I push off the floor, my broken arm tucked useless against my ribs. Every step is a negotiation, my knees feel like wet sandbags, my pulse a drum in my throat, but I force myself toward the door. One hand slides along the cool metal wall to steady me; the rig tilts with each motion. I smooth my skirt down, making sure I don’t accidentally flash anyone that could be on the other side, before I unlatch the door and pull.
Cool air hits my face like a slap. Dawn is a thin smear of pale gold along the horizon, threading through the skeletons of pine trees. The place is empty and silent in a way that makes what happened inside my old rig feel obscene.
I walk down the stairs, my legs threatening to fold, and force my eyes to scan the clearing for something, anything to tell me where I am, when I remember the panic button on my necklace. My fingers fumble at the pendant, thumb trembling as I desperately click it.
The sound of an alert cuts through the clearing along the treeline.
Somewhere beyond the trees, a curse rips out, then I hear the staccato of multiple pairs of boots on the ground.
I pivot, raising one arm because the other won’t obey, and the world narrows to the sound of people running toward me. He appears first at the edge of the clearing like a figure ripped from a dream.
42
Lucian
We stand in the tree line, as the cold settles into my bones, the whole abandoned RV campground is spread out in front of us like a place that’s been forgotten on purpose. There are only a few rigs here, but they sit crooked and sun-bleached, with their windows punched out. The newest one of them looks too damn much like Celeste’s old rig. That has to be the one she’s in.
Wethinkwe have the coordinates right. Linkin swore the triangulation was solid. I keep watching the rig anyway, waiting for movement, waiting for anything that tells me we’re not about to breach the wrong place.
The door creaks open, and I look over to signal Torres of the movement. We both look back at the rig when I notice the person is Celeste.
My phone detonates at that exact moment with that tone I set for her pendant: a single, high, ugly note that meansshehit SOS.The sound slices the night into a narrow tunnel. I’m already moving.
Branches slap my jacket, dirt kicks under my boots. Relief hits me like a physical force. I push harder, lungs burning, and she meets my eyes. Everything else drops away; she’s here.
Then she starts to fall.
I put on an extra burst of speed and close the last few yards in two long strides. I catch her before her knees hit the dirt, hauling her into my chest.
“Wildflower,” I say, because the nickname is the only thing that comes out. Her breath is ragged. Her left arm hangs at an angle that doesn’t belong to any joint; the sleeve is dark at the elbow. There’s blood at her hairline, a dark, sticky line where her scalp has split, running down her face. “Who did this to you? Where are you hurt?”
“Kelsey,” she says, and the name drops between us like a stone. “It was your physical therapist. She—she’s obsessed with you. She said if I was gone, she could step in. She thought with me out of the way, you’d be hers. She broke my arm.”
My hands tighten before I even think about it, and I pull her into me so close it feels like I’m trying to stitch the edges of whatever just happened.
“Kelsey?” I repeat, the name a question and a curse, low and raw. “She—she did this?” I search her face like I’m reading a map of the night, looking for the where and the how and the parts I can fix. “You’re safe,” I tell her, over and over, the words a litany against the thing that just happened. “You did it. You stopped her. I’ve got you.”
She collapses into me and everything narrows to one brutal, bright thought: Celeste isalive. I press my face into her hair and smell her shampoo and sweat and the metallic edge of blood, and let that proof steady my hands.
“I kept her talking,” Celeste says. “I asked about you, and she kept saying the two of you were meant to be, that you’d reverse your vasectomy, and get rid of Sir Sassafrass for her. I kept her on it until I felt like I could overpower her.”
“You did exactly what you were taught,” I remind her. “You stalled her, you kept her talking, and you remembered the pendant when it mattered. Be proud of yourself for that. You did the right thing.”
Torres comes out of the rig and stands next to us.
“The woman inside has lost a lot of blood,” he says, voice tight. He looks up at me, eyes sharp. “She’s starting to come around, but she’s disoriented. The ambulance is en route. The ETA is ten minutes.”
“Let Kelsey have it,” I say, the decision clean and hard. “You go with her. I’ll get Celeste to the closest ER.” My voice leaves no room for argument—Kelsey needs full medical attention and someone lucid at the hospital; Celeste needs speed and stability. Both need to survive this night intact.
I snag my cell, thumb fumbling until Orion’s name appears on the screen. It picks up before the first ring finishes.
“My alert went off. Tell me you’re calling because you have her.” Orion’s voice demands.
I hit the speaker. “We have her.”
“You were supposed to wait for backup. What happened?”
“We were canvassing, making sure we had Linkin’s ping right.” I slide an arm under Celeste’s knees, the other behind her back, and lift, making sure I hold her in a way where no one can see her bare ass. She presses into me, small and fierce, and the tremor under my palm is real. I start toward the SUV. “That’s when she alerted us through the pendant. I saw her covered in blood and ran to her. Thankfully, most of it isn’t hers. Her arm is broken, but we’re on our way to my SUV, where we’ll go straight to the ER.”
