Page 80 of Run

His eyes met hers. There was panic in them.

“Run.” He barely mouthed the word.

Elle couldn’t move. Her gaze was stuck on Ryan. Something was wrong with him.

“Ryan?”

Red, red blood appeared on his chest like an inkblot, spreading across his pale blue shirt.

The whole thing happened in seconds, but it took Elle a lifetime to watch. Blood poured down his face, dripping onto his shirt. His gun slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground as his eyes rolled back. And then he crumpled, folding in on himself as though his bones had evaporated. He struck the hard pavement with a dull thud only she would have heard in the chaos surrounding them.

And then Elle did run.

But not away. She ran toward Ryan but made it only a few steps before a man appeared in front of her. She kicked out, exactly as Joe had taught her. The man grunted and fell back against the wall, causing a business sign already hanging by a thread to fall to the ground. On top of Ryan.

“No!” she screamed, lunging for her friend.

A blow to the jaw snapped her head sideways and made her vision blur. An arm grabbed her around the waist, pinning her arms to her sides. A hand covered her mouth as her feet left the ground. All she could see of Ryan was his boots peeking out from beneath the rectangle of boldly painted plywood.

She screamed against the palm clamped to her face, the muffled sound only loud in her head. She kicked. Struggled to get free. Fighting to get back to Ryan. To her team. To David.

It was pointless. The hold on her was too strong to break.

As he swung her around toward a dark, narrow passageway, her frantic gaze searched for David. He was nowhere to be seen. And then a voice roared, the words carrying straight to her like arrows.

“Elle, I’m coming for you!”

David.

The wooden doorway to the passage slammed shut with everyone she loved on the other side of it.

“David!” she screamed against the hand.

He had to fix things. He had to find Ryan. He had to find her.

He had to.

Before it was too late for all of them.

As she was shoved into the back of a waiting car, Elle felt her mind begin to close down. Like programs shutting, one by one, on a computer screen. Until the only two left open were a video of Ryan, bloody and falling, playing on an endless loop—and a file marked “David Knight, Spy.”

* * *

David,Callum, and Harvard watched the ambulance doors close on Ryan. There was nothing more any of the team could do for him now.

“I should have seen this coming,” Callum said, his normally Scottish-blue complexion grayer than usual. “Should have planned for an attack here. Now Ryan…”

Harvard clasped a hand on Callum’s shoulder while the Scot stood like a rock in the middle of the carnage. “We did everything we could in the time we had,” Harvard told him. “We’ve all agreed that there was no way something like this could have been set up in the time we had. Ryan’s injuries aren’t on you. Put the blame where it belongs—at the James’ doorstep.”

Callum rubbed at his chin. “The boy… I know he’s a man. A trained one at that and bloody good at his job. It’s just, he’s like a…” He swallowed, looking away from them.

Like a son to me.His unspoken words hung in the air between them.

“He’ll make it,” Harvard said. “He’s strong.”

“Aye.” Callum sounded no more convinced than the rest of them.

“Has anyone told the rest of the team?” David asked.