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Rain drummed against the warehouse's metal roof, the only sound in the tense silence that had fallen over the open space. Ramirez and Peters still held their positions at the boarded-up windows; Lewis still paced the floor, tapping his cell phone against his thigh. And Jonas, his ass cold and numb from sitting on the concrete, turned the entire mess over and over again in his head—reaching the same inescapable conclusion each goddamned time.
Kate was wrong. This whole situation was his fault. Not in the control-freak kind of way she'd accused him of, but in the inevitable kind of way that stemmed from his own behavior. His own stubborn independence. He'd been so busy guarding against betrayal that he'd failed to form connections—to anyone. He'd never waited for help, never worked with a partner. He'd been a man without friends. Untrusted and untrusting.
In short, he'd made himself the perfect patsy.
And if that was true...Jonas’s breath caught in a painful lump beneath his ribs. If that was true, if he'd screwed up his past so thoroughly with his solitary existence, then maybe—just maybe—he ought to reconsider his future.
A future with Kate.
If he had one.
The sudden buzz of Lewis's cell phone underscored the last thought, bringing the imminent threat of his own mortality to hang over him as the other man answered the call.
Lewis listened for a moment, then snapped, "This better be for real, Douglas, or he's dead." Pocketing the phone, he turned to the others. "They're ready for us. An SUV, coming in from the west. One driver. Clear windows."
"I see it," said Hal Peters, peering between boards.
"Anything else moving out there?"
"Nothing since they pulled back," Ramirez answered. "We're in the clear."
"What about the windows across?"
"No movement."
"Right. Then it's time to move. I'll take Burke."
"I still think it's too easy," Peters growled. "They've had more than enough time to put a team together."
"A team would be coming in here to get us, not giving us a ride to the airport. We hold all the cards, Peters"—Lewis jerked his head in Jonas’s direction—"and everyone knows it. So we can either hang around debating the issue until they do bring in a team, or we can move. I vote move."
Ramirez sighed and pushed back the hair from her face. "I agree. Sitting here is getting us nowhere except on each other's nerves."
"Two to one," Lewis said. "We move."
He crossed over to Jonas and crouched beside him, handcuff key in hand and pistol in the other. "One wrong move and I finish what I started, Burke. With pleasure."
Jonas nodded understanding. He had no idea what Kate and Grant Douglas had planned, but he knew damned well it didn't include driving Lewis et al to any airport—and he was damned if he would jeopardize that future he'd finally decided he wanted.
"You have my word," he said.
Lewis undid one cuff long enough to release him from the pole, then snapped it shut over his wrist again and roughly pulled him to his feet. "Let's go."
* * *
The warehouse door in Kate's scope opened, and every fiber of her being snapped to attention. Jonas emerged first, framed in the doorway for a split second before someone shoved him forward, into the alley. Kate's rifle scope followed, and for a moment, both time and her heart ground to a halt.
Jonas might have been standing right in front of her, he seemed so close. Close enough to see the shadow of stubble along his jawline, the thick fringe of dark lashes around his brilliant blue eyes, the tug of pain at the corner of his mouth, the livid purple bruise that highlighted one cheekbone.
"You have a green light, Kate," Grant's voice came through her earpiece, yanking her back to the task at hand. "I repeat, green light."
"Ten four," she acknowledged. This was it. Time to get Jonas the hell out of there and end this thing. She shifted her scope away from him, seeking her target. She found the pistol pressed to the base of his skull, the hand holding it, the brown sleeve that covered the arm attached to the hand...
And then, nothing. Jonas's superior height and breadth all but made the person behind him invisible. She had no shot.
"Shit!" She jerked back from the rifle scope. "No confidence, Grant. I repeat, no confidence! Get me another window. I can't even see the target from here!"
"No time, Kate," Grant said, his tone even. "The windows are all sealed in their frames. Even if we could get one out fast enough, they'd hear us."
Freaking hell. Kate dipped her head back down and swept the scope over the little group below. Carmen Ramirez and Hal Peters stood to each side of Jonas, their weapons drawn as they scanned the alley intently. That meant the brown sleeve belonged to Lewis—for all the good the knowledge did her.
"Just do your best," Grant's voice advised in her ear.
"There's no such thing as 'best'," Kate snapped. "I either make the shot or I don't, and right now there's no damned shot to make!"
Sweat trickled down her back, and her shoulder quivered with the strain of holding the rifle barrel aloft. She pushed away the ache forming along the edges of her consciousness. She pressed her lips together. Later, she could hurt. Right now, she had no time. Couldn't allow the distraction.
Tipping her head to one side, she peered past the scope at the bigger picture as Hal Peters walked around the front of the SUV to the passenger door. Time was running out. If she couldn't make the shot, Jonas would get in the vehicle with them, and they would drive away with him, and—
She suppressed a shudder. And she didn't need to think further than that, because it wasn't going to happen. Regardless of what Jonas did or didn't want for them, she wouldn't be another in a long line of people who had let him down.
Jonas stepped forward, and Kate returned to following his progress through the scope. The edge of the SUV's black roof entered the bottom of her circle of vision. Jonas shifted to his right, and for a split-second, Lewis's full arm came into view. Kate caught her breath. The arm disappeared again behind Jonas. Despair slammed into her gut.
"Damn it!" she growled. "How much time do I have left?"
"Ramirez is in the car, rear seat, passenger side," Dave responded. His voice was controlled and even, but tight. "Her door is closed. Peters is standing by the front passenger door, not open yet."
