“Emery!”
I’m not sure how many of us call her name, but all four of us descend on her. Derek gets to her first and scoops her up, immediately carrying her to the other side of the room, closer to the door, Darcy trailing after him.
“Help me with him,” Xavier orders as the knife skitters across the exposed wooden floor.
I whip back around to find him kneeling over a panting and sweaty Tray, gibberish about pain and being shot spewing from his lips.
“What?” I ask, and even to me, the question sounds stupid, but I’m struggling to understand why we aren’t just letting him bleed out.
“Grab a rag, wad it up, apply pressure. He can’t die here.”
Striding over to the ratty-looking backpack with clothes falling out of it, I look over at Derek and Darcy when I hear someone vomiting. They’ve turned Emery on her side as she throws up, body flexing with the motion. My throat aches, but I grab the rag as requested and bring it back to Xavier, who is still pointing his gun at the semi-upright Tray. He has turned a disgusting shade of gray as blood trickles from the wound in his shoulder.
Balling up the fabric, I press it to his shoulder.
Tray flinches before grinning maniacally. “You’re all dead.”
“We aren’t the one with a bullet in their shoulder, so I’m going to have to beg to differ,” I reply sardonically, trying not to breathe too deeply once his rancid breath hits my face.
“The Two-Sixers are expecting her to be here for them,” he replies, then groans as I press down harder on the wound. “She needs to pay off the debt.”
“She’s not the one who’s going to be paying off the debt,” I grind out, just as the sound of a car door slamming outside of the house echoes around us.
Tray eyes darken and he starts to laugh, an evil edge to it. “You’re out of time.”
Chapter 5
Darcy
“We need to get her to a hospital,” I call out to no one in particular, my palms clammy and my vision a little blurry.
There was only one bout of vomiting, and it wasn’t much, but now she won’t open her eyes and moans quietly if we move her too much. I’m surprised I can even hear the noise with the way my ears are filled with the sound of my rushing blood.
Derek checked her for injuries, but besides the swollen wrist and bruised cheekbone, we can’t find any other issues.
“Maybe she hit her head when he took her?” he asks as he moves toward her head and starts working his fingers through her hair and over her scalp, pausing a few inches above her temple. “There is a sizable bump here.”
“Concussion?” I ask, but it finally dawns on me how quiet the room is behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and icy fingers wrap around my heart. Shielding Emmy with my body, I turn and try to figure out what the fuck happened while I’ve been distracted. Xavier’s pistol is pressed into the temple of that fucker, and Hudson is applying pressure to his wound.
The counterbalance of their positions makes for an interesting concept, and I take a mental snapshot for later.
There is a creak at the front of the house.
Someone else is here. For Tray? For us?
Fuck. For Emery?
Making eye contact with Derek, I reach for the gun tucked into the back of his waistband, and he gives a nod before carefully sliding his arms beneath Emery and cradling her to his chest. As gently as I can, I place her injured arm in her lap as he stands and then put myself between the two of them and the door, finger poised over the trigger, gun aimed at the door.
Nerves rattle around inside of me, making me feel like a shaken snow globe.
Learning how to handle a gun is one of my earliest memories. Nothing fancy, just shooting at tins and jars at my family’s vacation residence in the mountains. At the time, most of my uncles were in criminal law, different firms, but they were all on the same page about the next generation being able to protect themselves if anyone ever broke in.
However, being comfortable with shooting at stationary targets, that don’t spray blood when you put a bullet through them, doesn’t help me right now.
There is a quiet whistle, more air than noise, and out of the corner of my eye, Xavier shifts before making the same noise. A second later, a massive hulk of a man dressed in all black appears in the doorway.
