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But this is New York, and even though the queue toOnyxhas gone down and the streets are quieter, the city never sleeps.
I scream. Loud. Bloodcurdlingly so. The man flinches so aggressively, and I hope I’ve burst an eardrum.
My hopes are short-lived. The man releases my arm in favor of shoving a hand over my mouth.
“Shut the hell up, you little bitch.” He practically spits in my ear as he silences me.
Something instinctive comes over me—the same feeling I had when we were in Alpine.
Pure terror clashes violently with my anger.
The need to survive takes me over.
The knife is in my hand before the thought is fully formulated. The silver handle lodges into his throat a millisecond after that.
He wasn’t expecting it. I can see it in his shocked expression. How his lips open and close as if at a loss for words.
Then, a wave of blood gurgles from his mouth. His body begins to slump into me, and I can feel it dripping onto my clothes as I attempt to hold him up. His limp weight threatens to crush me entirely. My mind is entirely numb to the fact I just stabbed someone in a public place.
I’m rescued by another pair of hands, which quickly alleviates the weight from on top of me.
“Right here, sir,” the driver says as he opens the door to the back seat of the car. In one fluid movement, the driver folds the dying man into the seat and slams the door behind him.
All I can do is stand there, paralyzed by fear and sweat and blood.
“Ma’am?” The driver’s voice cuts through the static of my brain.
“Y-yes?” I croak, turning away from the curious eyes watching from across the street.
“May I suggest riding shotgun?”
I can only nod as my trembling fingers reach for the door. But the driver beats me to it, holding the door open with chivalrous flair.
A few seconds later, despite each second feeling like a lifetime, I’m sitting in the plush leather of the limo, and the driver is closing the divider between us and the back seat. A detail I couldn’t be more grateful for.
“Is he–” I have to stop myself before the tears begin to flow.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver asks instead.
Right.I assumed we’d be going to Eda or even my brother’s warehouse. But the driver seems content with letting me call the shots. And with my phone in our passenger’s pocket, it’s not like I can call ahead.
I take a shaking breath in and out. My legs and arms are aching as if I’ve run a marathon. They feel too heavy to even move. It’s like my body pushed through the point of exhaustion and is now systematically shutting down each limb.
With Arnie gone and not knowing if he’ll be okay, I can feel my insides breaking in two. Not to mention the revelation that one of my best friends resents me and sold me out to my enemy.
The truth is,there’s only one person I want to see right now.
“Take me to my sister,” I whisper before giving him the address to the bunker Aimee talked about.
Was that only a few days ago?
The driver punches the zip code into his car and readjusts his seat.
I take the opportunity to glance out the window. No one seems to have noticed our little altercation. The people who were looking at us before seemed to have moved on entirely. I could almost pretend it didn’t happen at all if it weren’t for the small pools of blood on the floor.
Or the man in the back seat.
“Ma’am?”
