Liam nods his agreement. “We will find Tony, or anyone else who can explain what happened, and while we’re in there, we’ll radio the hospital in Asheville about getting the helicopter here for Raven.”
There isn’t any other option, really.
We don’t have any fucking idea what went down or where Tony is, and without the sheriff, there isn’t anyone here to protect the town or any of the people in it—wherever they are.
I nod my agreement. “Go. I’ll keep an eye out for any trouble out here.”
They close their doors and take off toward town hall, and Raven reaches up again, tipping my face down to her. Tears stream from her eyes now, her split lip quivering as violently as the rest of her in my arms.
“This is all my fault…”
“No.” I shake my head, capturing her hand gently to kiss beneath the cut on her wrist. “It’s not.”
A sob slips from her, and it’s so filled with anguish that I can feel it in my soul. “I’m the one who wrote the story, knowing full well what I might be bringing down on us.” She pulls her hand from mine, as if she can’t bear to be touched and her warning against that now feels like years ago instead of only a few weeks. “This is all my fault. Whatever happened to Tony?—”
“Hey”—I take her face between my palms—“we don’t know anything did happen to him. Don’t do that. Don’t think the worst.”
“How can I not?” She sobs again. “Where is everyone? Why isn’t the damn sheriff out here doing his job?”
“Killian and Liam will find Tony. They will figure out what’s happening, and we will get you to the hospital.”
The fact that several of her wounds are still bleeding, and after seeing how much blood she lost up at the cabin, I’m terrified of her closing her eyes again?—
A gunshot cracks, and we both flinch.
I jerk my head up and look toward town hall, to the doors Killian and Liam entered, where the shot just came from.
Raven struggles in my hold, trying to push herself up. “What was that?”
“Trouble.”
And my brothers just walked into it.
RAVEN
Connor carefully sets me down on the back seat like I’m a porcelain doll he’s afraid is going to shatter if he so much as breathes on me in the wrong way. He slides across the backseat and grabs the door handle to climb from the truck, but I snatch his wrist before he can get out.
Panic seizes my lungs, tightening them so intensely that I barely manage to get the words out. “You can’t go in there!”
“I have to, Raven.” He points toward the building. “Killian and Liam just went in, Tony’s car is here, there are dead bodies lying in town square, and that was a gunshot.” He pulls out his gun, the one that he left for me at the cabin, from his waistband. “I’ll be all right. I have to go.”
Tears well in my eyes, but I don’t bother trying to fight them, just let them fall. “I’m coming with you.”
“Like fucking hell you are! You’ve been unconscious for literally half a day, you’ve lost a lot of blood, you’re hurt. You’re staying in the fucking car with the doors locked, with this.” He hands me the gun. “Anyone you don’t know comes out, you shoot them. Anyone you don’t know approaches this truck, you shoot them. Do you hear me?”
“No.” I shake my head, holding the gun in my trembling hand. “If you won’t let me come, take this, otherwise you won’t have any way to protect yourself.”
Connor scowls at me. “When am I ever without my axe?”
He closes the door, walks around to the bed of the truck, and pulls out his axe that still glistens with the blood of the man from the mountain.
A normal person might recoil from the sight of it.
I’ve never been normal by anyone’s standards.
Knowing what he did to protect me, after everything he’s suffered, all his guilt and nightmares and demons that have plagued him, knowing he was willing to do it again, only reminds me why Connor McBride was my first choice all those years ago.
He pauses next to the door again and stares at me through the window, pointing toward Killian’s door. “Lock the fucking doors.”
