Page 143 of The Ashes of Summer

Around us, women start crying. Not because they're frightened anymore.

Because they're watching proof. Proof that somebody in this building gets to go home. That somebody gets their family back.

And I feel it land in me too, because I made a promise on a cold driveway to a man I was certain I'd left to die.

I'll find her. I swear to God, I'll find her.

I did. He's holding her right now.

And somehow, despite the blood and the bodies and every terrible thing in this building, the warehouse doesn't feel quite so dark anymore.

Jacob steps up behind me and his good arm comes around my waist, and I melt back into him without a thought. His heart beats steadily against my back through the bandages.

Alive. Still here. Still mine.

His lips brush my temple. "We did it, baby."

And for the first time since all of this started, I believe him.

For the first time since Jackson took me, I think we might actually survive it.

Chapter 43

Come With Us

Jacob

The girls are out, Summer is safe, and Christ, it feels good. Not perfect. Not anything close to normal. But good.

The parking lot is crowded now, women wrapped in blankets and oversized jackets while Black's men move quietly between them checking injuries and handing out water. Some of them are crying so hard they can't stand. Others sit on curbs and truck tailgates staring past the floodlights into the dark, like their minds haven't caught up with the rest of them yet.

I know that look. Shock. The kind that comes after surviving something you never once believed you'd survive.

Pain pulses steadily through me while I lean against the hood of my truck. Now the adrenaline's draining off, the exhaustion is settling into my bones properly. Every breath hurts. The bandages around my chest feel tighter than they did an hour ago, and there's a sticky warmth spreading where fresh blood's coming through.

Worth it. Every fucking second of it.

Because Summer is alive and I kept my promise.

My eyes find her through the crowd. The way they always do.

She's twenty feet away, wrapped in my jacket, talking quietly to one of the younger ones. The kid can't be more than nineteen. She's still got that blanket clutched against her chest, and every few seconds she wipes her face with the back of her hand while Summer keeps talking to her like there's nowhere else in the world she needs to be.

The sight does something dangerous to my chest.

Because after everything Jackson took from her—after Vince, after Brenda, after every hour in that house—she's standing in a freight yard at four thirty in the morning holding somebody else together.

Black appears beside me with a cigarette between his fingers. He doesn't light it. Probably because this whole lot already smells like blood and smoke and gunpowder.

He studies me, then his eyes drift toward Summer.

"What about Moore?"

The question settles heavy between us. Not because I haven't thought about it.

Because I haven't stopped.

Every time I shut my eyes, I see Summer tied down in that house. I see the women inside that building. I see Groves strapped upright in a chair with a hole between his eyes. I see Hayes. Vance. Calder, twenty-three years old, laid out at the edge of a clearing with somebody's flashlight on him. I see Reyes in a hospital bed three towns over, still not out of the woods.