Cricket lying on her back, head in the dirt. Cricket with her mouth half-open, trembling,trembling, trembling.Like she’s trying to speak,speak, but can’t find any of the words.
Cricket making aterrible terrible terriblewheezing sound.
Cricket with too much blood spilling from her torso.Blood.Oh god, there’stoomuch blood. My eyes start to blur, but I blink,blink, force myself to focus. Heart crashing against my ribs, skin tight against my bones. I touch a hand to her chest, searching throughthe blood, finding the bullet hole. It’s on the right side, not through her heart, but it’s bleeding, weeping. Too much of it.Everywhere. It might have punctured a lung, air hissing from her throat, from the awful hole.
Too much blood…
Too much.
I press my palms to the wound, shaking with adrenaline. “We have to get her up,” I say to Noah, my voice too high, too much panic on each word.
She’s choking, coughing up blood—and it reminds me of Mom, the blood that heaved up from her broken, dying body.
Dying, dying.
“Cricket,” Noah says, touching her face, trying to keep her eyes focused on him.
But they roll back in her skull, then snap back into focus. “Go,” she somehow mutters, spitting up more blood. Choking on it.
I ignore her. “We can carry her,” I say to Noah, nodding,nodding. Trying to convince him, convince myself. “Put her on Odie’s back.”
She coughs again, more blood dripping from her mouth.Too much. Shit, there’s too much.Behind us, I can hear the men. Shouting, gathering, coming toward us. They want to take me alive—they won’t risk firing another shot.
“Go,” Cricket tries again, using her hand to push against my shoulder, and somehow she has enough strength to force me back onto my heels. Still some fight in her. Still stronger than most men.
Noah touches her face again, wiping away the blood, but it only makes it worse, spreads it across her cheekbone, along her bare scalp.She nods up at him—words silently spoken between them. A language only they understand. He nods back, a solemn, terrible tilting of his chin, eyes dark.An agreement.
“No,” I say to Noah, knowing what he’s thinking, what’s about to happen. “We can help her.”
He shakes his head at me, tears against his lashes. But he says it anyway. “It’s too late.” A waver in his throat, in his trembling lips. His heart breaking right in front of me.
“It’s not,” I answer, heat and fear pushing against my eyes.I can’t let her die. Not after August, not after everyone at the barn. They all die, everyone who tries to help me. They die—because of me. And I can’t let it happen again. I wrap my hands around her shoulders, trying to pull her up. “Help me,” I bark at Noah, spearing my eyes up to him.
But his gaze whirls back to the edge of town, where the men have stepped out into the open and are moving toward us. “We have to go.”
More blood oozes from Cricket’s chest, and I move my palms over the hole, pressing, keeping it bay.We can save her!my mind screams. “Please, Noah,” I whimper, voice cracking. Time seems to stretch out briefly, the air soft and slow from my lips.
Noah releases his hands from her face, and stands up, towering over me—blocking out the dull evening sun. “Get up,” he instructs. An order. A command—as if I were a soldier on a battlefield—but I refuse to hear.
I shake my head… even though I know,I know, there’s no recovering from this. Even if we get her onto Odie’s back and travel far away from here, toward the lake, she won’t recover from this. She’ll bleed out, slowly, painfully.
But my body is trembling, refusing to stand up, to walk away. She has risked her life twice now to save me—even for all the times I know she wanted to walk away—and now she’s about to give her life because of me. Tears thread down my cheeks, awful little trails. I don’t want her to die like this, bleeding out, in pain and afraid.
But her hand folds over mine, dirty fingernails and a calloused palm. Her chin quivers. “He’ll protect you… no matter what—” She gasps for air, eyes pinching closed against the pain, and then they find me again, wide and watery and fearless. “He’ll die for you—” she says. “But don’t let him.” She squeezes my hand so tight that it hurts, then lifts her head a fraction of an inch, looking me squarely, firmly, in the eyes. “You protect him… promise me.”
I choke on the words I want to say, fear stiffening inside my chest like a fist. She loves him, I know. Loves him in ways that make my heart ache a little. In ways I don’t fully understand. She would have gone with him to the edge of the world to protect him. And now she’s asking me to do the same. She’s asking me to not let him die.But everyone near me dies.Tears burn my cheeks, my heart so loud in my ears, it sounds like I’m underwater. But I squeeze her hand back and manage to nod, meeting her eyes dead-on, so she knows I’ll keep this promise. Knows I won’t let him die—this boy she loved.
She nods back, and without another word, she releases her hand from mine, a stubborn, fiery gleam in her eyes, then reaches for the knife at her waist.
Time cracks back into place, moving in fast-forward now. I release my palm from the hole in her chest, blood gushing to the surface. Spilling out.
I’m shaking,shaking.Noah reaches down, hoisting me up fromthe ground. “We have to go, now!” he says into my ear. I want to fight him—the guilt too much—I want to drop back down and brush the blood away from her mouth and wait for her to take her last, final breath—so she’s not alone. So she isn’t afraid.Because this is my fault.But Noah whispers, gently like he knows I’m near breaking, “Please, Vega.” And I know we need to move. I need to keep my promise, because if we stay, they’ll capture me and kill Noah. And I won’t let him die here too, in this barren, nowhere stretch of land. Blood and choking back tears and too much pain in my chest.
Noah tugs me away from her, and I let him. We run, sprinting across the open plains, away from the deserted town. From Cricket. A shot is fired, then another, the echo vibrating through the still air, ripping past our heads.Maybe they’ll take me dead or alive after all.As long as we don’t get away. With the map still on my flesh.
My skull is a hammer, too much pain, too much blood on my skin, everywhere, and I wait for the next bullet to pierce my back, or Noah’s, but our legs keep running, carrying us forward. We reach Odie, and Noah lands a hand against her rump, and she breaks away into a gallop, heading for the trees—her eyes wild, breath quick from her nostrils, ears flattened back.
At the low gully, we drop down into it, scrambling, adrenaline screaming in our veins, then climb up the other side. I want to look back; I want to peer over my shoulder and see if the men have reached Cricket. But I wait until we’ve staggered across the open patch of land between the gully and the line of trees, legs burning, and then we duck into the cover of the tree line.
