Fox breathed as steadily as he could. His pulse all but deafened him and he felt the adrenaline as it tried to make his arms shake, but if Axel thought for one second Fox was about to aim the gun toward him, he’d pull his own trigger. Fox had no doubt about that. The man was ex-Special Ops. He was trained to make decisions in fractions of a second and he would absolutely act to save his own life.

The grim look of betrayal in Axel’s gaze hurt so badly that Fox was half sure he’d never recover from it.

This was the flip side of the social engineering coin. Fox wouldn’t ever use his abilities and knowledge to do this kind of harm, yet in Taylor Kennedy’s hands, words had become weapons sharp as any blade, and able to cut twice as deep.

He’d appreciate the mastery if only he had the time.

Fox was damn sure to keep his gun aimed at Taylor as he continued to raise it, inch by precious inch, keeping it slow so that Axel wouldn’t fire.

“Taylor Kennedy.” He could hear the wobble in his own words, but he pressed on. “You are under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to perform acts of terrorism.”

“Really.” Taylor looked bored. “No Miranda rights, Tenko?”

“No.” Fox took a cautious step toward Taylor. “I don’t need to question you.”

“True, I guess. I did just tell you everything, didn’t I?” Taylor slowly offered up his hands, wrists facing each other, but there was a glint in his eye that gave Fox pause. “It’s a shame you won’t get to complete your arrest, though.”

He was about to tell Taylor to shut his damn mouth and stop talking crap. The guy’s only weapons were the lies he wove and the sooner he divested Taylor of those the better. But Taylor seemed so fucking smug.

So convinced.

Fox hesitated.

He wasn’t sure what he heard first: the skid of tires on dirt, or the stretch of a poorly-treated emergency brake, but hot on their heels was a soft, single word from Axel.

“Shit.”

“Oh come on, Agent Walker,” Taylor cooed. “Weren’t you busy arresting me? You’d better be—”

Fox heard a short burst of gunfire, and bullets tore a hole in the ceiling over his head. He yelped as he dove for cover behind the couch.

“Too damn slow,” called Taylor. “That’s your problem, Tenko. Always was!”

He heard a grunt as Axel hit the floor somewhere far behind him, and cursed under his breath. They weren’t even going to have the time to fix the damage Taylor had done, and if either of them died now, those words would be the last damn thing Axel ever thought of Fox.

Fox wasn’t about to let it go down that way.

Another set of tires pulled up outside, but Fox couldn’t worry about those. Not when the first gun was firing again. More holes punched through the ceiling, and a couple ripped through the front door as it foolishly creaked back on its hinges, still reeling from Axel’s boot.

Fox had no line of sight to the doorway from where he’d landed. He began to snake backward.

Their only chance was to get the hell out of this house before Taylor’s people surrounded it. They wouldn’t fire indiscriminately, but it dawned on him that Taylor stayed in his goddamn chair because that was the safe spot.

Fuck.

This was a goddamn trap.

All these people broken out of their cells, just waiting for the fish to be in the barrel. The house had to be bugged, or maybe Taylor had set an alarm on the door. Either way, they’d come from however far away it took to be invisible from the road and now they were able to fire into the house at will because they knew where exactly to avoid.

Everything else was fair game.

“You assholes are all still under arrest, you know,” Axel yelled from somewhere at Fox’s back.

The rattle of semi-automatic gunfire was almost deafening. Holes appeared like magic along the front wall of the house, and dust fell like water from overhead.

Fox squirreled his way back against the rear wall, covering three meters in what felt like a second. He had to take the risk that they were still shooting overhead, because otherwise he’d be pinned, and that was going to get them all killed.

With the benefit of his new position he could see Axel crouched behind the kitchen counter, gun aimed at the front door. He made a brief hand-signal, a point toward the rear door, and prayed it was enough to attract Axel’s attention.

It was.

Axel glanced his way, his eyebrows drawn together.

Fox thumbed to the rear door again, but Axel indicated the front door with two fingers.

