“No, Ez!”
He shoots me a furious glance. One wrong move and we’re dead. Ezra keeps his hands suspended in the air and walks unsurely to Callum. Callum then trains the gun on Ezra, half parts watching his every move and keeping an attentive eye on me. My arms grow heavy, gravity pulling them relentlessly to the earth. The farther Ezra is from me, the more I deflate, my adrenaline depleting fast.
Ezra does what he’s never done before.
He fights back—
—and rams into Callum like how I’ve tackled players on the football field. I’m thoroughly impressed, embarrassingly aroused, but we have a chance now. And I take it.
Callum almost loses his pistol in the scuffle. It comes tumbling down with him and fires aimlessly into the night. The shot cracks and leaves a lingering echo—a ringing that reverberates in my ears long after the bullet’s been fired. Callum nearly loses purchase on the ground, resetting to aim. I have ample time to intercept, so I waste none of it. Despite the shrill pain in my ankle, I push forward and slam Callum into the car with brutalforce. I topple over with him from the sheer torture of my foot, but I’m successful in disarming the mercenary—the pistol clatters to the pavement.
I roll to grab it. The sound of Callum’s attempt to stand is swiftly squandered by the noise of a thorough pounding and the squelching crack of bone. I slip the gun into my possession and flick my attention to the chilling noise. Ezra mercilessly kicks the already unconscious man with the sole of his shoe. Crimson bursts from Callum’s nose, misshapen by Ezra’s nonstop blows.
“Ezra!”
He doesn’t hear me.
“Ezra, enough! We need to get out of here,” I say.
He halts and looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face. It chills me to my core.
“O-okay,” he croaks.
Ezra helps me to my feet again. He lowers me into the passenger seat and takes off for the driver’s side. I hand him the key, he twists the ignition, and we idle there for several moments. Several moments too many. Ezra watches the way we came, as if willing Tommy into existence. I grow antsy, nervous that Callum will wake from his unconscious stupor any second.
“Ezra, we need to go,” I urge.
“We can’t leave him—”
“He told us to go.”
He considers this another minute before shifting into drive. We zoom away to the distant wails of police sirens. Ezra navigates to the highway. After a while of driving, I notice our trajectory shift to the interstate leading to Salt Lake City.
Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to.
We just carry on and hope for the best.
Chapter 17
Ezra
“Where did Tommy say we needed to go?” I ask Conin while I navigate the highway interchange, directing our course toward Tooele, and trying desperately not to think about the way I hurt Callum.
It made me feel things . . .
“He dropped the burner phone in his struggle with the mercenary. Let me check it.”
Conin produces the flip phone and scours through it. He decides to call the last dialed number. The beating of my heart picks up pace, muscles shocked he took the risk of calling. It rings several times before a voice sounds from the other end. My shoulders tense. I try to listen over the sound of roaring tires and the staple Utah wind.
“Hi,” Conin says, awkwardly. “I’m the friend of the recidivist Tommy was talking about. Yeah. We ran into trouble. He said to escape, that he’d catch up. Where do we go? Eureka? Okay. Okay, I will.” Conin hangs up, snaps the burner phone intotwo severed pieces, and chucks them out onto the highway. In another brief decision, he holds his phone in a white-knuckled grip before tossing it into oblivion. The act, the brevity of it, what it means, throws me into a loop. It makes sense—our situation is dire. I don’t have anyone who would care enough to contact me, or I anyone else. The only person I love is in this car with me, taking on the unknown dangers ahead. So, I dig my phone out of my pocket and hold it in my sweating palm. Miss Bresshet takes this moment, the perfect opportunity, to call it.
Conin pales. My thumb hovers over the answer icon. He wants to talk to her, I know he does, and a part of myself wants him to, but we shouldn’t—not when there’s the risk of someone, Barclay Network or otherwise, that could glean any pertinent information on our whereabouts. Finally, breath hitched, Conin says, “Don’t answer it.”
With a trembling hand, I discard my phone. It’s engulfed by the black of night, its fate to be determined by the road. I grip the steering wheel tighter on ten and two with sleek, sweaty hands. Conin’s breaths are heavy, labored with suppressed panic. As we near the turn of the mountain, I can’t find the proper words to comfort him. I wish I was a writer like Conin with the knack for always knowing what to say, but I’m not. I need to say something, though. None of what’s happened has been fair to him.
“Are you okay?” I ask. It’s a stupid question. He’s obviously not.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
