Page 132 of Priest

His eyes held mine.

“Yes,” he said. “Because I knew Joker was going to start sniffing around you. I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how close he’d get, but I knew he’d try.” His jaw tightened as his gaze flicked once toward the door. “The second you disappeared, I pushed Archangel to move.”

That should have terrified me.

Maybe it would have, if we were anywhere else. If I wasn’t sitting in a room where Lena’s blood was still spreading across the floor. If he hadn’t come through that door with a knife in his hand and something careful in his eyes.

Instead, all I could do was shake as he shifted in front of me and started working at the rope around my ankles.

“Priest,” I choked.

“He’s here,” Ace said, already crouched at my feet. “They’re clearing the lower floor. He’s tearing this place apart to find you.”

A sob broke out of me before I could stop it.

The last rope gave way, but my legs didn’t feel like mine. My wrists throbbed, my ankles burned, and the pain across my stomach tightened again until I could barely draw breath.

“I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t move.”

“Yes, you can.” Ace’s voice didn’t turn harsh, but it became absolute. “Lean into me. If you fall, you fall into me. I won’t let either of you hit the floor.”

Either of you.

He said it like a vow.

He slid one arm behind my back and helped me up, careful not to crowd my belly. The room lurched around me, and for one terrifying second my knees folded. Ace took my weight without hesitation, bracing himself hard enough that I heard his boot scrape against the floor.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “You’re going to be okay now.”

We made it three steps toward the door before a man appeared in the hallway, Dead Man’s Hand patch on his cut and a gun already lifting in his hand.

Ace moved faster than thought.

He shoved me behind him and twisted, taking me down with his body curved around mine. The shot cracked through the doorway, close enough that heat seemed to skim the air. Behind us, the chair I’d been tied to jerked as the bullet tore into it.

The place where my stomach had been seconds before.

Ace fired once from above me, and the man dropped out of sight.

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Ace’s breath came hard against my ear. His arm was locked around my shoulders, keeping my belly shielded beneath him, and only then did I realize he had put his entire body between the gun and my baby.

“You hit?” he asked.

I shook my head, unable to make sound.

His sleeve was torn near the upper arm, blood darkening the fabric in a thin line. He saw me looking and shook his head once.

“Graze. Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” I whispered, voice breaking.

“Later.” He pushed himself up and pulled me carefully with him. “Right now we move.”

He kept me tucked against his side as we reached the hallway, his gun up and his body angled to cover mine. Every step pulled at something low in my belly, and the pain tightened again, hard enough to steal my breath.

Ace felt it happen.

“Blue?”