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My father used to warn me to never let a perpetrator change my location. “If you leave with them, you’re as good as dead, Cee.”
I tried. There were so many. I fought. Will my family know I fought?
My heart thrashes with regret. With terror. Blood swooshing in my ears. Head pounding. There are six men in here with me. All of them yelling and cussing as the asphalt begins whirring by. It’s utter mayhem outside. A haunting sight, like news footage of a terrorist attack. Not something I ever thought I’d be in the midst of, certainly not as the intended target.
There’s an army of masked men, automatic weapons slung across them. A bunch of vans like this one. These must be the Skulls.
Bad news, as Liam put it, seems mild.
They want something. My fight isn’t over. Maybe that will keep me alive until the guys get to me.
Unless …
“Death has already touched you tonight, and it won’t be the last time.” Liam’s words slice through me with more meaning than they held in the still quiet of kisses and cuddles—even after the attack. I’m pretty sure I glimpsed Keith’s lifeless body.
Keith. He has a girl back home, a girl he parted with for far longer than planned to keep me safe. Just last week, he beamed because she’d agreed to move here. He’d worked for my father for a long time, but he wanted to stay on as my guard and was willing to uproot his life to do it.
My chest shudders, tears welling. Are all my guys gone? Rena? Ivy was okay. I heard her yelling for Wells and Liam. Was she yelling because they didn’t …
My shoulders convulse as more of Liam’s words clobber me. “There’s always threats and danger and the question of how many tomorrows we’ll have.”
No. I can’t … he has to be okay. They all have to be okay.
He’s the sunrise. That’s what he promised.
He’ll always show up.
One of the men grips the handle of the door to seal us inside from the chill of the whipping winds and pandemonium. It’s halfway shut when an unmistakable blur of ginger hair flies inside, landing with a thud a second before the clang of the lock sounds. What the hell?
“The fuck is that?” the driver belts out as he peels away, winding around another van.
“Some chick dove in here,” another answers, tackling and patting down Ivy, who snarls like a savage beast at him.
“I’m not armed, asshole! I pitched my gun!”
“So, a stupid chick.” A guy to my left barks a laugh as the van swerves, so aggressively that it feels like we tip onto two wheels, jouncing us all into the side.
There are three bench seats, all facing the center. Beef Jerky and I sit alone against the back.
“Not so stupid, motherfucker,” Ivy hisses, wriggling enough to keep the pervert at bay. “You’d have shot me if I was armed.”
That’s a good point. They probably would have shot her if she’d jumped in here with a gun. How the hell did she think of that while chasing me down? And will herself to leap into a van filled with psychopaths without a weapon?
The handsy asshole chuckles darkly, dragging his knuckles over her cheek. “This one’s feisty. She’s mine.”
“Gross.” Ivy retches, spitting in his face. “In your fucking dreams.”
He smacks her across the face, and my body tenses, but she barely flinches with a shadow of pain even though her head rolls to the side from the force.
“Stupid bitch!” he sneers. “You know we’re going to kill you, right?”
“Not until we all fuck her,” the guy in the front passenger seat muses. “Think you can handle forty or fifty guys, darling?”
My gut wrenches at his threat. I didn’t have a plan to get myself out of this, let alone the both of us. What was she thinking?
Ivy squirms until she’s resting against the back of the driver’s seat, legs tucked against her chest, calming gaze set on me, even with guns pointed at her and blood trickling down from her scalp. “I’m here because, if you’re going nowhere, I’m coming with you.”
Tears pool in my eyes with that proclamation. This is certainly not what we meant when we came up with that little ditty. And we are undoubtedly going somewhere. I hate that she did this, but love her all the more for it. The tables sure have turned. All growing up, I protected her from the brazen words hurled by cowardly bullies. Now, she challenges armed lunatics accosting me without a blink. Not exactly an even trade.
