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A round slammed into the reception desk hard enough to make me flinch.

Lachlan stepped directly into the open, and my heart stopped.

“Lachlan!”

He fired twice.

The man dropped behind the column.

For half a second, no one moved.

Then one of the three men who had come in with Lucian advanced toward the fallen attacker, weapon trained on him.

“Clear.”

Another crossed quickly toward the first man shot.

“Clear.”

The entire gunfight had lasted only seconds, but the lobby looked as though it had been ripped apart. Somewhere behind the reception desk, a woman was crying while one of the FBO employees crouched beneath another desk with a phone pressed to her ear. The cool air now carried the smell of gunpowder.

Lachlan immediately turned back to me.

His gaze scanned over my face, my body, my legs.

“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask.

Then his attention went straight back to the room.

Lucian was already moving toward us.

Behind him, Gabriel and the other men fanned out around us, taking positions that kept Lachlan and me protected.

For the first time, I saw Lachlan among his own people. There was no hesitation or confusion, and no one questioned him.

He pointed toward the front entrance. “They got a call out. We’ve got more coming.”

One of their men reached the window beside the lobby’s front entrance and looked toward the road.

“Two vehicles turning in,” he shouted.

Lachlan’s jaw hardened.

“How long?”

“Less than a minute.”

A siren began to wail outside. It sounded like airport security was coming too, adding more armed people who wouldn’t know who had started any of this.

Lachlan looked toward the jet waiting beyond the glass.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Lucian reached us as Lachlan gave the order, one hand closing around his brother’s shoulder in a hard grip that lasted barely a second. Whatever either of them wanted to say would have to wait.

Lucian turned toward the broken sliding door while Gabriel and the three Syndicate men immediately reorganized around us. Two covered the front of the FBO, where the dead gunmen had entered, while the third moved with Lucian toward the ramp.

Lachlan caught my hand with his left, Ciro’s pistol in his right.