Page 146 of Savage Surrender

Half a mile might as well be fifty, but Bianca is somewhere beyond those trees.

Ezra calls Winston, and it rings once.

“Winston. We need a pickup.” The answer comes fast enough that I hear its shape without the words. “All four of us are alive. Hurt, but moving.”

I take the phone from him. “Bianca.”

“She’s safe,” Winston says. His voice breaks across the speaker. “She’s at her parents’ house with Freddie and Megan. She fell asleep a little while ago.”

My knees nearly stop working.

Safe.

Asleep.

Freddie has her.

I hand the phone back, and Ezra sends our location. “Have Matt meet us at the county-road pull-off. No headlights when he gets close.”

He ends the call and looks back at the bodies. “Give me thirty seconds.”

Ezra limps through the warehouse and circles back. Fire climbs two separate walls behind him, and smoke is already spreading beneath the patched roof.

We push the roll-up door high enough for us to get beneath it.

Rain hits my face and cuts tracks through the dirt. The warehouse sits among old trees with no other building in sight.

A white gas tank squats against the outside wall. Ezra points to it, and Weller presses the gun into my hand.

I put one round through the metal. The shot rings off the wall, and the tank starts hissing into the rain.

The fire can do the rest.

Weller supports Tristan, and I get beneath Ezra’s arm.

By the time the road shows through the trees, every breath cuts through my ribs, and Ezra is dragging on my shoulder. He checks the map and points south. “Pull-off is right around the bend.”

He stops to call Megan.

She answers before the first ring finishes. Ezra’s grip tightens around the phone.

“Meg? It’s Ezra. We’re on our way.”

31

BIANCA

The actress on the television is standing in the rain, trying to decide between two men who are both very much alive and answering their phones. I keep looking at the front window.

Rain blurs the sliver of Sycamore Lane between the curtains, but every set of headlights still pulls me forward until I’m perched on the edge of the couch again, chewing at the corner of my thumbnail. I’ve already bitten the other one down far enough to hurt. Freddie catches my hand before I can start on this one and keeps it in his lap.

Winston’s house is down the street, close enough that I could run there barefoot in a few minutes if my body didn’t feel packed with hot dirt. I keep looking for Mom’s car, even though she was still being questioned at the last update.

Winston said it was a peanut allergy, but that seems awfully convenient.

Another sedan creeps past. Freddie’s hand disappears under the coffee table to grab the gun Winston handed him, but Megan barely looks up from her phone. “He lives three doors down. I saw him leave earlier.”

The car pulls into its driveway.