Page 9

Chapter 9

Piers

I try to scoop Fantasia off her feet, but she flails so hard I’m afraid she’ll tear her side wide open again. She slips past me out of the bathroom, adrenaline making her steps sure. Ignoring the bodies of her former bodyguards on the floor, she rummages through her duffle, still open but unemptied on the bed. I creep toward the door, listening hard for any movement from our intruders, when I notice her struggling with the blouse, wincing as she pulls it over her head. I don’t hesitate, grabbing her duffle bag from the bed and slinging it over my shoulder.

Under our feet, at least four men search the house. They aren’t exchanging words, no doubt focused on trying to figure out where everyone is and why the front door was left wide open. I check the magazine of my handgun, and find what I already know is true.

I might have enough bullets to shoot my way out of this situation, but only if there aren’t more men than I think there are. And only if I never miss.

Footsteps start up the stairs. They have two directions to go- left, toward the two smaller bedrooms down the hall, or right. Toward us.

I don’t have a silencer on my gun. If I have to shoot the guy coming up the stairs, everyone will know, and we’ll likely end up in a standoff. I don’t have the ammunition to hold out against even a few other assailants.

If I fire, Fantasia and I are both dead.

I feel Fantasia’s heat at my side. Looking down, I find her staring back up at me, her pale eyes hard as jade. She’s not afraid, despite what’s just happened to her. In fact, she has Barnes’s massive knife clutched in her hand, still stained with her own blood.

I could kiss her again, if we weren’t in mortal danger. I settle for grabbing her free hand with mine.

Together we wait, breath held, as an unseen man’s footsteps hit the top of the stairs. He pauses for a moment, deliberating on his path. Then his steps begin to fade. I wait until I hear the creak of a door down the hall. Then I squeeze Fantasia’s hand fiercely.

Now . We have to take our chance now.

I pull Fantasia out of the room and down the stairs, carefully balancing speed and silence. Fantasia is even lighter on her feet than I am, which I knew from years of her sneaking up on me around corners in Wesley Hall. We pause on the bottom step, listening again for the sound of footsteps moving through the house. There are mumbling voices in a different room, but no one nearby.

I squeeze Fantasia’s hand again. We dart around the bottom of the stairs- and almost trip over my duffle, which I dropped here when we first got to the house. I hesitate for only a second before tucking my gun into my belt and grabbing the bag, which holds clothes, money, and ammunition. Feeling slightly more prepared, I lead us down the hall toward the back of the house.

On the way, we pass the door to the den, the second living room, the garage. At every doorway I pause and peek inside, breath held. On our way past the kitchen I spot the first men, and my stomach plummets. There are two in here, armed and alert, but thankfully not facing the doorway. One is turned so that I see nothing but the back of his red hair. The other is showing me his profile- and his breast pocket, where a white and gold handkerchief is neatly tucked.

The Crowes. Fantastic.

“Are we sure this isn’t some random fucker’s house?” The man with the red hair doesn’t turn, but I hear his whisper clearly. He has a thick Irish bend to his voice. “If we have to dodge more cops-”

“The tag we put on ‘im went right here,” his companion says.

Him? Did they slip some kind of tracker into Barnes or Armstrong’s clothes during the fight at the airport?

Well, if that’s the case, then at least we can make a clean getaway ourselves. If we can make it out of the house without being seen.

Fantasia pokes me in the back, urging me on. Before either man turns to spot us, we slip past the kitchen. There’s nothing between us and the back door. With Fantasia glancing over our shoulders frantically, I turn the lock on the door as carefully as I can, channeling every single night I snuck out the back door of the orphanage growing up.

The lock clicks quietly. Footsteps approach from the kitchen. I turn the handle with steady purpose, open the door- and drag Fantasia through before anyone spots us.

Unfortunately, I have no time to close the door. I have to leave it cracked, marking our trail, before we can sprint across the grassy slope of the backyard.

Darkness is falling over the house, turning the tall trees around the property into towering, many-limbed beasts. I lead Fantasia into the shadows at their feet, camouflaging us as we run down the length of the driveway. I wish I could pull us directly into the car we used to get here, but there are two other cars parked behind it at the foot of the drive. Blocking us in.

