My head smashes against the cracked window. Pain. Colors burst behind my eyelids and I grab my head. Worse.
The air smells like gasoline and my mouth tastes like pennies. Hart moans. I force my eyes open. Blink. Can’t focus. Blink again. Still can’t see straight. Everything’s smeary. Something’s crunching.
Glass.
I shift, my surroundings snapping into focus. We’ve stopped and the SUV is reversing, bits of windshield spitting under its tires. The driver door opens and a guy in a black ski mask hops onto the pavement.
Walks straight toward me.
Panic hums in my ears and I scrabble at the seat belt, fingers numb. It clicks loose and I fall sideways. He yanks at my door. Won’t open. He takes two steps back.
And then charges forward.
I shrink down as a huge boot kicks in the window, spraying me with glass. He uses one arm to knock the last bits away and then reaches into the car and grabs me. I shriek. He pulls me through the window.
My knees hit the pavement in a bright white pop of pain. I kick both feet under me and slip. He hoists me up, half dragging me toward the SUV’s passenger door. Through the window, I can see the silhouette of shoulders and a head. Someone else is in there.
Someone else is waiting for me.
I dig my Chucks into the pavement, hear something scraping behind us. Feet. Coming fast.
Hart hits both of us at a dead run. I land face-first, getting a mouthful of gravel, but even before I can spit out the bits, Hart’s forearm is hooked around my waist. He flings me backward, pinning me behind him just as there’s an unmistakable click in the air.
Pistol. Hart’s pistol.
“You need to leave,” Hart says. It’s so quiet I don’t think the ski mask guy could possibly hear it, but he must’ve. He retreats one step. Two. His eyes stay on me though. They never leave my face.
Because he’s memorizing me?
Or because I should know him?
I scrape one hand across my lips and smell him on me. Cigarettes and the leather from his gloves. I gag.
Hart gestures toward the SUV with the now-cocked gun. “Go.”
This time, the guy doesn’t hesitate. He walks around the ruined front grill and jumps in the driver’s seat. The SUV peels off and Hart turns to me, checking me so closely we’re breathing the same damn air.
He put himself between us. He shielded me. This isn’t . . . it was never supposed to be . . . I swallow and taste bile.
Hart wipes a touch of blood from his face and grimaces at his reddened fingertips. He looks so much less plastic now, so much less together. If it weren’t for the blood—and how that blood happened—it might be a much, much more approachable look for him.
We study each other in silence until Hart breaks first. “I warned you. Do you believe me now?”
Yes. Hot tears prick my eyes and I inhale hard, fighting them. “Who was that?”
“Hard to tell at this point. One of Michael’s competitors? One of Michael’s men? Someone else? All I really know is they’re coming for you, Wick. Next time . . . they won’t go so easy. There will be more.”
“And that means you’re going to save me? What if something like this happens to Bren? To Lily?”
“We’ll stop them.”
Our driver limps to my side, cell phone in one hand.
Hart ignores him. “We know what you did when you got those recordings of your mother,” he tells me. “We know about Joe Bender and what you engineered.” The statements should sound accusatory—at least hateful—but Hart’s tone wobbles between guidance-counselor understanding and . . . just plain proud. “Do you regret what happened?”
What happened was I had Joe Bender killed. Why can’t he just say it? Why can’t I?
I did it to save my sister. Joe hurt her to get to me. The murder should feel justified. It should be easy to confess.
I meet Hart’s gaze. “I don’t regret it.”
“Good.” There’s a faraway whine of sirens and we both tense. Hart watches the closest side street, index finger tapping against his knee. “There are terrible people in this world, Wicket. They make nothing but misery. What if you could help that?”
My stomach sinks. “I’m not into playing God.”
I’ve heard this line of reasoning before and it makes me nervous. The night Detective Carson escaped, he told me all about how he had wanted to make me a hero—that’s why he blackmailed me into working for him. He thought he was making me Good by siccing me on people he thought were Evil. And the thing is . . . they were evil. He was right. But he was also deciding whose sins were the worst, who deserved punishment, and who deserved a pass.
“Don’t think of it as playing God,” Hart says, eyes still skittering over the side streets. Our driver returns to the ruined town car, holding his cell to one ear.
“Then what is it?”