Free Asa (Marked Men #6) by Jay Crownover Page B

full blink, and then hell was unleashed.
    A kid, a boy that was barely out of puberty, popped up over the edge of the roof, opened fire from his higher position, and hit Dom. He took two shots in the vest, one ripped through his arm. The force and surprise sent him stumbling backward until he hit the waist-high railing of the fire escape and started to tumble over it. One last bullet had caught him just right in the side, but it was the fall that did the most damage.
    Then all I could hear was screaming, my own and Dom’s as he fell. I returned fire, caught the kid dead center in his chest. It didn’t matter. I thought Dom was dead and I couldn’t stop screaming.
    I woke up with a jerk. I was covered in a light sheen of sweat and noticeably shaking. Luckily this time I wasn’t making any noise and no one seemed to notice my disheveled state, mostly because Ayden and Jet had arrived and everyone was gathered around saying hello. I watched as Asa pulled his strikingly beautiful little sister into a warm embrace.
    And then it was like Shaw and the baby knew, like her and Rule’s baby boy had been waiting for just the right minute to make his grand entrance into the world. He seemed to know the exact moment that his whole family was there to meet him because it wasn’t until the entire gang was present that Reyer Remington Archer made his debut.
    I had to say it was the best thing that had ever been waiting for me on the end of the nightmarish visions of that horrible night, and I would forever be grateful I was allowed to be part of it.

CHAPTER 5
Asa
    About two weeks after the night at the hospital, I walked into the Bar full of trepidation. Rome had called and asked me to come in an hour early because he wanted to talk to me about something. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if I had screwed something up or done something wrong, but his grave tone was more serious than usual and it made my long-honed self-preservation instincts kick in. If he was going to can me, tell me to get lost, I told myself it was no big deal. I could hit the road, I could figure out something else to do, but the Bar had really sort of become the first place that felt like it was solid under my feet, and I didn’t want to admit that losing that scared the hell out of me. Not having this place really would set me adrift, and when I was adrift I got into trouble … lots of trouble.
    Ayden and Jet had stayed for a week. My sister wanted to be there when Shaw took baby Ry home and got settled. The nickname was cute and Shaw loved it because she was a huge J. D, Salinger fan, plus knowing who the kid’s dad was, he was bound to have a little Holden Caulfield rebellion in him. It wasn’t enough time with my sister, and even though I could see she was happy, really happy with her choice to move in order to get more time with her man, I missed her and I could see that she was still worrying too much about me. I tried to tell her that I was fine. I tried to explain that if I was going to fuck up, it wouldn’t matter if she was here in Denver or in Austin, but that just made her tawny eyes spark at me in anger. I loved Ayden more than I ever knew I was capable of, but I wasn’t going to try and fool her into believing that I was never going to screw up again. All I could do was try. Try and be better, try and be honest, try staying on the right side of the law and not running when things got hard. Trying was just going to have to be enough. For Ayden and for me.
    During the day the Bar was fairly quiet. There was a whole slew of retired veterans that liked to hang out and share old war stories. It never ceased to amaze me how many of them had to do with ex-wives and old lovers rather than any actual war. Rome typically opened the bar up and hung out until I got there in the early evening to run the night shift. He wanted to be home with his family during the evening and I couldn’t say I blamed him for that. Being a retired soldier himself,