More banging, scraping, the sounds of something beating through wood, the piercing, scratching noise of someone tearing it away. I felt dirt shower on me, wood falling on me, air streaming in and I sucked at it, taking dirt in with it and choking.

Then I heard a loud thump and Chace’s, “Fuck me, Jesus, f**k, f**k me.”

A loud crack of a sheet of wood breaking then hands under my armpits and I was pulled out.

Out.

Air.

Clean air.

A lot of it.

No dirt.

I sucked it in.

“Give her to me,” I heard rumbled and I was jostled, in different arms, my eyes opening and closing, my mouth sucking in air. “I got her. Give him a hand,” the same voice ordered.

I was shifted then jostled and new arms closed around me, familiar arms, and then I was down, my ass in Chace’s lap, his arm tight around me, his legs cocked, cocooning me, his other hand shifting my hair away from my face.

“You breathing, baby? Faye, you breathing, baby?”

I looked into his face and saw the bad kind of raw.

So I gave him what he needed to take it away.

“Yeah.”

Before I could watch it melt away, he shoved my face in his neck, his voice thick and hoarse when he muttered, “Fuck me, f**k me, f**k me.”

I looked over his shoulder and saw Ty, Tate, Wood, Deke, Twyla, Bubba, Deck and Nina Maxwell’s husband dirty, filthy, mud caked up their arms, on their chests.

They’d dug me out with their hands.

I turned my face into Chace’s neck and whispered, “You need to buy a shovel, honey.”

His body went solid around me.

Then he shoved his face in my neck and burst out laughing.

* * * * *

Semi-lounging, semi-not on Chace’s couch, hanging over the back of it, I looked out his back window.

On his deck illuminated by the outside lights was a beautiful, thin brunette who was having words with an extortionately handsome Italian American man. This was happening while a supremely good-looking black man with twists in his hair and another man, somewhat schluby wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a t-shirt that I could appreciate that said, “All hail Khaleesi, bring on the dragons!” looked on.

“I told you once, I told you a thousand times, Ren, what I do with my life is none of your business! Stay out of it!” she shouted.

She.

That would be Serenity.

My Serenity.

Or a woman I met an hour and a half ago named Ally Nightingale. A woman, after she gave me a big, relieved hug, who told me she lived in Denver. A woman who unabashedly and thankfully did not stop poking her nose into murder and mayhem in Carnal when I asked her to.

The woman who saved my life.

Luckily, at her back, was a badass introduced to me as Darius Tucker (the black guy) and a computer geek that Ally admitted did all the keyboard work introduced to me as Brody (the Game of Thrones freak).

Following her on her self-appointed assignation to save my behind but doing it in order to ream her, was a man I hadn’t met since he laid into Ally the second he arrived. I did know from her shouting at him that he was called Ren.

Cool name.

Hot guy.

And he seemed seriously pissed at her but it was in that way that Chace got pissed at me when he found out I did something crazy and stupid. That was to say, he was pissed because he was seriously worried she’d get hurt.

And it seemed Ally wasn’t cottoning onto that.

It further seemed Ally “Serenity” Nightingale was not like me in a lot of ways and not just that she was thinner than me, taller than me and a brunette. But also she was the queen of backtalk and attitude.

I knew this when Ren shouted back, “Baby, you keep up with this shit, I’ll chain you to my goddamned bed!”

To which she returned heatedly, “Try it, Zano, and I’ll kick your ass!”

All Chace had to say was “baby” and I was all, “okay”.

Not Ally.

Watching, it appeared Ally never gave in in her life, even to a serious hot guy who was threatening to chain her to his bed, which, studying him in all his tall, dark, hot-blooded Italian, badass gorgeousness, was no threat at all.

Jeez, she had this guy hot on her heels and she was perving on Nathan Fillion? I mean, Nathan Fillion was mega hot but this guy… amazing. And he didn’t live wherever Nathan Fillion lived but he was right there, on Chace’s deck, a foot away from Ally, shouting at her because he was worried.

I sensed movement, tore my eyes from the action, turned my head and watched Chace, hair wet from a shower, in clean jeans and a sweater, bare feet, walking to me, eyes to the window.

Infinitely hotter than the Italian hottie on the back deck.

He shifted in behind me and hauled my booty into his lap as his lower half twisted so one leg was on the couch, my h*ps were between his legs and through this, his eyes remained out the window.

“They still at it?” he asked.

I looked from Chace’s handsome profile out the window to see Ren pointing a finger in the African American man’s face, not a good move in my estimation but he didn’t seem to be worried, as he shouted, “You should know better!”

Darius Tucker grinned.

Seriously, he was hot too.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Should I intervene?” Chace asked.

There was a hot-blooded, pissed off, tall Italian guy on the deck. I was steering clear. I’d had enough danger for one night.

“Would you want someone to intervene when you were concerned pissed and shouting at me?”

“I’ll leave them be,” Chace muttered instantly and I grinned. “Just got a call from Cap,” he announced and my eyes went from the scene outside to him.

“Yeah?”

Chace’s eyes came to me.

“He told me that apparently, while Ally and Tucker were playin’ The Elite to get a lock on you, Brody was at CPD showin’ them the trail. They may have got what Newcomb was holdin’ over those boys, but two of them got fidgety and stupid. Direct links to the guy who nabbed you at Bubba’s and that shit ties in another man called Clinton Bonar who they’re goin’ out to pick up now. Some of that crew might breathe free but those two will go down for conspiracy and Frank says they already got warrants to collect shit on Brody’s trail. Not to mention, Tucker and Brody are both connected to a private investigator in Denver called Lee Nightingale who’s got links to law enforcement. So, the male PI Nightingale and his brother who happens to be a cop put their stamp on it, the shit he gave them direct may still be admissible.”

“Did she know they were coming after me?” I asked, hoping she didn’t and thus didn’t warn me.