Page 96 of One Filthy Kiss

Nikki has been shot.

I can’t think straight. I can see her body bleeding out on the ground, but she shouldn’t be outside. What was she doing? Why didn’t she say something instead of just opening the door like that?

It doesn’t…

I can’t…

I feel numb, and the world is spinning. But then Amber’s voice jolts me back to reality, and my body reacts accordingly even though my brain is stuck on the sight of my best friend’s body on the ground.

Her body.

A sob wells inside my chest making it hard to breathe, hard to focus, hard to believe that this is even happening to us. But Amber has been my driving force for so long that survival instinct kicks in without me having to thinkabout it.

I chase after Amber.

My heart is plodding inside my chest like it has forgotten its own tune. My pulse is racing out of control. I don’t want to look at my best friend’s body, but I can’t drag my eyes away from it, and I know that I can’t let Amber see it too.

“Amber!” I scream as she stumbles over a rock and her knees hit the ground.

Her body keeps on moving with the force of her momentum, and I have a mental image of the time she fell off her scooter when she was four years old and scraped the skin off both knees.

I grab her arms and heave her upright, turning her around so that she is facing away from Nikki.

She’s sniveling, sniffing back tears, her words getting stuck in her throat. But there’s no time. We can’t do this here. I’m suddenly aware that we’ve done the one thing Ric told me not to do: we’ve left ourselves exposed outside the cabin.

“Amber, listen to me.” I grip her upper arms tightly.

I can’t think about Nikki. If I do, I’ll dissolve into a sloppy mess of blood and bones and tears, and he’ll just walk right in and take Amber. And after everything that we have done to protect her, I’m not giving up now.

“We can’t stay here.”

“B-b-but—” Tears stream down her face.

“It’s not safe. We have to leave. Now!”

I’m waiting for another gunshot. I don’t know if it will hurt, or if it will all be over so quickly that I won’t even realize I’vebeen hit. But Amber will know. I can’t let that happen to her either.

“Amber, we need to run.” I squeeze her arms until she squirms beneath my grip. It’s the only way. “I’m going to count to three, then we’re going to run, okay? One. Two. Three.”

I can’t believe he hasn’t caught us, but I’m not going to waste time counting our blessings until our luck runs out.

So, we run.

I don’t know what I’m thinking or where I’m going, but I do know that the cabin door is wide open, and we can’t go back inside. He could’ve snuck in there while I was trying to stop Amber. He could be watching us right now from just inside the doorway, waiting to pounce the instant we cross the threshold.

Instead, I turn around and pull Amber in the direction of the next cabin up the mountain slope. I’m doing everything wrong. Ric told me to stay inside, relocate to the bunker. I feel sick knowing that I’ve exposed Amber to the danger we’ve been trying to protect her from, but it’s too late to turn around now.

All I can do is keep going.

It’s tougher than I thought it would be navigating the gentle slope at the base of the mountain. We can’t keep climbing; it will slow us down too much, and we’d basically be like the ducks on the target range at the carnival.

I have to drag Amber along with me. I don’t look around. I don’t even glance at her. One look at her tears, and I’ll be tempted to stop and pick her up, and we won’t even reach the first cabin if I’mcarrying her.

One foot in front of the other.

Thud. Thud. Thud. In time with my heartbeat.

There are no lights on inside the cabin. No sounds either. I don’t even know if the door is locked.