Page 108 of The Ashes of Summer

Maybe we all have.

And for one second—one single second—I let myself breathe.

BANG.

Pain detonates through my shoulder, white-hot, and the roar comes out of me before I know it's coming.

Summer screams.

I go down hard, and the floor comes up, and everything on my right side turns to molten metal.

My head snaps up.

Jackson Moore is at the far end of the corridor with his gun up, chest heaving like he's run the whole way here, blood down the front of his shirt and half his ear gone.

And when his eyes find Summer on her knees beside me, something pulls at his face that isn't rage.

It's possession.

"She's mine," he snarls.

He says it like a man watching someone walk off with his property.

Summer's got fistfuls of my shirt. I try to get my weight under me and my shoulder won't take it—blood coming through the fabric fast, running warm down my ribs.

Jackson raises the gun again, and I know he’s aiming straight at my head.

I reach for my weapon. But I’m too slow. The pain whites out my vision for half a second. But somehow I still know he smiles.

Then Summer moves.

She comes off the floor. Lunges for my handgun—the one that left my hand when I fell—brings it up in both fists.

Wrong grip. Hands shaking so hard the barrel won't sit still.

And Jackson freezes.

Actually freezes. Shock crosses his face—real shock—because somewhere in that ruined head of his he still believes she belongs to him too much to do it.

"Anna—" he whispers.

BANG.

The shot goes off like the corridor itself split.

Jackson jerks sideways. The gun leaves his hand. Blood bursts out of his thigh, he hits the wall, then goes down onto one knee with a strangled sound I'll be hearing for the rest of my life.

Summer's still holding the gun. Shaking so hard she looks like she might go down too. Her eyes are huge. Horrified.

Jackson stares up from the floor. Confusion. Pain. Disbelief.

He didn't think she had it in her.

But the truth is, he's had her for days and he still doesn't know one single thing about her.

Carter's past us before Jackson has a chance to move. He boots the gun away down the corridor, takes him by the back of the neck, puts his face into the concrete hard enough that it bounces.

"Move again," Carter growls, wrenching his arms back, "and I'll cave your fucking skull in."