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“Your boss,” the man says, his eyes sliding back to meet mine. “The big man? The owner?”
“He won’t be back for hours,” Emi trills from behind the counter, apparently still trying to attract his attention now that he’s focused on me. She can have it. He’s unnerving me, with his preternaturally attractive face, and that dangerous way he moves. Nothing wasted, every single step calculated. Like he’s... planning something.
“Where did you get that?” he suddenly asks.
I glance down at the rag in my hand. “From, uh, from behind the bar—”
He scoffs at my answer, straightening his shoulders and drawing himself up to his full and impressive height. He towers over me — I feel it, sense it, like a heavy blanket of power radiating out of him. I take a step back and fight the urge to swallow nervously. This isn’t my first rodeo, and he’s not the first bar patron to think he can intimidate me.
“No, I meant—”
“What can I get you?” I interrupt, turning away from him. “We’ve got two beers on tap, one dark, one light — which do you want?” I’m already walking away, ignoring the frustrated noise he makes in response. Maybe he’s already drunk, and that’s whyhis eyes look glassy. I’m not gonna get burned for over-serving, but that’s my sister’s problem, not mine. And given how bitchy Emi’s been to me today, maybe I wouldn’t mind getting her in a bit of trouble.
I’m not sure where this sudden streak of… rebellion has come from, because I don’t normally feel it burning beneath my breastbone, humming there with a soft vibration that’s new and not at all unwelcome. It feels odd and wonderful.
“Miss—”
His voice sounds tense, choked up, if you can imagine. I spin back to him, ready to unleash another stream of this New Katy that’s bubbling up in my chest, but I don’t get a chance. He grabs me in his arms, and my cry of surprise is drowned out by a wave of sound behind me.
Heat flashes over my skin. He tucks me against him. We go down hard, the solid, unforgiving cement cracking against my hip. He curses against my temple, his hands adjusting over my body to cradle me as he presses me into the ground, wedging me firm between its shocking cold and his intense heat.
The world whites out, red at the edges. The air is bitter, smokey, on my first inhale. And underneath it, the light fragrance of fruit wine is there, in the background, somewhere. The roar and heat of flames crackle around me as I bury my face instinctively in his chest. Something exploded — there’s a fire — but I’m safe. He’s on top of me, shielding me from the worst of the heat, even as my head swims and I don’t even really know what’s happening.
“Get up,” he yells in my ear, and he’s off of me in a flash, hauling me to my feet, his hands wrapped around my wrist. Somewhere, someone’s screaming. My sister. Emi.
I lift my head, but the room is filled with smoke, thick and smothering. My eyes sting, and toward the door, flames lick at the air.
I stare, frozen. The stranger grabs me by the shoulders and gives me a shake. In slow motion, like I can’t move any faster than a crawl, I lift my head to look at him.
“Back exit?” he’s asking, and for a second I shake my head, then my eyes widen, and I turn, running toward the storeroom in the back. He follows me, as a sound like multiple pairs of heavy boots thud in the doorway at the front of the bar, and Emily is screaming something, at someone, for somebody to get out.
“There’s a shelf,” I say, running into the storeroom, and glancing toward the bar, trying to see Emi through the smoke. “But it’s got boxes—”
I twist my head back around to see the stranger grabbing hold of the tall metal shelf that’s been in front of the back door for as long as I can remember. It’s still loaded down with boxes of old tools and auto parts, and it’s gotta be at least three, maybe five hundred pounds’ worth of junk, shelf included.
My eyes widen as it squeaks, then shudders, beginning to move. He’s wearing a leather jacket, but even the leather flexes around his muscles as he pulls it away from the door, leaving enough of a gap for it to swing open and us to get through.
A high-pitched shriek from the front of the building has my immediate attention.
“Emi!” I can’t see her through the billowing smoke, but it’s starting to clear.
“No, we have to get out,” the stranger insists, and his strong arms wrap around my waist. He lifts me clear off the ground as the air in front of me shifts, parting enough to reveal three new men now at the bar, one of them reaching across it to grab hold of my sister.
A hand claps over my mouth to stop me from making noise, and I’m dragged backward, out through the now-cleared and -open back door. Fresh air and sunlight tear across my face and I breathe it all in, gasping into the hand that’s pressing my lips together tight. The backyard behind the bar is empty except for some empty kegs and a few rusted-out cars — and a large black motorcycle I’ve never seen before, which definitely does not belong.
My eyes are blurry and darkened with tears from the smoke, and he drags me toward it. I want to scream, but I can’t. Panic boils up in me, sending waves of fear both cold and hot over me. The man carrying me says nothing. But as we get closer to the bike, my brain and my body both finally jerk into action.
… what the fuck am I letting happen to me?!
I reach up and scratch at his face, his ears, his eyes, anything I can reach, and I bite down on his palm, hard. He lets out a curse, grunts, and squeezes me tighter.
“Do you want to fucking die?” he demands in a curt, gruff, snarl of a whisper, which doesn’t do much to inform me which actions might result in said death, and hauls his leg over the bike, dragging me over his lap. The vehicle roars to life beneath and between us, drowning out the protest that’s caught in the back of my throat, just as two men appear in the mouth of the pub’s back door with heavy guns in their hands. I duck my head against my stranger’s chest, choosing the lesser of my two current evils, andthe bike rocks under us once before we shoot forward. My eyes slam shut and I cling to him as the crack of gunshots rings out.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy SHIT—
A bullet hits the bike. We swerve, he curses, and the bike jumps forward with a bang. The ground leaves us behind and we soar through the air as I scream, my throat catching fire with the rawness of it.
We hit the ground again, bike taking most of the shock, and he holds me tight so I don’t go flying with the inertia. We’re sheltered by the side of the building, but he’s speeding up, not stopping, and we hurtle forward, as Emily and another strange man stumble out of the front of the building. I stare over my shoulder, her eyes catching mine for a brief second. The building facade is streaked with soot and blast marks, and it’s the last thing I see as we turn the corner out of the front yard, the bike thundering down the street and away.
