in my side when I wouldn't give them my lunch money."
His face hardens, his eyes flashing this intense fire.
"Because when I was seventeen, I shot a guy before he could do the same to my brother. Because by the time I was twenty-one, I'd done more shit that you've ever seen in all the mob movies in the world. That's why it doesn't faze me."
His voice is hoarse, his face hard lines and shadows. His hand comes up to cup my jaw possessively.
"Because this life is burned into me, Sierra. Because I'm not like you, or your perfect little town, or your awesome family. Because I'm broken, and I've glued myself back together, but I'm not like people like you."
"People like me?"
"Loved," he spits out bitterly. "Surrounded with kindness and goodness. That's not me, and that's why this doesn't shake me."
He looks away, his face grim.
"Now, we need to get going. I'm sorry I snapped at you, but my goal right now is to keep both of us alive. All right?"
I nod, sniffling and feeling so weak for crying and freaking like this. "Okay."
We turn and head back to the car.
"Sorry I freaked out," I mumble.
"Don't."
He pulls me close, his eyes lancing into mine.
"You were amazing back there, actually."
I roll my eyes.
"Oh, you don't believe me? You do a lot of wheel-grabbing and passenger-seat driving while someone shoots out the window of a moving car?"
I smile quietly.
"Yeah, that was pretty bad-ass, sweetheart."
He pulls the car out of the rest area and revs us back up the ramp to the highway.
"Well, that's me. Bad-ass grad school fuck up."
Connor grins.
"Keep lighting fires, princess."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Connor
"What is this place?"
She shuts the car door and looks up at the old two-story house. The surf crashes loudly farther down the beach, over the dunes, and the sea-salt air I fucking love washes over our faces.
I grin to myself, looking up at the house.
Damn, I missed this place.
"It belongs to some family friends. Me and my brothers and sister used to come here in the summers. I fuckin' loved it here. And, we'll be safe here. No one knows about this place."
She turns to me, her brow furrowed. "I thought you just had brothers?"
"Eh, it's complicated."
"Hey, I'm one of five, spill it."
I grin as I walk around to the big porch that looks out over the dunes and the ocean past them.
"It's just old family shit, boring stuff."
"If you say so."
I find the spare key exactly where I knew it'd be in the mason jar bolted to the underside of the second step. The lock clicks, and the door creaks on sea-brine-rusted hinges.
It's musty in here, but untouched. There was some shit with local kids breaking in a few years back. Liam and Damien and I put a stop to that real quick by sneaking in here one night, leaving the lights off, and waiting for those little fuckers to come back.