Page 131 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

The convoy makes a hard right toward the warehouse district. I follow, leaning so far into the turn that my knee nearly kisses asphalt.Thirteen years of fear, and my hands still know exactly what to do.

"Target heading toward Vernon Industrial Complex," I radio. "Moving to intercept."

I pull alongside the convoy's lead vehicle and lock eyes with the driver. He swerves toward me, trying to use his SUV's weight advantage to force me off the road.

I brake hard and drop back, watching him overcorrect and nearly clip a parked car.These guys are good, but they're not racing drivers. They're thinking like soldiers, not like racers.

Big mistake.

I surge forward again, this time targeting the rear SUV. At seventy miles per hour, I thread between the rear and middle vehicles, close enough to reach out and touch both.

The rear driver panics and hits his brakes. The middle vehicle, focused on me, doesn't react fast enough.

Metal screams against metal as the two SUVs collide, and the middle vehicle—Mira's vehicle—veers hard left and slams into a concrete barrier with enough force to deploy airbags.

I brake hard and swing around, my heart hammering against my ribs as I approach the crashed SUV. Smoke rises from the crumpled hood, and I can hear shouting from inside the vehicle.

Then the rear door explodes open.

Mira rolls out of the wreckage like liquid death, zip-tie restraints hanging from one wrist, something sharp and bloody in her other hand. The tactical team that captured her is either unconscious or screaming inside the twisted metal.

The bastards' mistake was thinking restraints would hold her.

Our eyes meet across twenty feet of broken asphalt, and her face transforms from lethal fury to something that makes my chest tight.

"You magnificent, reckless fool," she calls out, limping toward me. Blood on her lips and fury in her eyes. "Thirteen years of phobias and you pick now to play hero?"

I swing off the Honda and meet her halfway, catching her as she throws her arms around my neck. She's shaking—from adrenaline, from shock—but she's solid and warm and alive against my chest.

"Yeah, well." My voice comes out rough, shaky. "Turns out watching you get dragged away by armed psychopaths is worse than any nightmare I've had about twisted metal."

She pulls back to look at me, her eyes bright with something between tears and laughter. "And if you'd crashed that bike trying to save me?"

"Then I'd die knowing I tried instead of living knowing I was too much of a coward." I cup her face in my hands, thumb brushing over a cut on her cheek. "You're worth conquering every demon I've got."

"What if I'm not worth it?" Her voice breaks on the last word. "What if I'm just another demon?"

"Then I guess I'm collecting the whole set." I press my forehead against hers, breathing her in. "Still think you're an idiot for doing it, though."

"Yeah, well." My thumb traces the cut on her cheek like I'm memorizing it. "You're worth being an idiot for."

"God, we're both completely insane," she whispers, and then she's kissing me—desperate, hungry, alive.

That's when the world explodes around us.

thirty

Mira

The explosion's shockwave throws us against the Honda, debris raining down like metallic hail. Jax shields my body with his, pressing us both low behind the motorcycle as concrete chunks bounce off the street around us.

"Move, move, move!" Cole's voice cuts through the ringing in my ears over comms. "LAPD response time, three minutes."

Jax pulls me upright, his hands running over me with—fuck, they're shaking. Not the clinical precision I've seen him use on engine diagnostics. These are the hands of a man who just rode a motorcycle for the first time in thirteen years.

"Can you ride?" His voice cracks on the last word.

The question shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Not because he's asking—because of how he's asking. Like he's still processing what he just did. Like his brain hasn't caught up to his body yet.