AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was the voice of the killer Dawg had described to her once, the one Natches had once been.
Chaos erupted suddenly.
The sound of glass shattering came at the same time that Dorne stepped into the foyer, freezing him in his tracks. His finger twitched on the trigger of his weapon, firing in a string of death as he went to the floor.
Lyrica was only barely aware of Graham throwing her to the ground as she watched the second death of the day.
Dorne went down, half of his face simply gone from the sniper’s bullet that took him out. One side of his face was slack with surprise; the other side, just gone.
She blinked, the realization that it was over slamming into her senses like a sledgehammer.
“Stand down!” Natches was snapping into the link. “The shooter’s mine. I repeat, the shooter’s mine.” He said it again, snarling, just to be certain he was heard. “I repeat, the shooter’s mine. It was his shot, by god. Stand down.”
The shooter was his? Since when did he have a shooter?
“Yours?” Dawg screamed. “Who the fuck is out there, Natches?”
Natches stared back at him, his expression filled with irritated self-disgust. “Well, it wasn’t me. Who’s the only fucking protégé I’ve ever had? The only man on the face of the earth that could have made that shot?”
No, it couldn’t be Harley, she thought—Harley was gone. He’d been gone since the night Zoey’s fragile heart had been broken.
Poor Zoey. She knew how her sister felt now.
Turning to Graham, the sense of unreality grew so strong inside her it was frightening. It soon became terrifying.
“No . . .” The word slipped past her lips as the arguments around her and through the link receded. “No. Please, god . . .”
She couldn’t scream.
She wanted to scream, to wail, to release the building agony burning inside her.
“Graham . . .” She reached for him, realizing he had done exactly as she had been terrified he would.
He’d taken a bullet for her.
“Shhh.” He reached up for her, his hand shaking, his face ghostly white as blood stained his shirt and the floor beneath him. A slow, oozing trail of blood. “It’s okay, baby.”
“No. No.” Her gaze became blurry, tears falling from her eyes as she felt the sobs tearing from her chest. “Please, Graham . . .”
“Shhh.” Her hand covered his, holding it to her cheek as Dawg and Natches were suddenly rushing to them. “Don’t cry. Don’t let Kye cry . . .”
“Don’t you die on me!” Fury lashed at her now. “Damn you, Graham. You bastard! Don’t you dare leave me like this where I can’t even torture you for breaking my fucking heart!”
Sobs mixed with the fury pouring from her as she watched his eyes, watched the regret, watched emotion fill them.
“I want to tell you . . .”
“Dawg!” She was being pulled away from him, hard arms tearing her from him as her brother and cousin were suddenly hiding him from her. “Let me go!” She fought, clawed, kicked out at whoever, whatever was dragging her away from the man she loved.
“Stop it, Lyrica.” Timothy was holding her, pulling her into his arms as she collapsed, sobbing, holding on to him as sirens could be heard screaming into the parking lot outside.
“I have to stay with him!” she cried, desperate to get back to him as the front door was flung open and EMTs rushed inside. “I have to stay . . .”
“Lyrica.” The brutal, hoarse snap in his tone had her stilling, staring up at him, and seeing the tracks of tears staining his face.
“Tim?” she whispered his name, the agony lancing her, tearing ragged holes into her soul.
“Come on, Lyrica.” He drew her to the door. “Let the EMTs take care of him. You can’t be with him now.”