"Come on, come on," she murmured, willing her target into view. Still nothing but that damned brown—
And then it was there. In view. A sliver of Lewis's face, just beside Jonas’s head as he reached to open the SUV's back passenger door on the other side of the vehicle. Kate tightened her finger against the rifle's trigger, slowly, infinitesimally. But no more of Lewis appeared, and she eased off again. It wasn't enough.
"Kate?" Grant's voice in her earpiece, taut, questioning, prompting.
"Still no confidence. It’s an unfamiliar weapon. I need a wider margin." Her voice was a bare thread of a whisper. She waited, willing herself to patience. She shut out the room behind, the world around, the turmoil within. Her focus became absolute. Unwavering. In the scope, Jonas's head lowered for his descent into the vehicle, and part of Lewis became visible—forehead, eyes, the bridge of his nose. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
She had a viable target.
Kate stilled the tremble in her shoulder.
She stopped breathing.
She squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Jonas felt the hairs on his head lift in the wake of the bullet a millisecond before the report of a rifle cracked through the alley and echoed between the buildings. Chaos followed on its heels. Shouts, another shot, the thunder of heavily booted feet.
His head snapped up long enough to register the presence of armed agents coming at them from seemingly everywhere, and then instinct kicked in. He dropped to the ground and rolled away from Lewis’s body and the vehicle until the brick wall of the warehouse brought him up short. More shouts from many voices all muddled together, filling the narrow alleyway.
"Drop your weapon! Now!"
"On your knees!"
"Hands in the air—in the air!"
Jonas struggled to sit and wedged himself into a gap between the wall and a Dumpster. Only then, out of the immediate way of too many adrenaline-driven people waving guns, did he dare take stock of the situation.
The SUV blocked most of the activity from his view, but there was no mistaking the bright yellow FBI emblazoned across the chests and backs of the heavily armed and armored agents swarming the scene. No mistaking, either, the prone figure of Hal Peters, face down in a puddle with four of those agents pointing their weapons at him.
Or, a half-dozen feet away, the unmoving figure of Lewis on the pavement, a spreading pool of crimson beneath his head, a small hole punched neatly between his brows.
Jonas stared into the vacant, unseeing eyes of his former colleague. He waited for the expected sense of satisfaction to rise in him, but it didn't come. Nothing came. No anger. No relief. No anything, really, except a hollowness in the center of his chest where Kate's head had rested one last time that morning when she'd said goodbye at the elevator and told him to be safe.
Booted feet came between him and Lewis's corpse, and Jonas blinked as an FBI agent kicked the pistol away from Lewis's limp hand. The agent looked down at Jonas.
"Are you injured?" he asked.
Jonas hadn't thought to check, but there seemed to be no critical damage, and so he shook his head. "I'm fine."
"Good." The agent nodded. "Stay put. I'll send someone to get you in a minute."
Jonas watched him stride over to where Peters was being cuffed, and then he returned to staring at Lewis. So that was it, then. After all that had happened in the eternity since he’d been shot, it was over. Lewis was dead, the others were in custody, their operation would be blown wide open, and Jonas would have his life back. Except...
Except.
Except after spending these days with Kate—after having her be such an integral part of his every waking moment, his every thought—the life he'd had before her seemed beyond empty, felt like it had belonged to someone else. Someone he'd known a long time ago, but couldn't really remember anymore. He didn't think he wanted to remember. And he sure as hell didn't want to go back to being that person.
He scanned the blank windows in the building opposite, looking for her. She was up there somewhere, his beautiful, maddeningly stubborn Kate, who'd had his back throughout this whole ordeal, refused to let him shut her out, and shown him just what he'd been missing all these years.
But all the windows looked empty, and a chill that had nothing to do with rain or temperature shivered down his spine. She was up there, wasn't she? What if she'd—
A door banged open on the other side of the alley. He dropped his gaze to it as Grant Douglas emerged, followed by four more people Jonas didn't recognize, and then Dave Jennings.
Jonas blinked. Jennings? Where the hell had he come from?
The lanky RCMP officer sauntered across to him and, grinning from ear to ear, grasped him under one arm to haul him to his feet. Then, to Jonas's everlasting shock, Jennings pulled him into a hug and slapped him heartily on the back.
"Damn, but it's good to see you still breathing." Jennings set him away again but kept hold of his shoulders as he grinned some more. "You have no idea how close that was, my friend. No freaking idea."
Jonas's scalp tingled with the remembered passage of the bullet. "On the contrary," he said, "I think I do. We're sure that whoever took that shot meant to miss me, right?"
Jennings chuckled, turning him so that he could undo the cuffs. "Oh, I'm pretty sure she meant to miss, all right."
Rubbing at the marks on his wrists, Jonas turned back to him. "She?"
Jennings's grin grew, threatening to split his face in half. "I told you she was better than you thought. You did ask her about the shoulder, right?"
Jonas stared at him, trying to absorb words that made no sense. Kate? He looked up at the windows of the building opposite. Kate had taken that shot? But how—
"Three years as a sniper with our emergency response team," Jennings answered as if Jonas had spoken aloud. "Until she took that bullet."
Jonas swallowed against a thickness in his throat. Kate had made it clear how she felt about him. To have made that shot, knowing the risk, knowing that if she missed...
He met the other man's calm gray gaze. Jennings's grin faded to a half smile, and he nodded.
"Hardest thing she's ever done," he agreed. "She could probably do with seeing you breathe in person. Thirteenth floor. Suite fourteen oh-six."
Jonas didn't need a second invitation.