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Gage’s gruff tenor follows seconds later. “Tango eight down.”
Ty’s tone deepens an octave, peppered with concern. “Tango nine unaccounted.”
“Tango nine unaccounted on Delta side,” Gage confirms.
“You smell like a memory,” Ivy warbles in a sleepy drawl, her nose nuzzling my jaw, apparently oblivious to the bloodbath encircling her.
“Not a memory, Ives. I’ve got you. Stay awake.” As the words fall from my lips, Liam’s voice announces in my ear, “Tango nine unaccounted on Charlie side,” and my gut wrenches.
The snow crunches as a scraggly figure emerges from the shadows, mere feet from my position. My pulse ratchets higher as I smash Ivy into the tree and fire at his face—a kill shot between the eyes. A shower of gore and bone, flesh and brain matter, rains down on us both.
“Tango nine down,” I say, clutching Ivy’s trembling body more securely.
She isn’t screaming, not externally anyway. But she saw it, and she’s in shock, somewhat aware that she’s blanketed with the insides of another human. Nothing prepares a soul for that. A string of bleats and whines stutter out of her.
Fuck,I never wanted this for her.But it’s where we are, and there’s no way out, except straight through the carnage.
“Alpha side clear, Chief,” Ty reports.
Gage’s voice resounds through the comm next. “Delta side clear, Chief.”
“Charlie side clear, Chief,” Liam finishes.
I scrutinize the area with a final once-over. “Bravo side clear. Move out.”
With that, I dash to Ivy’s Porsche, snatch her go bag, pluck her rifle out of a bush, and sprint toward the C side. Stationing Ivy and myself behind the coverage of the school, I coil around to launch a grenade at the Porsche, demolishing any evidence of her presence here in a blast that bellows with a tumult of clanging metal and shattered glass. The whoosh of flames sunders the smoky air.
When I climb in the back seat of the truck with Ivy straddling my lap, no one speaks a word. She’s a harrowing sight—cloaked in the remnants of life and death and her journey through Hell.Ty sits beside me in the back, Gage shotgun with Liam behind the wheel. He peels out of the parking lot with a jolt, sirens blaring in the near distance.
While I’m whispering soothing words into Ivy’s ear, Ty reaches a hand over, squeezing reassurance into her thigh. I’m sure he simply needs to feel her, to know we really have her, but she pays him no mind. Racking sobs rumble from her chest as she clasps her hands into the hair at the nape of my neck. She’s stuck, suspended in the terror that ensued around her.
We drive straight to our safe house—one we’ve had in this area for years because of her. She needs medical attention, but we can’t take her to a hospital when she’s doused in blood and brains. I cart her straight to the bathroom attached to a bedroom. She clings to me as I shimmy our vests off. Her hand never abandons the grip on me, even as I shuck our clothes, tossing them beyond the door for the guys to burn.
Flipping the nozzle to hot, I enfold her quivering frame into mine. My fierce girl seems so small here, so fragile. The tremors in her limbs and her chattering teeth scream how rattled and flustered she is, but her sapphire beauties are glossy and vacant. Like her mind ventured on one of her vacations.
Split between two worlds.
I lift her into the shower, and she sags against me, sluggish,while I scrub over her bruised and battered skin, a crimson stream puddling around our feet. Her ribs are tender and already varnished with purple-and-black contusions that extend to her back, and her left breast is an angry, mottled red. She winces as my fingers peruse the marks, but still, her gaze is absent.
There are blood-encrusted scrapes and cuts mantling her scalp, so I gingerly work my fingers through the tangles, sifting bits of my kill from her knots.
“You’re okay, Little Storm. It’s all over, baby.”
She doesn’t respond, her empty eyes fastened to something out of reach, some unattainable destination of peace.
I keep talking, hoping my voice will penetrate her haze and bring her back to me. “You did so good. My strong, brilliant girl.”
And here, in the heavy steam of the shower, after a month and a half of anguish and days of trepidation, I permit myself a brief breakdown because,Christ, she’s here. Traumatized but here. And so damn breathtaking.
I brace my hand on the dewy tiles behind her, a shuddering breath billowing out as still-vivid fears prick my eyes and drip to blend with the shower drizzle. “Fuck, I missed you so much, Ives.”
Her ocean blues, spilling like a sea at high tide, snap to mine, loosening the knot in my chest a smidgen. “My mother?”
“Safe,” I assure her, skimming my thumb over her bloodstained cheekbone. “Your dad too. They’re at the hospital. We’ll go there soon.”
“My dad. Good. I thought …” She scans my face, then my hair, unkempt and still saturated with particles of her assailant, before she locks eyes with me again, her pupils blown and as wild as her matted strands. “I … killed people. Lots of people.”
“Five,” I tell her honestly. She killedfour inside the vehicles and one on foot. Glossing over our reality won’t stabilize her shock. Owning it is the only way through the fog.
