Page 97 of Dark ’N’ Deadly

Shit.

He’d hoped the paramedics would be able to stabilize the guy sufficiently for travel so he could be another set of eyes on Gant.

The other pair of paramedics rolled by with Jesse, stopping at the base of the stairs to collapse the wheels. An IV hung from a pole, running into the kid’s arm.

“Wait!” Jesse shouted. “Tess just told me Harley killed your friends and did that to you. All those scars… I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I swear it.”

“I know.” Across the gurney, Eric nodded to the paramedics to get Jesse out of there.

“No!” Jesse gripped Eric’s arm with more strength than he would have figured the kid had left in him. “Harley’s changed a lot in the last few years. He doesn’t look the same.”

“I’ll never forget the way he looks.” The bastard’s face was carved in stone in Eric’s memory.

“Neither will I.” Tess’s eyes glittered. She opened her mouth to say something more, but he cut her off before she could get out the words he knew were coming.

“No,” he said in a hard tone. “You’re not coming with us.”

“I am, and there’s no time to waste. I’ve already discussed it with Jesse. I’m going.”

He began shaking his head. He might not live to see another day, but he damn well wanted to make sure she did.

“The troops are rolling.” Dayne pocketed his phone. “Say the word, and we got your back.”

Tess came around the gurney. “I told you before, this is my fight, too. It still is.”

That much he understood. His need to nail Gant burned just as strongly inside him as it did within her. As he looked into her beautiful face, about to say the one word that went against his innate need to protect her from all evil, he saw visions of his future disintegrating into the proverbial mist. But he didn’t have a choice, and she knew it. Over a thousand lives were at stake.

An overwhelming sense of dread hung like a deadly cloud over their heads as he said the one word he hoped to hell he didn’t come to regret later.

“Okay.”

Chapter Thirty

“Af!” Eric ordered, wanting Tiger to lie down so he wouldn’t get flung backward. Then he hit the lights and floored it, speeding east on I-78 toward Newark. Behind him, the cavalry had his back.

Tess sat rigidly in the passenger seat. There was still so much he wanted to say, but between relaying critical information on his phone and nonstop radio calls, there’d been no opportunity.

“Tess, we need to—”

“Two-four-one.” His on-air call sign.

He grabbed the microphone. “Two-four-one.”

“Be advised, Newark PD and state police are closing all roads leading to Newark. Bomb squad units from multiple agencies are en route.”

“Ten-four. My ETA in”—the speedometer read in excess of ninety—“ten.” He set the mic in his lap. Calls were coming in so fast there was no need to bother hooking it back on the console. “Tess—” His cell shrilled, and he swore under his breath.

“Miller,” he said into the phone, not bothering to identify the caller.

“Eric.” It was RAC Verrone. “The JTTF broadcast your photo of Gant all over the state, starting with the Newark PD. No sightings yet. We’ve ordered the hotel to begin evacuating. Police will issue orders to surrounding buildings.”

“Copy that.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Will do. Out.”

“When this is over,” he said to Tess, although given how fast he was flying down the highway he couldn’t actually look at her, “we’ll talk. About everything,” he added. Meaning his dirtbag behavior toward her.