Vanessa laughs. It is not the laugh I know. It is too high. Too thin. A pretty thing stretched until it tears.
“You don’t get to drive away with her,” she calls.
Cole’s hand lands on the back of my neck, firm and warm, keeping me low. “Stay down.”
“I am.”
“No matter what you hear.”
My stomach turns cold.
“Cole …”
“No matter what.”
Sloane shouts, “Vanessa, stop.”
A second later, the world cracks open. The gunshot is louder than I expect. Not like television.
It rips through the air and turns the inside of the SUV into a small, hot box of terror. I scream before I can stop myself. Glass bursts somewhere behind us. Cole’s body moves over mine for one brutal second, his shoulder forcing me lower as the SUV lurches forward.
“Down!” he roars.
Then another shot, but it’s different.
Cole accelerates hard enough that my body jerks against the seat belt. Tires spit gravel. The SUV swings left, and I hear voices exploding behind us, Sloane shouting, Eli shouting, someone screaming.
“Cole?” I gasp. “Cole, are you hit?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
His voice is clipped and focused. He sounds terrifyingly calm.
We tear across the parking lot, my head still down, his hand still pressing me low even as he drives. The SUV’s speakerscrackle, and Sloane’s voice cuts through them, hard and controlled.
“Suspect down. Leg wound. Weapon secured. Keep moving.”
My brain catches each phrase and refuses to assemble them into sense.
“Vanessa?” I whisper.
Cole does not slow.
“Alive,” he says.
The word hits me strangely. It’s a mixture of relief, horror and grief. All of it at once. My whole body starts shaking violently now. It’s uncontrollable. Cole keeps one hand on the wheel and the other at the back of my neck, his palm anchoring me to this world while the old one burns behind us.
“She shot at us,” I say.
“I know.”
“She could have killed you.”
“She didn’t.”
