Bullets flew throughout the coffee shop. Aidan rose from behind their table and shot at the driver. Cassie swallowed, scanning the room. Everyone was on the floor, trying not to get hit, fear etched on their faces.
Aidan dropped behind the table as bullets whizzed above their heads. She met his gaze. His eyes were dark and stormy. The man was ready to kill.
“Stay down.”
She gave a quick nod before he rose again. Then she reached for Olive’s hand. It was shaking.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
Olive’s face was white, and fear had her eyes as wide as saucers. She opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out.
Cassie squeezed the other woman’s fingers. Then a loud grunt sounded from the table beside them. Her stomach clenched when she saw a man on the ground, dark blood soaking into his shirt. He looked at Cassie, shock and fear and pain distorting his features. Time seemed to crawl…then his eyes closed.
Oh, God.
She couldn’t let an innocent person die. Cassie snaked her body toward him, keeping as low as possible, until she was close enough to touch. Quickly, she whipped her sweater over her head and pressed it to his stomach. She put two fingers at his neck.
Come on! Where’s the pulse?
She closed her eyes and tried to block out everything around her. Then she felt it. It was faint but there. He’s still—
Punishing fingers wrapped around her upper arm and yanked her back against a hard chest. Then she was being dragged along the floor, toward a back hallway.
She shrieked and clawed at the man’s fingers. He didn’t release her. Instead, the fingers tightened, digging into her skin.
They were almost at the hall when a big body collided with the man’s side.
Aidan.
She wrenched her aching arm free and rose to all fours as the two men fought. She was crawling back to the fallen man when someone else grabbed her around the waist and lifted, carrying her into the hall again. Before she could blink, she was thrown over a shoulder. When the man rushed through a door into the back alley, panic blasted in her chest.
She heard a car door opening.
No, no, no. If he got her into a car, her chances of escape decreased massively.
Desperate, she reached down and grabbed the belt loops of his pants. Using all her strength, she pulled herself forward while throwing her heels into the man’s face.
It worked. He stumbled with a shout, then fell back, landing right on her when she fell to the ground. A jarring pain whipped through her body. The weight lifted. Gray haze danced over her vision, but when those strong hands took hold of her wrists and began to drag her, she blinked it away.
Survive now, feel the pain later.
Cassie yanked and writhed to get her arms free. She shot a look over her shoulder and shuddered when she spotted the dark blue vehicle with tinted windows. Her gaze brushed over the man pulling her, but he wore a mask. Then she saw who was standing beside the open back door of the car.
Joshua. The sight of him was the stuff nightmares were made of.
A man lifted a gun from the open car window. Aidan shot his hand, then his chest through the front windshield. Before he could shoot again, a man behind a nearby table pulled a gun from an IWB holster.
Aidan dropped behind a table just before the bullet passed.
Shooters were goddamn everywhere. Some had come from the car. Some from the street.
And at least two had been in the goddamn café with them.
His gaze honed in on Cassie. A man in a suit had taken a bullet, and she was pressing her hands to his chest. He was just focusing on another shooter when she cried out. His head swung around.
Fuck!
A man was trying to use Cassie as a shield even as he dragged her toward the back of the shop. She was covering too much of his body to risk shooting.
Aidan holstered his weapon and leapt at them, then pulled the guy off her.
He’d just gotten the asshole onto his back when the man pulled a knife. Aidan shifted out of the path of an unskilled swipe. He grabbed the guy’s wrist, turned the knife and plunged it into his chest.
A bullet hit the table beside his head, and he rolled. Then his gaze went to where Cassie should have been—only she wasn’t there anymore.
He scanned the floor of the café. Fear catapulted throughout his body, turning his skin to ice when he realized she wasn’t in the shop.
He took off toward the back door, not paying attention to the bullets still flying around the room or bodies slamming into bodies. He had one goal—get to Cassie.
He flew outside.
There they were—a tall man wearing a ski mask, dragging Cassie toward a car as she struggled to get free. A second guy stood by the back door. Joshua.
Aidan shot forward so fast the man didn’t see him coming. He wrenched the guy off Cassie and threw him into the side of the building hard enough to render him unconscious. Then he turned to Joshua.
Elijah’s brother was madly tugging at a gun in his holster, his movements frantic and clumsy.