It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together, but Fox was one, so he got there in double time.

The front door had line of sight to the back, and if either of them went for it they’d be sitting ducks.

He nodded to show his comprehension of the problem, then snapped off another couple of signals, hoping to God the FBI were taught the same ones as the CIA were. He pointed to himself, then held his hand over his head, before gesturing to Axel and then the door.

I’ll cover you. You get outside.

Axel’s gaze flicked around, then he nodded.

Fox inched along the wall. “Hey assholes,” he yelled. “Which one of you is the hot one?”

To their credit, nobody answered him with anything more than bullets and he grinned to himself as they punched through the carpet.

“None of you, huh?” He thumbed his safety. “It’s okay. Not everyone can be as pretty as me. Or as smart. You’re not all that smart, are you? You know every time you shoot all you do is tell me exactly where you are, right? You do understand that?”

“Just fucking kill him already,” Taylor yelled.

“Why don’t you come out here so we can see how fuckin’ smart you are?” Fox couldn’t place the voice, so it must have been one of Axel’s team’s arrests.

“Okay! Don’t shoot, I’m coming right out!” Fox grabbed a lamp’s power cord and pulled it from the side table it sat on and a hail of bullets thumped into the floor.

The clustering was all too similar. These idiots weren’t even moving around out there. Maybe they were afraid of coming inside, for all Taylor’s bravado.

Maybe Taylor just wasn’t paying them enough for this shit.

Fox glanced to Axel and nodded.

Now.

Then he aimed at a spot to the right of the front door and squeezed his trigger three times in rapid succession.

The first shot punched a hole through the wall.

The second found a target.

The third almost drowned out the sound of screaming.

Axel fired at the back door, smashing the glass, and he dove through it shoulder-first. Glass rained down around him as he fell out of sight, but two seconds later gunfire came from the ruined back door, and Fox heard another scream from out front.

The screaming wasn’t his own.

He had to remember that.

He sucked down a breath and snapped off more shots, to the left of the door this time. His targets would have moved now, so he had less chance of hitting while firing blindly, but coupled with Axel’s shots from outside it should deter them for precious seconds.

Seconds in which Fox could get the hell out of this house and be by Axel’s side again.

The plan better work, because it was the only plan he had.

There was a bout of back and forth. The ceiling was ruined, as was the floor. He could see the sky through the holes rent in the roof.

Then a moment’s silence.

Fox took his chance. He bolted for the gap Axel had left in the back door and threw himself out of it with no idea of how far he might fall once he was through.

It was a handful of inches, thank God. Nothing more than that. He tried to break his fall with his shoulder, but he hadn’t been able to prepare or judge the distance and he skidded painfully across grass and dirt.

A firm hand grabbed his collar and hauled him away from the door.

“You okay?” Axel hissed the words down at him.

Fox nodded numbly. “He was lying,” he mumbled. “Axel, I swear, he was fucking lying!”

“Yeah.” Axel shook his head, but when his lips moved again the sound was drowned out by more gunfire, and Axel snapped off more shots into the house. “We can’t fucking sit here,” he whispered.

Fox rolled onto his front so that he could prepare to move. All he could hear was the whizz of bullets, the rasp of semi-automatic fire, and the thud of his pulse in his own ears.

Was it getting hot out here?

God, there wasn’t a fire, was there? He looked around as he tried to take it all in, but he didn’t see any flames.

Just Axel.

“What do we do?” He gripped his gun tightly.

Axel said nothing, and the look in his eyes was all the answer Fox needed.

Axel didn’t know what to do.

They were going to die.

Fox’s world was closing in, and this was it. An epic scramble around the United States would end right here, right now, in the dirt.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“For what?”

Fox took a deep breath. “For not kissing you in Syria.”

Axel eyed him, then smirked. “Yeah,” he rumbled. “You’re not the only one sorry about that.”

“Great.” Fox nodded and raised his gun. “Let’s not fucking die, then.”

Axel chuckled. “I have an idea.”