“You think this is over? That you can just walk away?” Roland spat at her.
“Fuck you,” Meghan yelled.
Then Reyna heard a series of gunshots. Roland shifted fast enough to miss most of the spray, but a bullet must have hit. He grunted and gave a bit of release on her ankle. Reyna reared back and kicked him in the face. He let go, falling backward across the pavement.
Gabe tugged Reyna all the way into the van. She gasped on all fours as she stared through the open doors at Roland’s furious face. Evenafter being shot, he still got back on his feet and raced to catch them.
But he couldn’t take down a moving vehicle barreling down the street. Their eyes met in the distance, and a chill ran down her spine, as if he was saying that he would come for her. This wasn’t over.
But it was over.
It was all over.
Chapter Two
The van skittered around another corner and toward safety as Meghan and Gabe pulled the doors closed. The noise from the outside disappeared, sending them all into a stony silence, their labored breathing the only sound.
Reyna didn’t recognize the woman with brown skin and a bindi on her forehead who turned to the back from the passenger seat. She rummaged through a black duffle bag and handed warmer clothes to Meghan and Gabe. She moved toward Reyna, but Gabe put his hand out to stop her. His eyes shot to Reyna’s and then back. He shook his head as if she were a volcano about to erupt.
The woman shrugged and passed the clothes to Gabe. He walked through the large open area in the back to where Reyna was still seated on the floor, shell-shocked. She tucked her knees to her chest, pulling Beckham’s jacket tighter around her. She wouldn’t relinquish this. No matter what anyone said.
“Hey,” Gabe said, crouching down. “You’re going to get sick if you don’t change into this. You don’t want it all to be for nothing.”
He held out a pair of pants, thick socks, a sweater, and a jacket to match Meghan’s. When she didn’t respond, he put the clothes next to her and went to talk to Meghan, who appeared a minute later with a haunted look in her eyes.
She didn’t try to talk to Reyna. She didn’t try to tell her that things would get better. She didn’t lie to her. She acted like the nurse that she was trained to be. She helped Reyna into the pants and socks. Reyna only protested when Meghan tried to remove Beckham’s jacket. This was all she had left of him.
Tears filled Meghan’s eyes at the sight. She slung the otherjacket on top of Beckham’s, rubbed Reyna’s hair gently, and then stepped away. She returned a minute later to bandage her wrist and then left her alone.
The adrenaline of the escape and chase had suddenly left Reyna’s body, leaving her utterly empty. Leaving her with her memories.
Beckham’s broken body. Him falling to the ground. Not moving. Dead.
She felt as broken as he had looked in that moment. Broken and bleeding and empty. Just empty.
Reyna could hear everyone whispering about her. “What happened to her?” the woman asked.
Gabe shook his head. “Beckham…”
“He’s gone?”
Meghan cleared her throat noisily. “Prisha,” she hissed.
“Yeah,” Gabe replied. “He’s gone.”
Tye cursed softly.
Meghan hiccupped around her own tears.
“She saw it?” Prisha murmured.
“Yeah,” Gabe whispered.
“Poor thing.”
But Reyna didn’t feel like a poor thing.
She wasn’t a wounded animal.
