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“That’s the car we drove here,” I explain hastily. “It’s either him or an accomplice of his.”
Cross stretches his hand out and signals those behind us.
Stop this car, is what the hand gesture translates too. It’s one of many the Devils use to communicate without speaking on jobs.
He lets the SUV pass us and I peer hard at the man driving. There’s two of them in there, and the one driving isn’t the one who took Lily. But the one in the passenger seat is.
He recognizes me, his look full of surprise, right before it turns to fear as the SUV driver breaks hard to avoid hitting the bikes blocking his path. He veers hard to the right, goes off the road and into the grass. As he tries to correct it, something gives with the sound of metal breaking—probably whatever was clanking all day—and the SUV comes to a sputtering, shaking stop in the grass.
The brothers nearest are on it in a flash, obscuring it from view with their bodies, as they drag the men out. I leap off Cross’ bike and run to them, because no one but me is getting that creep. No one.
The throng opens and Lily comes out. Her beautiful face glowing in the moonlight, her long black hair shining silver.
She whimpers as she sees me, opens her arms and runs into my embrace.
A moment later I’m kissing her back just as hard as she’s kissing me, ignoring the sharp pain in my arm as I hold her just as tight as she’s holding me.
“You’re alive,” she says in a whisper. “Or am I dreaming?”
“I’m alive,” I say. “I couldn’t die while that man had you. That would be impossible.”
I’m not just saying that. I believe it, and it makes perfect sense.
Cross clear his throat beside us, and it’s painfully obvious he’s been watching us for awhile.
We break apart almost all the way, though we’re still holding onto each other loosely as we both turn to face him. I have no idea what his thinking. His face is a mask. A mask made of stone.
“Dad,” Lily says, releases me and gives him a hug. I’ve never seen the man’s face go that soft. Ever.
“I knew you’d come. I knew you’d find me,” she says. “But how did you get here so fast?”
“We have the men here,” Ice yells from over by the car before Cross can answer. “What do you want to do with them?”
Lily steps out of her father’s embrace. “Give me a gun. He’s mine.”
Her eyes are as black as Cross’, and just as piercing and intense, as they look at each other. Like father like daughter. Cross breaks first. “Lily, I don’t know…”
Tank walks past me, holding a pistol, grip first to Lily, but looking at Cross.
“She’s right, it’s her kill,” he says.
Cross shrugs and nods for her to take it. Which she does.
She strides towards the men, her hair flowing behind her. She’s not a killer and I don’t want her to be one. But she is a warrior and always has been. And I have no problem letting her have this kill.
* * *
LILY
The gun is cold in my hand, but just heavy enough, perfectly balanced, one of Tank’s own two pistols with the rose and thorn decorated grip.
My father’s men clear a path for me, as I walk up to the two men kneeling on the ground. Neither look up as I approach. One of them is the creep who grabbed me and shot Eagle. The other one looks almost exactly like him. They’re even dressed alike in jeans and flannel shirts, and sweat stained ball caps. The one who grabbed me is holding his hand across his chest, blood seeping into the dirty rag he used to wrap up his hand—the hand I pierced with my nail-studded board, no doubt. That was just the first bite of what is to come for him.
“I told you this would happen,” I hear myself say in an even, hard voice. “You should’ve believed me.”
They both look up at me, and I know why I recognized the man who grabbed me. It was because he looks exactly like Ariana’s husband, Mitch, the other man kneeling before me. He has murder and hatred in his dark eyes as he glares at me now, while the creep who grabbed me—his brother, maybe even twin, going by their uncanny resemblance—just looks like he’s in a lot of pain.
The pistol I’m holding is halfway raised as my brain works out all the implications of this. It’s slow going because my head is still pounding from getting hit with that slab and smacking into the side of the trunk of the SUV from which the Devils rescued Tina and me.
