Page 94 of Only Fools Rush

Obi grinned.

Well, that was one way to take care of the rest of them.

Everything went silent. Raging black smoke billowed from the car. The two of us fist bumped. Just another day at the office.

“We need to go.” Obi stood and reached out to pull me to my feet.

Leona shouted. My head snapped toward our car on the other side of the intersection. A man’s large frame covered hers, wrestling with her on the ground.

My heart stopped. My eyes went wide.No.

I sprinted, barely registering the sound of Obi’s footsteps behind me, eyes locked on the two of them as Leona struggled to fight him off. She screamed again and my vision went fuckingred.

I yanked the man off her, ready to snap his neck, slit his throat, then cut his limbs off one by one, but his eyes were glassy and his body was limp. One of our knives from the duffel bag stuck out from his heart.

Leona looked up at me, eyes wild. Ragged breaths racked her frame.

“Sweetheart.” I gulped and dropped to my knees beside her.

“I killed him,” she said, shaky at first. Then she cleared her throat and spoke again. “I killed him.”

I almost collapsed in relief. She’d killed him. My vicious girl.

I grabbed her hands and pulled her to her feet, scanning her body for injuries.

“Yes, you did. Nice job, sweetheart. You okay? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, straightening her shirt. Her jacket had ripped. Fuck, I liked that jacket. It made her look hot as fuck. “He didn’t hurt me.”

I cupped the back of her head and pulled her against my chest. Fuck, my heart felt like it was about to explode.

I looked back at the dead man’s face. Blood dripped from the side of his mouth, his face locked in a mixture of surprise, shock, and pain. Yet something about him seemed familiar.

“Obi,” Leona murmured against my chest. The only indication that he was affected at all by what had just happened was the slight increase in his breathing.

He cupped the back of her neck, pressing the pad of his thumb to the hollow of her throat. “You’re okay?”

“I’m good.”

He swiped a thumb across her cheek, wiping away a bead of blood off a scrape, before he pulled away.

“This is a shitshow.” Dead bodies and shot-up cars surrounded us. Fuck. We didn’t have the LAPD on payroll yet. We could almost guarantee we’d be on cameras or video somewhere.

Obi glanced at the shot-up G-Wagon, then down at the dead guy at our feet. He looked fucking pissed, eyebrows furrowed, and mouth turned down. “Who are they?”

Finally, it clicked where I knew the assassin.

“I know this asshole,” I said, kicking the man’s body. “A mercenary for hire I ran into once in Amsterdam.”

“Someone hired them to kill us,” Obi said, tucking his gun into the back of his pants.

“What the hell?” Indignation replaced Leona’s shock as she pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Who else knows we’re here? Did someone follow us?”

My realtor obviously knew we were here, but he was on my payroll and had been for years. He knew I’d kill him if he were anything less than discreet.

“Ciel said he kept our trail clean,” Obi said. “The only other person who knows that we’re here…”

“Kofler,” she said, eyes narrowing. Her fists clenched at her sides. “That motherfucker. He betrayed us!”