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Is it an omen? A bad one, maybe, with the way thunder vibrates the glass and lightning splits the sky above us.
The drive is long, too long for me to not get fidgety, and more uncomfortable than I already am. I tune into the conversation occasionally when Ezra and Arlo talk about their plan.
“What if you guys get shot?” I can’t help but ask, meeting Cyril’s gaze in the mirror.
“We’ve done this before,” Ashe promises quietly. “This isn’t our first ambush, nor our first rescue mission. We’re not stupid, and we’ve worked at stuff like this for a long time, Ari.”
Again, his words don’t comfort me quite as much as I should.
“But you’re staying outside,” Cyril says, pulling onto a side street with large houses interspaced far enough from each other that each of them has a large yard and ample space. It looks familiar, and Iknowthe house I came out of would fit in well here.
We have to be close.
“What?” I ask, straightening. “But you gave me a gun.”
“In case anything happens, yeah. And when we’ve killed everything that breathes in that house, other than Isaac, you’re going to help us drag him outside and remind him why we don’t go into bad situations alone,” he explains patiently.
“Oh.” It makes sense when he says it like that. I don’t know how tostorm the compoundor whatever they’re about to do, and I don’t want this to turn into them having to savemeas well. That wouldn’t be fair to Isaac when this rescue is all for him.
Cyril pulls the car to a stop and I get out as Ezra does as well. The friendly facade melts from his features as I watch until I’m left staring at a cold, calculating male who I’ve only seen once before, and even then for just a flash.
He’sterrifying.
But then again, when I look around at the Lost Boys to gauge their expressions, it occurs to me that they’reallterrifying. Every single one of them has a look of cold anger on their expressions, tinged with absolute indifference. Like they could kill someone, walk away, and completely forget about it by the time dinner rolls around.
Good for them.
I wonder if it’s something that can be learned because I would love to know how to do that on command. Or at all, frankly. I don’t think I can make my face look like that or exude the air of violence and uncaring that all of them are giving off.
I let out a breath and lean against the car, shoving my hands in my pockets. The gun is in its holster around my thigh, hanging onto my opposite pocket from the knife, and I’m acutely aware of it every second that it’s there. Does everyone feel like this when they’re carrying around a gun? Or is it something you just getusedto?
“We’ll be back,” Ashe promises, resting a hand in my hair. “And we’re going to get Isaac back in one piece.”
“I might chop off a finger, just to teach him a lesson for interrupting my day,” Ezra complains, stalking past him and disappearing into an empty space between two fences.
“Does he know where he’s going?” I ask, nodding in his direction.
“He’s going to look for high ground, and he’ll follow us when he finds it.” Arlo nods at the slanted rooftops of houses. “He’ll find a place to get in when we find the house and then start at the top while we clean out the bottom.”
“That sounds…dangerous?”
“For them? Yes. For him…” Arlo shrugs. “It’s just a regular Tuesday for Ezra.”
“C’mon,” Cyril’s voice is cold, and he’s already walking when he speaks. “Sooner we do this, the sooner we canallchew Isaac out.” They sound so sure. Soconvincedthat Isaac is fine and just waiting for them to waltz in and save them.
But what if he’s already dead?
Arlo turns to me as the others go, and there’s reassurance in his face that I don’t deserve. “He’ll be okay,” he promises, as if he can read my thoughts. Before I can reply, he reaches out, cups my jaw, and presses his lips to mine sweetly.
All too soon he pulls away and joins the others in their trek down the rainy street, leaving me juststandingthere like I’m rooted in place.
My heart twists, a fist clenching around it as I watch them go and wonder if I’m ever going to see them again. What will they do if they walk in and Isaac is long dead?
It’s been at least an hour, after all, since I’ve been here. At least an hour, and he could’ve died sixty times over in that amount of time.
I suck in a breath, let it out, and lean against the hood of the car, watching until they’re out of sight and then still keep my eyes glued to the place they disappeared.
Minutes go by. Maybe hours, though judging by the way the rain still falls in a steady downpour in the darkness around me, it can’t really have beenhours. My hair is soaking wet, and I wonder if I’m just missing sounds from the house because of the rain in my ears.
