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I flinched, a whole-body tremble picking up and coursing through me.
I couldn’t do this.
I wasn’t brave or strong like Nova, or beautiful like Vivienne or smart like Georgia. I was just little Winnie Russel, a nobody from Hicksville.
I doubted anyone had even noticed I was missing. I certainly wasn’t the sort of person whose face would be plastered all over newspapers and milk cartons.
“Winnie!” Nova hissed, grabbing her meager belongings from her bed. “Move! We’ve got to go before they get back here with that gun!”
But I couldn’t. The fear had me in its grips again, and I just wanted to check out so I didn’t have to feel it.
She slapped me, her palm sharp and stinging across my cheek, but I still couldn’t move. I wanted to, but my legs were cement blocks, and any attempts at moving them seemed futile.
“Just go without me,” I murmured. “I can’t do it.”
Nova got in my face and pushed a bundle of blankets into my arms. “No way. You saved me when I had that seizure. Now I’m saving you.”
She hauled me toward the door, my feet shuffling for the first few steps while I clutched the blanket-wrapped parcel, but slowly, the movement felt more natural. One step turned into two and then ten until I was running, following the other women out the back door, down the steps, and across a darkened field.
We ran by the light of the moon with fear in our hearts but fresh night air on our faces for the first time in weeks. I wanted to stop, look around, take it all in because everything felt so new. We got to the edge of some woods, and I slowed, breathing heavily, my tiny bit of energy all spent.
Another gunshot cracked through the night, a bullet whizzing just by our heads.
I stifled a hysterical scream.
I wanted to drop to the ground and curl up in a ball and weep. I wanted to give myself up, fall at our captors’ knees and beg their forgiveness.
A tiny sound, one I’d almost forgotten, came from beneath the blankets in my arms.
I pulled them back an inch, gazing down at the tiny baby in awe.
She’d made a noise.
In the last few days, since Caleb had tossed her in here again, she hadn’t made a sound. It was like without Kara, she’d given up as much as the rest of us had.
We’d all just been waiting to die.
But that noise. That tiny cooing sound broke through all my defenses. All my fears.
If Kara’s baby could find her voice again, then I could do this. I could run. I could fight. I could survive.
I forced my feet forward, carrying the little baby with me.
9
FANG
Istared at the blood dripping down War’s shirt and his pale, wide-eyed face.
His head dropped, and he groaned, clutching the bullet wound. “Fucking hell, and here I was, thinking we were so quiet—”
Another bullet pinged off the metal hood, and I ducked on instinct, sinking down on my seat and dragging War off his as well.
“Fuck,” he moaned as he hit the floor. “That doesn’t tickle.”
The van had only two front seats, with a gap in between to access the rear. I shoved War into the gap, half lying on top of him, and tried to get my gun out of the waistband of my jeans.
“How bad is that wound? Flesh, or you gonna bleed out on me?” I raised my head, peeping over the dashboard through the broken windshield. I thought I saw some human-shaped shadows, so I popped off two shots then ducked again.
