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“It’s okay,” I tell her.
It’s not, but she needs my face and voice steady. I need her to believe I have a plan, even if all I have is a pounding heart, a knife at my belt, and murder running hot through my veins.
The gunman steps around me, boots crunching through leaves. He looks at the two bodies on the ground, then back at me.
“Well,” he says, dragging the word out. “Looks like we got us some serious fighters, folks.”
One man chuckles. Another spits. The woman keeps staring at the body near my feet.
The gunman tilts his gun. “And I’m guessing you all might have had something to do with the death of a few of our guys.”
The two men from the store.
The ones Leon and I took out.
My stomach turns.
He nods to the others. “Drag the bodies back to the truck.”
My blood chills.
A truck means transport. It means distance. It means getting taken somewhere Leon won’t know to look.
No.
The woman crouches beside the man I bashed open. Her fingers hover over his bloody hair, then curl into a fist. When she looks up at me, hatred has stripped every other expression from her face.
“You killed him.”
I keep my eyes on the gunman. “He tried to kill my daughter.”
The others drag the bodies away. The one Poppy shot leaves a dark trail through the leaves, his boots jerking over roots. The arrow is still in his throat. Every bounce makes blood pump weakly from the wound.
The gunman looks back at me. “Get moving.”
“No.”
His smile fades.
He steps closer until the barrel of the gun settles against the center of my forehead.
Cold. Hard. Final.
“I said move.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides. Blood from the man’s skull dries sticky between my fingers. “And I said no, asshole.”
His eyes go flat. “I don’t think you want me to make this little girl an orphan, do you?”
Poppy’s breath catches.
My whole body wants to obey. To move. To do anything that keeps that gun from firing. That’s the trap. That’s how men like him survive. They find the softest part of you and press a weapon to it.
I narrow my eyes. “If you were going to shoot me, you would have done it while I was bashing your friend’s skull in.”
The gunman studies me.
I stare back.
