My hands fist the leather seats as I stare wide eyed at the body.
“Christ, Jenna.” My voice breaks; the constant pain in my chest that feels permanent intensifies looking at her. Her eyes are smudged black with evidence of tears dragging whatever makeup they smeared her with, hiding that dullness that screamed from her when she was on stage.
I ache to touch her, to make sure this is real, that she isn’t dead. She doesn’t budge when I skim my knuckles down her cheek, feeling the wetness still coating her skin.
She’s real, and the hollow rises and falls of her chest show she’s breathing.
The sob rips from the containment of my chest, and I almost dive in the trunk to comfort her. To hold my best friend that I thought I’d lost forever.
My relief from a six-year grief is short lived; one of Saint’s men dives in the trunk beside her as he slams the door shut, throwing himself over her body, and that’s when the veil around me is lifted.
Bullets crack through the air from further up. Saint whips open the door, someone firing back as a bullet lodges itself in the car’s reinforced metal frame, the piercing of metal sounding likehailstones, the back window shattering as I duck behind the seat with a scream.
Saint roars, “Ross, get in the car!” The front passenger door swings open as one of the men gets in, firing over the roof of the car.
I scream Saint’s name, ducking again when another bullet whips just mere inches from my head. Ross has moved in front of Saint, acting like a shield as the both of them shoot towards the Omnia security that seems to be building, the number of cracks breaking the air evident in their numbers.
Hot liquid hits my face, and a blood-curdling scream rips from my throat watching Saint slam against the interior of the door. Ross’s body collapses backwards into him, catching under his arms as he slowly falls to the ground.
“Boss!” the driver yells, starting up the car as the engine roars to life.
Saint doesn’t move, despite him standing like a wide-open target as he holds a no-longer-alive Ross to his chest, face splattered with blood, his once crisp white shirt stained with death. Saint’s eyes are bulging, unseeing, and vicious.
My cries of his name go unnoticed, and I watch as his head slowly rises, his expression dipped in an unrelenting fury.
“Saint, please! Please get in the car. Please, I’m scared.” When the terror in my voice hitches, he snaps out of the shock, letting Ross’s body guide its dead weight to the gravel.
He jolts in beside me, and the minute the door closes, the force of the speed we hit sends me backwards. Our eyes collide, his hands searching all over me as he notices the blood. “Fuck, Indie. Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, wiping a hand along my face and neck, glancing down at my palm. The colour of my skin is no longer visible as it smears with the scarlet liquid, my fist closing over.
The car jitters violently as we follow a long dirt road winding through the treeline of the manor’s grounds, the opposite direction in which we arrived. “Hold on,” the driver groans up front, the revving of the engine blaring as he drops gears, foot slamming the gas as a gate in the distance grows larger.
Saint grips the back of my head, forcing me to fold into his lap as he covers my body. The car smashes through the metal, the force so intense the back wheels bounce before slamming off the ground again, both Saint and I hurling forward into the back of the front seat.
“Jenna!” I pull out of Saint’s grip, turning into the trunk. But one of his men has her protected, body pressed to the side of her as he lays adjacent to her, gun raised as he peers out the cracked back window.
Everything eventually hums into a deathly silence, all bar the harsh breaths of lungs working through the chaos that erupted mere minutes ago, the tyres grinding through the woodland until we peer out into a dead-end road.
“Everyone alright?” the driver calls, all of us voicing that we made it.
Except for Ross.
I glance over at Saint. His jaw is clenched tight, a gruelling form set in the lines of his face. The sound of a vehicle door slamming jars me from my stare, the van we arrived in coming into view as Dawson and Rex hastily make their way over to us.
“Fucking hell. Get in the van,” Dawson barks as we each peel from our seats to step outside.
Saint holds his hand out for me, and this time I take it without hesitation. I’m not sure if he’s had to face a loss in his team before, but by the way his murderous expression is cemented in place, it’s either his first, or he’s unable to deal when someone falls for him.
“Where’s Ross?” Dawson asks, and I glance over at Rex, whose rigid body stands in the middle of the road, watching the guys pull an unconscious Jenna from the trunk.
Saint’s reply is toneless. “Dead.”
Dawson’s shoulders slump as he brushes a hand through his hair. “Shit.”
The guards who rescued Jenna carry her body over to the van, Rex taking a step back near the doors; the colour in his face vanishes the moment his eyes lock on to hers, fists tightening at the sides as she’s carried into the back.
When they place her inside, one of the guys returns with a canister, emptying it into the interior of the car we fled in, the strong, potent smell of gasoline assaulting my nostrils as its contents is emptied, the brown liquid glistening as it mixes in with the punctures of metal over the roof.
