AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Another bolt. And another. Lightning rained from the sky, targeting their enemy.
The Guide ran.
“Yeah,” growled a voice from behind them. “Watch that f**ker run now.”
Chris whirled. Gabriel was on his hands and knees, holding on to the bumper of a Chevy Tahoe. His clothes were scorched and his face nearly blackened from smoke, and blood marked his skin, but he was alive.
Nick grabbed him before Chris even realized he was moving.
“Easy, Nicky.” Gabriel coughed. “I mean—me too—but explosion—hurt—”
But Chris didn’t hear what else he said.
Because he was hugging him, too.
CHAPTER 25
Becca ended up in the ER.
The Merrick brothers didn’t.
She’d lost track of them somehow, when emergency personnel stormed onto the bridge and separated them all. Four different men had stood in the rain shouting questions at her, shining lights in her eyes, taking her pulse. Did she know her name? The date? Did she know she’d been in an accident?
She’d been freezing. A fireman had wrapped her in a Mylar blanket and carried her to the ambulance. She’d been so shaken that she let him. The rain refused to stop, streaking into her eyes and creeping under her clothes, as much a stranger to her as it had been before the accident.
Had she imagined that connection?
Was that what Chris felt, that link with the elements?
He’d held her so close—had she been feeling his power?
Now, in the hospital, she huddled on her stretcher, pulling the thin hospital blanket more tightly around her shoulders.
Her mom stuck her head through the curtain. “You all right, Bex?”
One of the best parts of her mom working the ER was that Becca didn’t have to wait long for anything.
One of the worst parts was that her mom was actually working the ER tonight. When Becca proved to be shaken but unharmed, her mom left her to sit alone in an eight-by-eight cubicle.
Someone moaned nearby. A baby screamed somewhere down the hall. The place was packed with victims from the storm. Becca kept hearing nurses speak in low voices about things like crushed femurs and compound fractures. Becca didn’t even have a concussion. She just wanted someone to hold her hand.
God, could she be more selfish? Becca sniffed back waiting tears and nodded. “I’m fine. Can we go home?”
“Your dad’s on his way, sweetie.” Her mom’s voice trailed after her as she rushed down the hall.
“What?”
“I can’t leave,” her mom called back, “and Quinn’s mom wasn’t home.”
Ugh. Her dad. Now Becca wished she did have a concussion.
Especially when he showed up in work clothes, his boots caked with mud. Dirt streaked across the khaki shirt he wore, and it looked like he’d been in a fight with a wild animal—his pants were torn, and dried blood trailed out of his shirtsleeve and across the back of his hand.
He came rushing into her cubicle, flinging the curtain to the side. He seemed to draw up short when his daughter obviously wasn’t dying. Just wet.
“Hi,” she said without enthusiasm. “What happened to you?”
“Becca.” He studied her, as if he must have missed some life-threatening injury. “Are you all right?”
