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“Fyre!”
I shouldn’t even have been able to hear her over the violence, but I do.
My arms go slack as Charlotte says, “He hasn’t suffered enough.”
No force in the world could have made me stop right then. My psychotic rage is a bullet train screaming down the tracks with the sheer intent of snuffing the last flicker of life out of this sadistic fuck.
But Charlotte stops me.
Her words have power because I love her…and she’s right.
Red Hutchinson will not die today. Or tomorrow. He will die when Charlotte and I are done with him. When we’ve concluded that every last ounce of agony and humiliation have been rent from his black, wretched soul.
And on that day, we’ll end himtogether.
25
CHARLOTTE
Fyre drags Red out of the flames and towers over the man’s charred, smoking body. He’s still convulsing, and the three of us watch for a hushed moment before the nurse scrambles over to his side.
Whatever she injected me with cleared my head and released my body from the heroin’s dark, heavy embrace. But the flicker of energy I’d had is already eking out of me. Although the bleeding has stopped thanks to the bandages tied snug around my upper arms, it’s too little, too late. I’ve already lost too much blood.
I’m dying.
“Are you sure about this?” Gideon asks.
I stare up at Fyre, filling myself with the sight of him. He stands proud and sure, his slim, perfectly defined muscles shivering with exertion. He’s been hurt. Badly. Long cuts crisscross his torso, and bright red bruises cover his ribs and stomach like a rash. There’s a cut on his jaw too, so deep I’m sure it’ll scar.
I nod.
I’m sure.
Fyre winces as he crouches next to the nurse. “Is he going to live?”
She clicks her tongue and then puts her head down on Red’s chest. “Airway’s clear for now, but it could swell up.” She tips his head back, not seeming to mind the tackiness of Red’s skull.
I don’t see a single strand of hair left on him. It’s all been burned off. My stomach churns, and I barely turn to the side before I puke on the carpet. When I look back, the nurse is layering Red’s face with dressings cut into strips.
“We need to get out of here. Where’s the nearest exit?” Fyre asks.
“She needs a blood transfusion like yesterday,” the young nurse says almost primly, glancing over at me as she lays a strip of dressing over Red’s chin. “And he’s not going to survive if we move him.”
Fyre looks over at me, and I give him a nod.
Whatever it takes.
He lays a hand on the nurse’s shoulder. She pauses in the act of checking Red’s breathing again.
“What’s your name?”
She hesitates, and then gives her lips a quick lick. “Andy.”
“Andy, will you come with us?”
She looks over at me, and then back at Fyre. “I never abandon a patient.”
There’s a glow of warmth in my heart for her when she says that. But then the cold comes back, and this time, it envelops my entire body. I slump to the side as Fyre looks up and locks eyes with me.
