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I hear Maddoc shout something, and there’s way too much fucking gunfire for the plan to have worked the way Logan wanted it to. If it had, the Capside and West Point men would all have been dead already.
I don’t know what went wrong, and I can’t stop to care, but when someone shouts—a male voice full of pain—it suddenly hits me that one of them could die. One of theReaperscould die.
Something sharp and painful squeezes my chest, making it hard to breathe. But then a line of bullets smacks into the concrete in front of Chloe, sending chips of concrete spraying toward us. She screams, shying away from it, and I scramble up next to her and grab her arm.
“It’s fine, come on, keep going.Move, Chloe.”
I barely even register the words that are coming out of my mouth. I just know we can’t stop until we get somewhere safer. These damn pallets aren’t enough to stop bullets.
“Go, go, go,” I chant, forcing myself not to think about whether all three of the men who came here with me will walk away from this.
There’s a thick pillar off to our left, and I point to it. “There! Go!”
Chloe clings to me as we sprint for it, crouching low. The second we’re behind the thick concrete, I shove her down to the floor and throw myself on top of her, trying to make our bodies as small as possible.
“Fuck, oh my god, oh fuck,” I gasp, doing my best to shield Chloe from all this fucking chaos as she sobs and clutches me.
I’ve got her pressed as tightly as I can between me and the cold column of concrete, but I still want to puke from fear and adrenaline.
“How did you—? Riley! I can’t—I didn’t…” Chloe is sobbing, her words coming out in wet, broken gasps that make me want to kill Austin McKenna myself. But she’s here. She’s alive. That’s all that matters.
As long as we make it out.
“Shh,” I whisper, tasting salt as I bury my face in her hair and wait for it to end.
One of the Reapers will call the all-clear soon. They have to.
Worry surges inside me, and I try to tell myself that the icy shards of fear in my stomach are just for me and Chloe, and not because of what might be happening to the three gang members I’ve been living with.
They’re just a means to an end, and once we get out of here, itwillend. They’ll go on with their war, and Chloe and I will pick up the pieces of our lives.
“Fuck!”
I flinch. That was definitely Dante’s voice, and my stomach cramps so hard that I’m almost sick. I don’t want to care if he lives or dies, or fool myself that some random connection I feel is actually real… but I still don’t want him to die.
I don’t want any of them to die.
Then, so suddenly that it leaves my ears ringing, everything goes silent.
“Is it… is it over?” Chloe whispers, her whole body shaking against mine.
“I don’t know,” I murmur, my arms locked tight around her.
I can’t hear anything moving, not anything at all. Which is good, except… all that shooting definitely means Logan’s plan didn’t go the way he wanted it to. Dideveryonedie?
The silence goes on and on, and I have to know.
“Come on,” I whisper to Chloe, still holding her tight as I slowly push us up to standing.
“Princess?”
Everything inside me relaxes when Dante calls out. I loosen my arms, sliding a hand down Chloe’s arm to lace my fingers through hers, then tug her behind me as I step out from behind the pillar.
My legs wobble a little, and I lean against the pillar, letting it take some of my weight so that I won’t collapse to the floor.
“Riley!” Chloe hisses. “Oh my god, you got shot!”
What?
