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It’s the name that makes me feel like someone dropped an anvil on my fucking heart. I toss the ticket to the ground as if suddenly caught fire. “No….it…it can’t be,” I whisper to myself. I rock in place. I dig my nails into my palms, but the sting of the pain and the fresh blood rising to the surface does nothing to help me cope. “It just can’t.”
I hear the door open and assume it’s Pike coming inside. I’m prepared for his questions on why I’m shaking and rocking and making myself bleed but the questions never come.
“Oh, yes it can, and it is,” a familiar voice says.
A familiar voice that isn’t Pike.
My entire body tenses. I slowly look over my shoulder as I’m faced with my worst nightmare, a betrayal to end all betrayals.
I meet the eyes of the one person in this world I knew for a fact would never turn on me. Not for the first time in recent weeks, I’m finding out that I was wrong.
So very, very wrong.
I have so many questions, but I don’t have time to ask any of them because something hard connects with my head. Everything turns fuzzy as I slump over onto the thin carpet.
I don’t even care that I might be dying or already dead. Or that there’s blood dripping into my eyes that I can’t blink away because for some reason I’ve lost control of the ability to move my eyelids along with the rest of my limbs and functions.
No, death doesn’t matter, because all that matters is the answer to the one question I’m repeating over and over and over again in my head.
Why?
Of all the people in the world…why her?
Why Yuli?
Chapter Twenty-Six
NINE
I get a text from Pike that Lenny is back at the RV. I speed back, ready to explain myself, but when I get there, all I find is Pike, crumbled up on the porch, bleeding from his gut.
“Pike, fuck!” I run to him and lift him into a sitting position. He groans. “Lenny, she’s in trouble. You’ve got to find her.”
“Who has her? Where did they go?”
“A girl. Hot, but mean as fuck, man. It’s…” his words fade as his eyes close and his head slumps to the side.
“Fuck!”
I check his pulse while I pull out my phone, and thank god he still has one. I call Preppy who picks up on the first ring. “Clearwater Morgue. You grill ‘em. We chill ‘em.”
“Brother. Pike’s down. Took a bullet to the gut. I need medical at my RV. Lenny’s gone, too, but I don’t know where.”
Pike groans and his eyes open. “I heard her say something about Fall. Like it’s going to be Fall again?” His face is growing paler and paler. “I mean it’s a good season if you live up north, but we live in Florida, ain’t got no kind of Fall here.” And just like that he’s out again.
Preppy chimes in on my phone. “I’ve got a team of Lawless nurses heading your way. The MC is less than a quarter mile away and they were already there doing a check up on the BBB’s. They’ll be there in a few seconds.”
A few seconds is right. A van pulls up, the tires spinning in the dirt. Three women in scrubs run out and head straight for Pike.
“Take care of him,” I order. “Please.”
“Hey pretty ladies, what up?” Pike says, perking up yet again, drunk on blood loss. They check his vitals and start moving him onto a gurney. “None of you are mean, right? ‘Cause I just ran into a really mean pretty lady, and look what she did to me. She staind-ed my shirt.”
“They’re here now,” I tell Preppy, heading for my truck.
“Any clue where Lenny could be?” he asks.
“No clue, Pike said something about Fall, but he’s out of his mind.” I start the engine and pause.
Fall.
It’s going to be Fall again.
Falling again.
“Scratch that, brother. I know exactly where she is.”
“You wanna share that info or you want me to guess where I’m meeting you?” Preppy says. I hear his car door slam and his engine start up.
I bang my fist on my steering wheel as the world around me slows to a stop.
“The top of the fucking causeway.”
* * *
Lenny
When I come to and open my eyes, I’m at a place I never expected to be again.
The top of the causeway, on the very same ledge I fell from years ago.
How the hell did I get here?
My brain is trying to come up with the answers, but it isn’t functioning properly. I decide to reboot and try again, but from the safety of the other side. I grab onto the wires and pull myself up to stand so I can climb back over the railing. I freeze when I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking.
