Born of Fire

“A rat knows how to run through a sewer.” And with that, he faded into the crowd faster than she could blink. One moment he’d been right in front of her, and in the next, she was utterly alone.

She scanned the crowd around her, looking for other tracers. There was a certain carriage that all those trained in her profession held. Even when they tried to hide it, it stood out to those, like her, who knew what they were looking for.

Dipping her head low, she headed in the opposite direction.

Syn kept his gaze moving as he marked the ones on his ass. Eight . . .

No, nine. There was a female dressed in tan who appeared to be talking to someone.

All well-trained and all tailing him. “Come get some.” It was the one thing he always said whenever he was cornered on the street. But what they didn’t know was that on the street, he was never really cornered.

He reached under his shirt and pulled out his curlers—titanium blades that wrapped around his hand to form a spiked glove. If he pulled his blaster out and started shooting, the authorities would have him penned down in a heartbeat.

The only way out of this was to meld with the shadows and to take them out one by one.

He flinched as he felt his father’s fist slamming against his face repeatedly. “You want me to stop hitting you? You gotta outsmart me. Think, you little bastard. What do you do when you’re out-gunned and overpowered? You outmaneuver them.”

His father’s lessons had been brutal, but they’d taught him to survive, and for that he was actually grateful.

Ducking into an alley, he tucked himself into the shadows and waited until two of the tracers went past. He leapt on the one closest to him and brought him into the alley, where he quickly kicked him down and rendered him unconscious.

Syn was rising from the body when the first one doubled back to take him on. He caught the tracer’s arm before he could fire his weapon and yanked the link out of his ear so that he couldn’t communicate with the others. Even so, the link would let his team know that it’d been removed and was no longer transmitting his biofeed and pinpointing his exact location. Moving fast, Syn slammed his fist into the man’s throat, then took him down with short, clean strokes.

He stepped back as he heard the others moving in for him.

Yeah, this was about to get really interesting.





CHAPTER 20


Shahara paused on the street outside the restaurant where they were supposed to meet up.

Syn was three minutes late.

Scanning the crowd, she saw no sign of a tracer and Vik had already confirmed that he saw nothing, either. So where was Syn? What was he doing?

Had they captured him?

Or worse, killed him?

Terror went through her so viciously at the mere thought of his death that it almost dropped her to her knees. What if he died because of her? Could she handle it?

She’d never really considered the possibility. But right now it stared her straight in the face and slapped her with cold reality.

He might not make it back. And it would be her fault.

She tried to calm herself, but the agony of trying to imagine going back to a life without him was unbearable. How can I love such a surly asshole?

Yet she did. And if he died trying to help her . . .

Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t keep standing here, waiting for him to join her when he might be bleeding and needing her help.

She waved Vik down from the tree where he was perched so that he could keep an eye out. As soon as he was on the nearby fence, she made up her mind. “I’m going back for Syn.”

He cocked his bird head. “That’s not what he said to do.”

“I don’t care. He’s out there alone and—”

“Can’t you ever follow instructions?”

Relief tore through her as she heard that deep, sexy baritone. Before she could stop herself, she turned and pulled Syn into a tight hug. Vik shot to the sky with a loud noise of protest at human displays of affection blinding him.

Syn was stunned by her unexpected reception. But what floored him was how tight she held him and the fact that she actually trembled in his arms. Like she’d been afraid something had happened to him.

Gods, it felt good. Too good. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and let the scent of her hair shake him to the core of his being. If only he could stay here like this, but he knew better.

They had a job to finish.

“I’m getting blood on you, babe. As much as I’m enjoying this, you might not want to hold me too close.”

She pulled back with a gasp. “What?”

He held his hand up to show her where one of the trackers had cut him with a knife. “It needs some sutures, but I’ll live. It just hurts like hell.”

Shahara was horrified by the way the blood dripped from his hand to the sidewalk. Syn had wrapped a piece of cloth around his hand, but it was already saturated. “Are you sure you didn’t open a vein?”

He gave her a droll stare.

“Sorry. I forgot you were a doctor. It just looks bad.”

“Well, it’s not a scrape. But it’s all right. Let’s finish this and tend the wounds later.”