“There is no vaiting,” one of them mutters roughly. I can’t decipher which one spoke. I brace my hand on the ground, curling my other into a fist as I gather the blood in my mouth and spit it off to the side. I’m alert now, anger surging up hot, drowning out the pain.
How fucking dare they? Do they really think they can killme, here by the side of the road like some common thug?
The brute on the left raises his gun, and I lift my hand in defense as if such a thing could be of any use in protecting me.
“Hold on,” I mutter. My tongue is too thick in my mouth, and my throat scrapes with each word. Nothing sobers you up faster than a car crash. “What is this?”
“Vat do you mean?”
“This? You drag me out of the wreck, effectively saving my life, only to shoot me right here? Why not just kill me in the car?” I squint up at them and wetness pulls against my cheek. My forehead must be bleeding, the source of the copper in my mouth. They exchange a glance.
“Ve send message,” the brute on the right replies. “Ve kill you here to show message, not car crash.”
“Sure, right, okay.” I’m stalling, but it does nothing but extend my pain. I have no weapon, my phone must still be in the car, and occasionally they split into four people, so my head wound renders me useless in a physical fight.
“But you could have just shot me in the car, then dragged me out here. Would have saved you this conversation for starts,” I laugh wetly. It’s all I can do. I have nothing. I’m dead in the water here. “Just know, I wish I would be there to see the moment Dante fucking skins you alive for this.” A threat is all I have in defense.
“Enough,” the right brute scoffs, and the left lifts his gun higher. Two gunshots ring out.
My heart stops.
I flinch back against the tree, screwing up my eyes as I wait for the life-ending pain to crash into my body. I’ve killed enough people to know that people like me find their end in agony.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, two heavy thumps land in front of me, and when I crack open an eye, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb lie dead before me.
“The fuck—?”
“Killian!” Archer’s voice drifts down from the incline, andneverhave I been more relieved to hear his voice. “Killian!”
“I’m here,” I call back hoarsely, my throat scraping past the words. I press back against the tree, and my heart starts beating again, pounding energy through my veins. I close my eyes with a copper-tanged breath.
That was close. Toofuckingclose.
28
CARA
“Killian!”
A deafening silence answers me. The phone lies eerily silent in my hand, the call disconnected after what sounded like some kind of terrible screeching crunch. Any further attempts to reach Killian after that are met with voicemail, and my heart is ready to tear its way violently out of my chest.
At the foot of the stairs where I’d landed on my ass after the shock of the crash, I dial Killian’s number again just in case.
Please pick up. Please, please, fucking answer the damn phone!
He’d been drunk, I could hear it in his voice, and in the way he slurred his speech when he spoke. Just hearing his voice, though, had been calming enough for me that I hadn’t even considered anything else to be important. After all, Archer had been on his way to pick him up, right? Archer would have been driving?
But that sound… like a car crash. What if they’re both injured and mangled or—or dead in a ditch somewhere? Run off the road by a deer or something worse?
Heisn’tdead. He can’t be. Not Killian. He’s too fucking stubborn to go out like that. And people walk away from car crashes all the time, right?
My chest constricts sharply and I attempt to force a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart, but the air just doesn’t reach far enough. Dissolving into pants, a chill steals rapidly up my spine, and fat tears flood my eyes once again.
What do I do? Do I call someone? Do I call the police? Is that even safe?
Archer’s number is next on the list, so peering through my tears, I tap the dial and press the phone to my ear. There’s no ring to vibrate against my ear; it also goes straight to an automated voicemail that taunts me with a perfectly calm voice. Archer had gone to get Killian, so his lack of response has to be a bad sign, right? If they were both in the car at the time of that noise. They had to be. Why else wouldn’t Archer take my call?