The door to the warehouse opened, making me flinch.
But then there was commotion.
And not the good kind.
Elana tensed as the door flew open and Trick came in wide-eyed. "Trouble," he barked at her, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a gun. A gun. I mean I knew they were gang members, but still, it was one thing to know it, it was a complete other to see evidence of it.
"How many?"
"Six," Trick said as he moved back out.
Then something happened that, even if I had a lifetime to consider the possibility of, I never would have been able to come up with. My sister swung around and in a blur, she was no longer in front of me, but behind me. Her arm locked around my center. Now, we were both about the same height, but she had the slight advantage of heels, making her head several inches higher than mine. The arm that wasn't around my stomach, pressing into the spot where D had kicked me and sending a wave of pain through me that made me seriously worry I was going to throw up, went behind her for a second. When it came back, I saw the flash of silver. Then I felt something cold, round, and metal press into my temple.
I didn't have to see it to know what it was.
A gun.
My sister was holding a gun to my temple.
"El..." I heard my voice gasp and plead at the same time.
"Shut the fuck up," she hissed, pushing me forward. "Walk," she growled when I tried to plant my feet. And, well, I was too freaked, too shocked, and too scared to do anything but what I was told. I had been able to stand my ground and argue with her because, in my mind, she was just my sister. She was my sister who was playing a really stupid real life game of cops and robbers. That was all it was. She was still the girl who used to get my hair into wicked knots when she tried to braid it when we were in elementary school. She was the one who cried her eyes out with me when we went to see Les Mis on Broadway when we were seventeen. She was the woman who got so tequila-drunk at my housewarming party that she started taking all her clothes off. She'd been reaching for the strap of her bra when Rome rushed up, cocooned her in my throw blanket off my couch as she bitched that she was too hot for clothes.
She was my sister.
I could argue with her.
Because she would never hurt me.
But all ideas of sisterhood and family loyalty went right the hell out the door when you suddenly found yourself at gunpoint by someone you thought you knew every nook and cranny of.
There were yells from the main room and I felt my body go ramrod straight as I was pushed out into the commotion. Because I realized another thing: I was being held at gunpoint, but I was also being used as a human shield.
All the action that had been going on at the tables had stopped. The people who had been working there were all cowering under the tables and I realized that, maybe, they hadn't all been gang members. Maybe they had just been like... workers.
In front of the tables were D, Trick, and three other men I didn't recognize all yelling, all with guns raised.
My eyes snapped toward the other side of the room and I felt two things at once: relief and bone-deep fear.
Because there was Paine, eyes locked on D and I saw the intention there, the desire to cause some serious damage and I knew, I knew that he somehow knew what happened to me. Fanned out around him was Shooter, who had a weird little amused smirk, Breaker, who had a coldness in his eyes that made me shiver involuntarily, Sawyer who looked almost... calm, Tig, the big guy who told me to ice my neck the night I was strangled, who seemed tense but unconcerned about the gang members yelling at them and aiming guns. There was one last man, someone who had the buzzcut look and stiff stance of someone in the military. He seemed calm like Sawyer. Suddenly I wondered if maybe they had both been military, if they had seen things much worse than a warehouse with a handful of gang members and that was why they were acting like what was happening was no big deal.
"Move," El hissed in my ear again, slamming her knee into the back of mine and making an involuntary cry escape me. At the sound, Paine's eyes flew in our direction. It wasn't easy to read him then. A muscle was ticking in his jaw which was a pretty universal sign of anger. There was a tension around his mouth that I took for anxiety. But his eyes, those light green eyes I wanted to get lost in, they looked downright horrified.