“You’re dead.” The tone in Dawg’s voice sent a chill racing up Lyrica’s spine then. Even more frightening was the fact that Natches didn’t say a damned word.

“Yeah, yeah, so little Zoey told me,” Dorne laughed. “But as Carmina said, you’re not so young anymore. And you’re not armed. So I’m really not worried about you.” He waved his hand toward the basement door. “Let’s go now, before I have to put a bullet in her knee or something to make you hurry the fuck up. I’d like to get this little job done and head out for a beautiful beach with lots and lots of pretty girls.”

“Like hell,” Natches said then.

It was his tone that warned them.

It was the voice of the killer Dawg had described to her once, the one Natches had once been.

Chaos erupted suddenly.

The sound of glass shattering came at the same time that Dorne stepped into the foyer, freezing him in his tracks. His finger twitched on the trigger of his weapon, firing in a string of death as he went to the floor.

Lyrica was only barely aware of Graham throwing her to the ground as she watched the second death of the day.

Dorne went down, half of his face simply gone from the sniper’s bullet that took him out. One side of his face was slack with surprise; the other side, just gone.

She blinked, the realization that it was over slamming into her senses like a sledgehammer.

“Stand down!” Natches was snapping into the link. “The shooter’s mine. I repeat, the shooter’s mine.” He said it again, snarling, just to be certain he was heard. “I repeat, the shooter’s mine. It was his shot, by god. Stand down.”

The shooter was his? Since when did he have a shooter?

“Yours?” Dawg screamed. “Who the fuck is out there, Natches?”

Natches stared back at him, his expression filled with irritated self-disgust. “Well, it wasn’t me. Who’s the only fucking protégé I’ve ever had? The only man on the face of the earth that could have made that shot?”

No, it couldn’t be Harley, she thought—Harley was gone. He’d been gone since the night Zoey’s fragile heart had been broken.

Poor Zoey. She knew how her sister felt now.

Turning to Graham, the sense of unreality grew so strong inside her it was frightening. It soon became terrifying.

“No . . .” The word slipped past her lips as the arguments around her and through the link receded. “No. Please, god . . .”

She couldn’t scream.

She wanted to scream, to wail, to release the building agony burning inside her.

“Graham . . .” She reached for him, realizing he had done exactly as she had been terrified he would.

He’d taken a bullet for her.

“Shhh.” He reached up for her, his hand shaking, his face ghostly white as blood stained his shirt and the floor beneath him. A slow, oozing trail of blood. “It’s okay, baby.”

“No. No.” Her gaze became blurry, tears falling from her eyes as she felt the sobs tearing from her chest. “Please, Graham . . .”

“Shhh.” Her hand covered his, holding it to her cheek as Dawg and Natches were suddenly rushing to them. “Don’t cry. Don’t let Kye cry . . .”

“Don’t you die on me!” Fury lashed at her now. “Damn you, Graham. You bastard! Don’t you dare leave me like this where I can’t even torture you for breaking my fucking heart!”

Sobs mixed with the fury pouring from her as she watched his eyes, watched the regret, watched emotion fill them.

“I want to tell you . . .”

“Dawg!” She was being pulled away from him, hard arms tearing her from him as her brother and cousin were suddenly hiding him from her. “Let me go!” She fought, clawed, kicked out at whoever, whatever was dragging her away from the man she loved.

“Stop it, Lyrica.” Timothy was holding her, pulling her into his arms as she collapsed, sobbing, holding on to him as sirens could be heard screaming into the parking lot outside.

“I have to stay with him!” she cried, desperate to get back to him as the front door was flung open and EMTs rushed inside. “I have to stay . . .”

“Lyrica.” The brutal, hoarse snap in his tone had her stilling, staring up at him, and seeing the tracks of tears staining his face.

“Tim?” she whispered his name, the agony lancing her, tearing ragged holes into her soul.

“Come on, Lyrica.” He drew her to the door. “Let the EMTs take care of him. You can’t be with him now.”

“No, I can’t leave him.”

Tim was pulling at her, trying to pull her from the house.

“No!” The word was torn from her throat in a scream of rage as she broke from him, turning back to Graham as he was being loaded onto the gurney, the techs working frantically to stem the flow of blood.

“Come on!” Natches’s arm went around her shoulder, his hands stained with Graham’s blood, his expression dark with concern. “Let’s get in the ambulance. You can ride with him.”

“Natches . . .”

“It’s bad, Lyrie,” he whispered, his voice ragged, his eyes darkening as she shuddered, another sob ripping from her. “Come on, I’ll get you in the ambulance with him, but just . . .” He swallowed tightly. “Come on,” he repeated.

It was killing her.

She was dying inside as she realized what he was trying to tell her. Graham could die en route to the hospital, and she had to be prepared for it.

She couldn’t survive losing him like that.

If she had to do without him . . . god, don’t force her to do without him this way. Not like this. Not where she couldn’t at least see him, at least know he was there.

She prayed.

She’d always tried hard not to pray for herself, and other than when she was in danger of dying, she’d kept that rule. But she prayed now, for Graham. For herself.

God help her, how was she supposed to survive if he was gone? If he was no longer a part of her life?

She couldn’t survive.

If Graham died, she may breathe, she may walk, but Lyrica knew, inside where it counted, she, too, would die.

TWENTY-THREE

“I was shot.” Graham sighed as he felt the presence ease up to him and sit beside him.

He was in a white place, a bright place. This was a place he had never been before, even those times Doogan had managed to get him wounded.

“Yeah, son, you were shot.”

He turned his head, resignation weighing heavily in his chest as he stared back at his parents.

Garrett and Mary Brock looked as vibrant now as they had the day they died, as they’d looked hours before they stepped onto that doomed plane.

“Hell.” Rubbing his hands over his face as he stared around him, the total lack of anything but the pure white surroundings and his parents convinced him as nothing else could—he was dead.

His mother laughed, a sound as soft and loving as a breeze.

“You’re not dead,” she promised, easing down to sit on his other side.

He felt her arm slide around his waist.

“Then why am I here?”

“To help you decide if you’re going to fight to live, or if you’re going to give up,” his father answered, that firm, commanding tone of his just as grating now as it had ever been.

He gave his father an irritated look. “There’s days I’m convinced you’re a Mackay.”

It wasn’t a compliment.

Garrett chuckled at the observation. “Rowdy, Dawg, Natches, and I were damned good friends at one time.” He sighed. “But our lives were going in different directions.” He looked around Graham and smiled at the wife who had died with him. “We needed different things at the time, I guess.”