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“Don't.” Simon raises the tire iron when Ian takes a step toward him, his grip tightening around the handle. “I said sit the fuck down.”
Maybe Ian has finally calculated how many different ways this situation has deteriorated beyond his control. Whatever the reason, he sits.
Simon reaches into his pocket with one hand and pulls out his phone without lowering the tire iron. “We found them,” he tells whoever is already on the line. “Old tube launch off the river access road. Cebastian is here. Serena's here. She's alive.”
Alive.
The word lands strangely, like it's describing someone else. I can feel blood drying around my wrists, gravel embedded in my palms, every breath scraping against lungs that haven't quite figured out the danger is over. My head feels like someone is driving a railroad spike through the back of it.
But I am alive.
Baryn finally reaches me, and that's the signal whatever has been holding me upright was waiting for. My knees simply cease participating. I barely register that I'm falling before his arms are around me, catching my weight and pulling me against him before I can hit the ground.
“Fuck. Fuck, Serena.” His arms close around me, then immediately loosen, like he's afraid he's hurting me, his hands moving to my face instead. “Look at me. Where are you hurt?”
“Ian hit me.”
He goes rigid against me.
“In the head,” I add, because specificity remains important even now.
His eyes immediately search my face, then my hair, looking for an injury he can't see. “With what?” he asks.
“I don't know,” I answer.
“Did you lose consciousness?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him.
His hands move carefully over me without seeming to know where it's safe to touch, and that's when I feel the tremor in them. At first I think it's me, some delayed physiological response finally making its way through my body, but it isn't.
His attention shifts past my shoulder, and I watch something considerably less frightened replace the expression on his face.
“Simon,” he calls.
“Yeah?” Simon answers.
“I really want to come over there and hit him in the face with that tire iron, but I'm not letting her go,” Baryn tells him.
There's a brief pause.
Simon shrugs.
Then he hits Ian in the face with the tire iron.
Ian drops with a strangled sound, and Baryn's arms tighten around me as he watches him go down.
“Thank you,” he calls.
“Anytime,” Simon replies.
Baryn's thumb barely grazes my cheek, like he's afraid even that might be too much. “I called you.”
“I know,” I tell him.
“You didn't answer.”
“I was in a trunk.”
