We turn back.
* * *
And that’s when everything changes.
It happens before my brain can catch up. Before I’ve even properly seen it.
Cold. Sharp. Immediate.
Finn stiffens beside me.
An SUV pulls up too close, too fast. The tires bite into the asphalt, stopping like it doesn’t care about physics or safety or any human around. The door opens, and a man steps out, his gun already raised.
Everything in me goes cold in an instant. Not panic yet, but something much worse: that suspended second where the world refuses to finish forming.
Finn shifts beside me, just half a breath of movement, and I feel it. I feel him register it at the exact moment I do.
This isn’t a mistake or random. This is intent. My body grieves as I realize what this is. The world narrows to a single brutal truth:He found me.
“Get in.”
The voice cuts through the wind like it doesn’t belong here. My body reacts before my mind does. A step back. Then another. Finn does the same. We are synchronized without speaking.
And then it all fractures.
Rough hands grab us from behind.
“CJ!” I don’t even know if I say it or scream it.
We fight instantly. On instinct, not thought. Elbows, twisting, feet kicking backward into whatever I can reach, breath ripping in and out like my body is trying to outrun what’s already happening.
Finn’s beside me, struggling too, swearing, refusing, refusing, refusing.
But there are more of them than there should be. They are too strong, too coordinated. Like this was already decided long before we ever saw the SUV.
“CJ!” I scream into the air, into the space where I know he should be.
Something crashes behind me. Someone grabs my jacket hard enough that the fabric rips. I twist, hit, miss, hit again. Nothing lands the way I need it to.
And then I see him.
CJ.
Running to me. Deck running to Finn.
Guns in their hands.
CJ’s face is already breaking apart with a distance he can’t close.
And I understand it in one brutal, sinking moment. He’s not going to make it.
Not in time.
Not to me.
Deck won’t make it to Finn.
“Deck!” Finn shouts at the same time. His voice cracks through mine.
