Protective Secrets (The Protective Series, Book 3)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Running beside Asko and Jarmo was a feeling that was foreign, yet oddly familiar at the same time. It felt as if I'd been flung into a past life — a life where the three of us fought side-by-side, covering each other's backs in the face of danger, unafraid of the outcome on our own lives. In that moment it was just the original Protective Services crew charging head-on into their next mission like old times.

Breath scraped up the sides of my lungs as I rounded the next corner, halting sharply in my tracks. Asko and Jarmo skidded to a stop on either side of me, their eyes instantly falling over the blank canvas delivery truck pulling out of the gutter. Two men wearing plain black balaclavas sprinted after it, hopping into the back as the vehicle began to pick up speed.

Jarmo glanced down at the iPhone in his hand, using this short interval to catch his breath. "His last signal was here. They must have him in that truck."

I held up my hand to him, putting the other over my weapons belt as a precautionary measure. "Jarmo, look."

He followed my gaze to the sidewalk, kneeling down beside the unconscious body of a third man whose face was concealed behind an identical balaclava. A small pool of blood was slowly expanding beneath his chest, but that wasn't where the bullet had pierced him. Studying the trajectory of the wound upon closer inspection, I noticed the bullet had torn through his back, directly between the shoulder blades, and come out through the other side. Whoever shot him had been aiming to kill, and judging by his lack of movement and stiff muscles, they'd succeeded.

"There goes our only viable lead," Asko sighed, placing his hands on his hips. "Now what?"

"We're not giving up so easily," I rebutted, scanning the street in both directions. There were fresh black tyre tracks imprinted in the asphalt, looking like they led directly into the heart of the city. "Dominik is our brother, and we fight for our brothers. Just like we fought for Janne until the very end." I looked over my shoulder at the both of them, noticing they wore mirrored solemn expressions, perhaps realising the true severity of the situation could be far worse than any of us originally anticipated. "Do either of you have access to a motorbike?"

They exchanged a look, before Asko reached into the front pocket of his skinny black jeans and fished out a set of jingling keys. "Izzy rented one for us, but —

I snatched the keys from him without waiting to hear the rest of his sentence, deciding on impulse it was unimportant. We needed to get to Dominik as quickly as possible, before any further harm could come to him.

"Wait!" Jarmo called out, his rushed footsteps thumping along the concrete to catch up with my fast strides. "You don't even know where the bike is!"

I jolted to a halt. Not because of his exclamation, but because of the shiny black Harley Davidson FatBoy cleverly concealed between two trash bins that'd drawn my attention. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say this is it?"

He crossed his arms, muttering something under his breath that sounded like "lucky guess" before dropping the keys into my open palm. "Just promise me one thing, alright? Don't trash it. This is a rental. If you trash this, Izzy will kill one of us. And knowing my luck, it'll most likely be me."

Without answering him, I shoved the key into the ignition and hopped on from the back, sliding comfortably along the groove of the leather seat. The roar of the motor was almost deafening as I turned the key, marvelling at the sleek body and horse power the bike possessed. I felt all giddy and excited, like a kid bursting through the doors of a candy shop.

I focused my attention back on the task at hand, turning my fingers on the handle. The bike revved to life, taking off underneath me. Cars and skyscrapers passed by in blurred motions on either side of me as I sped along the road, following my instinct once I realised the tyre tracks I saw were the only piece of physical evidence I had to go on.