Page 198 of Barinov

She sighs, peering around me to stare at that damn door once more.

The moments after Tex and Laing carried Zeke out of that house were as chaotic as ever. Tex threw me the keys to his truck and yelled at me to go bring it up. I ran faster than I ever have down the streets of Ditmas Park just to get the damn thing.

They hurled Zeke’s sweat soaked body into the back seat before I even had a chance to put the truck in park. Bella didn’t waste a second before climbing in the back with her brother. Sabine too. Cade took the front seat, instantly on the phone with the hospital to let them know what was going on.

Bella held onto Zeke and tried to keep him as calm as possible on the drive. It didn’t work. The guy was delirious. He kept saying that he was burning up and freezing at the same time. Mumbling gibberish about some fuck and that we needed to catch him. That we needed to catch them both, whoever they are. Not really sure because the guy wasn’t making any sense at all. He kept rotating between names and locations and apologizing to Bella’s aunt.

And Claire’s been dead for years.

When Zeke’s eyes fluttered closed and his breathing slowed to practically nothing, Bella screamed at me to drive faster so loud my eardrums had to have been bleeding. I hauled ass to the hospital, running every red light in the process.

Hospital personnel swarmed us the second we arrived. But no matter how hard the nurses tried to reason with her, Bella wouldn’t let Zeke go. She was glued to him.

They said they were only going to allow one of us to go back with him. And despite the cruelty of it, we all knew Sabine was the right choice.

So I signaled Cade.

He wrapped his arms around our girl’s waist, and I moved in, yanking her hands from Zeke’s clothes. She lashed out at me and smacked the shit out of my face. The sting was immediate, but we didn’t let her go. I knew it wasn’t meant for me. It was just the only way she knew how to scream.

“Just come sit back down, baby,” I say, guiding her to the couch next to Cade.

She nods and plops down, throwing her legs over Cade’s as she leans back into me.

A few moments pass before my phone rings. I fish it out from my pocket and glance at the name.

O’MALLEY.

“Put it on speaker please,” Bella says, shifting her hips to try and find a semi-livable position on this cheap-ass brick this place calls a couch. It’s uncomfortable as fuck and feels like it was stuffed with gravel.

“Hey Mac,” I say, wincing when Bella sits up and her elbow digs into my thigh. My muscles are already on edge and the contact stings like a bitch.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

I shake my head, pulling her closer to kiss her temple. I don’t care about the bruise.

“You’re on speaker,” I say, leaning toward the phone.

“We’re almost done here,” O’Malley starts.

There’s a shuffle in the background followed by a low grunt and a loud thud that echoes through the speaker. “That’s the last of them,” Khoza’s deep voice sounds, muffled as if he’s a few feet away. “Is B sure Ivan was here?”

“Hey boss, Koz wants to—”

“Yes, Mac,” Bella cuts him off, snatching the phone from my hand. “It’s a long and crazy story but Ivan was definitely there.”

O’Malley scoffs. “Well he’s not anymore.”

“Damn,” she whispers, her grip tightening on my phone.

“And what do you want us to do with these bleeding bodies?” O’Malley asks, sounding more bored than bothered by the corpses piled at his feet. “Please tell me I can finally have some fun, yeah?”

Bella glances over at me. Her eyes narrow and her grin grows into something I haven’t seen since she lit Vince’s ass on fire.

“Upstairs in the main bedroom,” she explains, her voice dripping into a dangerous tone. “You’ll find three brand new purses near the vanity. Two of them are still in dark red boxes.”

“Purses?” O’Malley asks. I can practically hear the dude scratching at his fiery locks through the line. “You want me to bring ‘em to you? Looking for a bit of shopping in the middle of a massacre are we?”

“Fuck no,” she grits out, a cruel laugh breaking through. “I want you to lay them on top of my uncle’s disgusting body and use them to burn the house to the ground.”