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“I didn’t do it!” Becca said through her sobs, shouting from the top of the pallet rack. “I couldn’t. I saw how you were with them. How they were with you and I…I couldn’t.I hate the Saints. I hate that if it weren’t for them my mom would still be alive, but I wouldn’t do that to you! You have to believe me!”
Butheghostedyou, I thought to myself.
This Ace, whoever he was, he’d cut Becca off. Stopped texting her. Stopped seeing her.
If he hadn’t ghosted her, would she have told him the things he wanted to know? Would Becca have caused the deaths of my Crows?
“When he texted me from that unknown number,” she said between sobs. “I mean, whenDieseltexted me pretending to be him wanting to meet up, I was going to end it for good, Aves.”
I forced myself to look at her, my chest a hollowed-out shell filled with dark, but she brought the light.
There was no lie on her face. She’d fucked up. She’d made a mistake. She fell in with the wrong guy. Becca was smart, but even the smartest women could be fooled by the vilest of men.
A miasmal sense of foreboding wrenched the air as I wondered what exactly Diesel and the Saints would do with this new information. An Ace was trying to infiltrate Thorn Valley, gather privileged information, and take them all out. Diesel had been right not to trust the Aces. They were working against him in secret all this time. This was how gang wars started.
Wars that almost always resulted in innocent casualties. Likely what happened to Becca’s mom.
And I remembered.
I remembered whyI hated the Saints.Why I hated all gangs.
They’d taken Becca’s mother.
They’d also taken my father.
Would I not have done the same thing if I were in her shoes? Did I not promise myself that I would return to Lennox and collect on the blood debt owed for my father’s life?
And then it clicked.
This trial was neverifI could save Becca.
It was whether Iwouldsave her.
Which meant I’d already failed.
The timer began to beep as the countdown rolled to 59 seconds and Becca started crying anew, her whole body shaking.
“Oh god,” she croaked through the tears.
“Call them out!” I shouted to her, racing around the pallets. “Becca!”
A gasp, and then she screamed, “On your right!” and I went skidding to my knees, throwing a blade for the Saint’s neck. It sliced across the side of his neck as he dodged the throw, sending a spurt of blood cascading in an arc over the floor. He immediately went to his knees, choking as he tried to splutter ayieldfrom his lips.
There was no time to disarm him or make sure he didn’t get back up so I moved on, the crow handled blade and my blade at the ready in each hand.
I rounded a tower of tires and Becca screamed, “Watch out!”
I ducked just in time to miss an axe coming straight for my head, using the Saint’s momentum against him to drive an elbow down into the back of his neck, hearing the satisfyingcrack!of bone as he went down. Went still.
“Hold on, Becks!” I called as she worked furiously to get her hands free from the binds keeping them tied behind her back.
The timer read twenty-seven seconds and my throat closed as I sprinted through the last of the maze, every muscle in my body burning. The wound in my shoulder and the tear in my knee begging me to stop, but I didn’t dare.
I rounded the last wall of pallets and lifted my blade, not hesitating this time when Diesel came into my field of vision. He threw an ax, but I dodged it, rolling and up again before he could reach for an alternate weapon. I tossed a blade and it found a snug home in his Achilles, sending him to his knees with a look of utter shock on his face.
He reached behind himself for the gun my fingers were already on. I tugged it from the back of his jeans and aimed it at his head.
“She betrayed you!” he hissed just as the buzzer sounded and two men, no more than shadows outside of the spotlight’s reach, pushed against the base of the pallet rack, trying to knock it from beneath Becca’s feet.
