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The stalker reached inside his jacket. A black metal barrel flashed.

“Charlee! Charlee!” Jay ripped off the wig and tossed it, where it hit the man flanking him as he ran. “Goddammit, Colson, I told you to stay with her.”

“The perimeter’s not safe.” The older man gasped, maintaining Jay’s pace.

Charlee slipped around the bend and out of his sight.

“Charlee, no!” The scream barreled from his chest, and he ran harder, faster.

The race to her building was the longest moment in his life, one in which timing and speed could change everything. His heart thundered, his muscles heated, and his legs wouldn’t move fast enough.

Footfalls pounded after him. “Mr. Mayard,” Tony shouted from his other side. “Go back to the vehicle.”

The concrete blurred beneath his Chucks. He neared the side of the building and was slammed into it with the force of Tony’s body.

Her chest pressed against his back, and her hands and gun on the brick caged him in. She bent her neck and shoved her face in his. “The threat isn’t neutralized.” Her gray eyes became steel cannons. “I need you out of the kill zone. Back. In. The vehicle.”

Any other time, her look alone would’ve had him checking his pants for his balls. He bucked her off his back and skirted around her.

She shoved an arm out to block his forward motion. The downside of a top-notch bodyguard was her over-the-top-fucking-notch guarding.

“There’s someone back therewithCharlee. Move.” He spiked the last word with venom.

Her lips peeled back in a snarl. “Argh!” She spun ahead of him and put her back to his chest, positioning his body behind the cover of hers. Her left hand hovered a wobble away from his hip. Her right aimed a Glock up and out in front of her. “Stay behind me.”

Ahead of them, Colson led with his raised pistol, his other hand on the device in his ear as he spoke low into a mic. “This is Colson. Possible gun threat. The principal will not leave the kill zone. Need a mobile support team yesterday.”

They inched forward, and Tony’s hand brushed his leg. It was a haunting presence of his aunt’s hand on tattered little boy briefs. He recoiled and grabbed his head against the images of the shed, the soiled mattress, and Aunt El’s cruel smile.

He stumbled toward the corner of the building. Fight it. Focus on Charlee. Reaching into his pocket, he fingered the nasal bottle. A lift would sharpen his concentration, numb his trigger, and nourish his strength. Fuck, his grip on the present was spinning, darkening.

Tony crowded him, her nearness invading his focus and conjuring pollution from the sewer of his mind. He could taste the soot in the oven. He could hear the hollow reverberation of his aunt’s mewling.You’ll stay in the Bolo until you warm up to me, little boy.

A wall of hot ash and rust blackened the sun. Not now. Stop. Fucking stop. His fingers scraped uselessly on the brick building, on the Bolo oven’s door. Charlee could be struggling, hurting, and he was fucking trapped, couldn’t reach her. He fumbled with the inhaler from his pocket and huffed two burning squirts into each nostril.

The rush tipped his balance, and Tony caught his elbow. The sensation from her hand rippled over him, through him, like water. He was sailing, driven by the wind.

“Mr. Mayard?”

A strong sense of buoyancy sighed through his body, and the mist of scared boyhood evaporated into the cloudless sky. Vigor pumped through his limbs and strengthened his spine. He broke away from Tony, racing past her. Urgency flogged his thoughts, pushing him faster, harder.

At the corner of the building, arms wrapped around him from behind and the ground dropped away from his feet.

The same old shit rose in him, but he was fueled now, his senses were armed to fight it. He threw his head back, colliding with Tony’s. She grunted and released him.

He needed to catch up with Colson, who had already vanished around the corner. He held his fear tightly within him and burst into the rear alley.

At first, all he saw was the stiff back of Colson’s shirt. Tony positioned herself in front of him, panting and steadying her gun. “Stay behind me.”

Fuck that. He ran around her and froze.

At the farthest end of the building, a man faced Charlee where she stood with her back against the wall, the barrel of a handgun pressed against her jaw.

Rage buckled through him and dread knotted in his gut. He blinked against the sun beating down on him, whirling under weight of the sky and the buzz of cocaine.

The man looked his way, met his eyes. The wind beneath Jay’s high dispersed and his nervous system crashed. Sweat slicked his palms and panic rode in on a wave of tremors.

If he ran toward them, would the fucker shoot her? Even with Tony and Colson aiming their guns behind him? Not a chance he would take.