“Where are you?” Slade’s voice. Rasping.
Frowning, she drove toward the guard booth. She saw Myles, the night shift guard, and she flashed her ID at him. He nodded, then typed in the code to raise the gate.
“I’m...uh...just leaving the office,” she said. Hadn’t Slade gone home hours ago?
“Sydney, be careful.”
Her fingers tightened around the wheel. “What’s going on?” She began to ease away from the nondescript EOD building.
“Don’t trust him. I know you think you can, but...don’t.”
Gunner. She swallowed. “Slade, why are you saying these things?”
“Because I saw the way he was with her.”
Her? Did he mean Sarah Bell?
“You don’t really know him. Not like I do.”
“I—I thought you and Gunner were getting along—”
His rough laugh cut across her words. “Keep your enemies close...” he murmured.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. Saw Gunner’s truck following her. The flash of his headlights lit up her car.
“Gunner isn’t your enemy.”
“He’s yours.”
Her foot pressed down on the brake as she slowed to a stop. The intersection was clear, so she started to accelerate again. “Gunner isn’t my enemy.” He was many things, but not that. Never that.
“You’re blinded by him, just as she was.” He sounded sad now. “Can’t you see him for what he is? I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“He won’t!”
“He was afraid that you’d go back to me. He’s trying to play the hero—”
His words cut out on her. Bad connection. “I can’t hear—”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to die in the fire. Maybe he wanted to save you” —static crackled across his words— “so you’d be grateful. Then he took out the shooter before he could talk. Gunner got you out of the way before the bullet fired—”
She was straining to hear his words.
She lifted her foot to brake as she came up on a curve.
“—he knew the bullet was coming. Playing hero again.”
Her jaw locked. “Gunner isn’t playing anything. Look, I can’t talk now. It’s late and—”
Her brakes weren’t working.
The car wasn’t slowing as it headed into that curve.
Sydney pushed down on the brake again.
Nothing.
She held tight to the wheel and took the curve. She came out with the vehicle pushing too fast. There was another intersection up ahead. A red light shining. She pumped her brakes, trying to get them to work. “I can’t stop.”
“What? Of course you can stop trusting him, you can—”
No. She pumped again. The brake wasn’t working. The pedal was going all the way down to the floor and doing nothing. The light was still red for her. Other cars were whizzing right through the intersection. She was going down a hill. Faster, faster. “I can’t stop! The brakes aren’t working!”
The red light flashed to green. Her breath rushed out and her car flew through the intersection. But she had to stop soon. She had to find a place to stop.
Another red light loomed ahead.
Change.
Change.
“Sydney!” Slade’s frantic voice.
The light wasn’t changing.
Another car was going through the intersection.
She spun the wheel hard to the right. The passenger side of her vehicle hit the other car, scraping up against the side, and that crash sent her vehicle careening back, back—
Toward Gunner’s truck.
She turned her head. Saw him coming right toward her. Bright lights.
She braced for the impact.
* * *
“SYDNEY!” SLADE YELLED FRANTICALLY.
She wasn’t talking to him now, but he could hear the scream of metal.
He spun around. Cale was running toward him.
“What’s happening?” Cale demanded.
They were in the lobby of the EOD building. Mercer had finally finished grilling him. “I wanted to catch her before she left,” he whispered. “I had to warn her—”
Cale grabbed his arms. “What’s happening?”
“Sydney.” The phone was still clutched in his fingers. “Her brakes stopped working. I could hear...I could hear her screaming.”
Cale’s eyes widened, and he whirled away. He started shouting orders, calling for a track on Sydney.
But it was too late.
Slade glanced down at his phone. The line had gone dead.
* * *
GUNNER SLAMMED ON his brakes. The scent of burned rubber filled his nostrils as he jumped from his truck. The accident he’d just seen had his heart thundering in his chest.
“Sydney!” He ran toward her. Moments before, he’d seen her frightened face in the glow of his headlights.
Her car had raced forward—then smashed into a light pole.
His shaking fingers curled around the door handle, and he yanked the door open. A cloud of white greeted him. The air bag. He shoved it back. “Baby?”
A groan slipped from her.
He started to breathe again.
“Gunner?”
Carefully, oh, so carefully, he unhooked her seat belt and eased her from the car. The other driver was out of his vehicle now. Yelling about fools who shouldn’t be on the road.
Gunner lifted Sydney up against his chest. She felt small and fragile. Breakable. She seemed so fierce most of the time that he forgot just how vulnerable she could be.
He leveled a killing stare on the man who was yelling instead of checking to see if Sydney was hurt. The guy stopped midholler and backed up a few steps. “Call for help,” Gunner snarled.
The guy nodded frantically and pulled out his phone.
Gunner carried Sydney away from the road. More cars had stopped now. Bystanders were trickling toward them.
He put her down on the nearby grass. Brushed back her hair. There wasn’t enough light for him to see her face clearly. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “The brakes didn’t work,” she whispered. “I couldn’t stop.”
Fear and fury battled within him. Another attempt on her life. This time, he’d been helpless.
“An ambulance is coming!” a voice called out. It sounded like the guy who’d been yelling minutes before.
Gunner slid his hands over Sydney’s body, looking for any signs of injury. No broken bones. No cuts. But she winced when he touched her left shoulder. The seat belt would have cut into her there.