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I waited for the beam of another flashlight.
None came.
Then some sixth sense, some primal survival instinct I might never understand, sent alarm bells screaming and wheeled me about just as the fourth guard stepped through the front door. He’d snuck around the house and entered the opposite side.
I ducked around the corner, out of view.
His steps were slow, barely audible—but they were there—and he was headed my way.
45
Thomas
“Will!”Ishoutedfromthe top of the stair.
Like a startled leopard, the guard spun, his rifle swinging even more wildly than his frantic gaze.
Will didn’t miss a beat.
A shot fired.
Then a second.
The guard and his rifle clattered to the floor.
Before I could move, Will stood over the fallen man. He kicked his rifle away and checked for signs of life. Finding none, he looked up.
“Let’s go.” His voice was harder than I’d ever heard.
I was growing too weak to argue. Eszter—tiny, little Eszter—wrapped her arm around me and tried to keep me upright. We couldn’t descend the stairs that way, so she released me and went first, stepping backward down the stairs and holding me up with both hands. In any other time and place, it would’ve been comical. How she walked backward while going down a flight of stairs—while holding a wobbly man three times her weight upright—would forever baffle me.
And yet, she did.
“I’ve got you,” she said, her voice a sparrow’s call.
Will took me from her at the bottom of the stairs, his strength an immediate relief, and I sagged into him.
“Damn it, Thomas. I told you not to fucking get shot.”
I grimaced and tried to laugh. It hurt too much.
Will had my right arm draped across his shoulders, and I wasn’t walking so much as being dragged in a controlled fall.
My left shoulder pulsed with heat. Not fire—weight. Like something had buried itself in my flesh and now refused to let go. Adrenaline blurred it for now, but it wouldn’t forever.
We turned onto a side street.
There were no headlights, no dogs, no voices.
Just the wind threading through barren trees and broken gutters and the crunch of our boots on frost.
Eszter was just ahead of us, wrapped in her blanket like a ghost, glancing back every few steps. She hadn’t said a word since leaving the mansion. She hadn’t screamed when shots were fired. She didn’t even flinch, just froze—and ran when Will told her to.
She was her father’s daughter. God help her.
Will whispered, “Stay with me,” and I wasn’t sure if it was to me or to her.
Or maybe both.