Aidan was on him in less than a second. He grabbed his wrist and squeezed. There was the audible cracking of bone and a shout of pain. He lowered his head, and when he spoke, his voice was lethal. “Why do you want Cassie?”
The guy’s breathing was labored from pain, and there was an angry scowl on his face. “Fuck. You!”
Wrong answer. He clenched harder. More snapping. He was crushing the guy’s bones. And he’d keep crushing until he gave Aidan an answer.
Joshua screamed.
Suddenly, Cassie was beside him. Aidan growled. “Get the hell back, Cassie!”
She didn’t listen. Of course she didn’t. Why the hell would he expect her to listen to him in the middle of a goddamn kidnapping attempt?
“Tell me what Elijah wants with me,” Cassie demanded.
Aidan loosened his grip. And the guy took a moment to catch his breath, then, slowly, his gaze shifted over to Cassie. A smile curved his lips. It was a cruel smile. One meant to incite fear. It had more rage rushing through Aidan’s blood.
“You’re the chosen one, Cassie.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice a notch quieter now.
The back door opened. He shot a quick look over his shoulder to see Logan stepping out, followed closely by Blake.
Joshua’s gaze never left Cassie. “A long time ago, God came to Elijah. Told him a revelation. Told him what needed to happen when you turned thirty, for the salvation of everyone else.”
Unease swirled in Aidan’s gut.
Cassie inched close.
“Cassie. Stay. Back!” The words were low and guttural through Aidan’s gritted teeth.
“What needs to happen?” she asked.
“Logan, take Cassie inside.” She didn’t need to hear the asshole spewing bullshit that would only scare her more than she already was.
Logan moved forward, but Cassie threw out her hands to stop him. “No! I deserve to know.”
Logan stopped, and Aidan wanted to rage at the man.
“What needs to happen, Joshua?” she asked.
Another shit-eating grin. “Your death is going to save us all.”
Cassie’s breath stuttered.
“You’re our sacrifice,” Joshua added.
Fuck.
Cassie took a shaky step back.
“Logan, take him. Don’t let him go until he’s sitting in the back of a police car with cuffs around his wrists.”
The second Logan had Joshua, Aidan tugged Cassie aside. The asshole was still watching her, so he blocked the guy’s view. “Don’t listen to him.”
She nodded, but her face was a shade whiter than it had been.
Carefully, he cupped her cheeks, but when the back door opened again and police streamed out, Cassie shut down.
The next hour was a rush of talking to police, liaising with Steve and his team, and people being moved next door to the hospital. Cassie barely left Olive’s side. The second guy, the masked man who’d taken Cassie from the shop, had been Antwon, Elijah’s top guard.
Between Antwon’s and Joshua’s presence, and with the recording Olive had provided, the FBI had the evidence they needed to raid the compound and arrest Elijah. Olive had insisted on going with them, to be with her mother.
By the time Aidan and Cassie got to his car, it was late afternoon.
“Do you mind if I stop by the office to grab my laptop?” He’d left it there, planning to take her with him while he did some work tomorrow, but he wasn’t asking her to go anywhere. Not now.
She shook her head, her gaze remaining on the window.
When he parked on the street alongside the Blue Halo building, she remained quiet, gaze still turned away from him.
He touched her leg. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. Her bottom lip was between her teeth, and a frown marred her brow. “Mom knew.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Elijah told Mom he planned to kill me on my thirtieth birthday. He must have. That’s why she risked her life to get us out of there, but she never got the chance to tell me.”
He touched her hand. “Your mom was strong. She loved you and did what she could to keep you safe.”
“I just can’t imagine that kind of burden on her shoulders, being told an entire cult saw her daughter as their human sacrifice.”
He squeezed her thigh. “It would have changed everything for her.”
“Yeah.” Cassie blew out a long breath and climbed out of the car. He did the same. Once he was by her side, he wrapped an arm around her waist.
They’d just reached the corner of the building when he heard rattling.
A locked door. Like someone was trying to get into the Blue Halo office.
He eased Cassie away from the corner of the building with one hand and took out his Glock with the other.
She gasped at the sight of the gun and opened her mouth to say something, but she closed it again at the shake of his head. Gently, he pressed her back to the wall. “Let me check first.”
She gave a quick nod.
It was probably nothing, but after the day they’d had, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He whipped around the corner. A woman several yards away, standing in front of the door to Blue Halo, screamed before pressing a hand to her chest.
Aidan lowered the gun. “Mia?”
