Page 97 of Ford

He must have gotten through to her because she nodded, her jaw tight. “But you stay alive, you hear me? Promise me you’ll stay alive.”

The emotion in her voice broke him, and he let himself lean down and kiss her hard, fierce, a goodbye that held the only promise he could make.

He drew away, looked at Kat. “When I go out there, you need to run the other direction. Got it?”

Kat took RJ’s hand.

The footsteps came closer.

“Go.” He didn’t look back as he edged out along the truck, listening.

He kept his breaths shallow, refusing to give up his position.

Closer, closer— He launched himself at their pursuer with a roar.

The man was big—he’d give him that. And he took a punch, not going all the way down, but instead rounding and clocking York hard in the head with his elbow.

Gray hazed his vision, knocked him sideways, but he rounded and delivered the same punch.

The man grunted.

York couldn’t see much of the man in the darkness, cut just barely by the lights from the nearby train yard, but he had the sense the guy could handle himself.

The man whirled back around and delivered a shot to York’s gut.

York absorbed it and threw a punch to his jaw.

The man dodged, yanked him in close for a pummeling.

Fists found his ribs, twice. Knocked his breath loose.

Sorry, but he wasn’t going down that easily. York grabbed the assailant around the neck, forcing him down. He brought his knee up, aiming for anything soft—a belly, a groin—and connected with bone.

Pain ripped through his leg as the man pushed him away.

A scream tore through the haze of adrenaline.

Please, let it not be RJ sticking around to see this. Because this guy had chops, and York would do well to stay on his feet and buy them time.

The man kicked his knee, intending to take him down, but York bit back a grunt and launched himself at the man, slamming them against the building. Held on even as the man landed two moneymakers into his kidneys. York swore and delivered an answer into the man’s gut.

Still the screaming.

Run, RJ, please be running!

Because he was starting to hurt.

Then to his horror, the scream turned into his name.

“York, stop!Stop!” RJ was there,notobeying him,notrunning into the safety of Yekaterinburg, but grabbing him by the elbow, pulling him back from his attacker. “Stop! That’s my brother—it’sFord!”

The man pushed him away, hard.

York stumbled back. “What—?”

He just stood there, freshly punched, reeling, his knees about to buckle as RJ turned and threw her arms around his attacker.

Her hero, apparently.