Fantasia stumbles behind me and almost falls into the underbrush. She’s only keeping up because I refuse to let go of her wrist. If she falls, it’ll rip open her side and make us unmoving targets. We need to get to a vehicle, not only to increase the speed of our exit, but to spare Fantasia from hurting herself more.

I aim us at the last car sitting in the driveway, the one free to back out, and am relieved to find it unlocked. No keys, of course, but that’s not a problem. I learned to hotwire a car when I was thirteen.

Fantasia leans on the side of the car beside me, panting for dear life. I can’t imagine how tired she is, not only twenty minutes after being brutally attacked, but also after months of barely eating or sleeping, and a week of sweating out alcohol withdrawals. She’s not physically equipped to be running for her life.

An intrusive thought tells me I should be glad that she’s getting to see how it feels, but I shake my head hard, banishing it angrily.

“Hey- Shite!” a Crowe shouts.

I slam my head against the steering wheel trying to look up through the front windshield. He stands at the top of the driveway, pointing toward us and shouting for his friends to get out of the house. Fantasia ducks around the back of the car and climbs into the passenger seat, wincing when she has to bend her side double for the first time.

“Hurry please!” she cries.

I strike the battery and ignition wires together, and the engine wakes. When I straighten, there are four men running down the driveway toward us, silhouettes backlit by the house’s lit windows behind them.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say please in your life,” I muse, shifting the car into reverse.

“Just go , you psychopa- AAH!” Fantasia shrieks as I gun the car backward down the drive.

As cool as driving a car in reverse feels, I have to slow at the base of the drive to give the gate time to open- except it already is. Just like how I hotwired my car, it looks like the Crowes opened up the control box on the brick column beside the gate and forced it open, leaving exposed wires in their wake.

Works for me.

I pull out onto the street and straighten up just in time to see the second Crowe car barreling down the driveway after us. I throw the car into drive and hit the gas.

Well, we have a car now, but we’re also being closely pursued. I steer us at too high speeds out of the neighborhood and out into busier streets. If I’m lucky, I can lose the Crowes at a light or in traffic. In practice, this means I’m dodging past other cars and speeding like a madman. If a cop sees me, we’re fucked.

Every time I switch lanes, the Crowes’s car follows, so close I can’t even see their headlights in my rearview. They stay on me like this for two blocks, and I’m sure at any moment I’ll see flashing lights behind us both. I have no idea where I’m going- ideally out of Raleigh- but I know that if I manage to get onto the straightforward, open highway, I need to lose the Crowes first.

Finally, I think I see my opening ahead. I’m passing in the slow lane, but a semi in front of me won’t let me keep that up for long. I change lanes, almost without looking, cutting off the minivan to my left at the very last second and leaving the Crowes’s car trapped behind the semi and inside the minivan. The road is clear to the intersection, so I slam the gas pedal to the floor and take off.

Up ahead- too far ahead- the light turns yellow. The semi I’m passing starts to slow. The car in the fast lane beside me starts to slow. The minivan behind me starts to slow. Trapped behind the wall they make, the Crowes’s car has nowhere to go unless they want to jump the median and fly into oncoming traffic.

And just when I think they will, they don’t.

The light turns red, but I don’t stop. Our car barrels through the intersection, but I might as well have launched it across a canyon and reached the other side unscathed. Every one of my fingers and toes is tingling with adrenaline.

“Fuck! Yeah!” I shout. “Did you see-”

But when I look over, Fantasia’s eyes aren’t even open. She’s holding herself still in the passenger seat. Trying to breathe through her pain.

The worst case scenario flashes through my mind. She really did tear open her side while trying to run. The wound was worse than I thought and now she’s bleeding internally.

I have to take my eyes off of her. I have to focus on the road. But it’s all I can do not to reach over and pull up her shirt to check on her stitches.

“It’ll be okay, love,” I tell her, half to convince myself it’s true. “We’ll stop at the first petrol station so I can take a look-”

“Spare me your blubbering, Piers,” Fantasia snaps. “I’m fine .”

Other, more stable men might be irritated by the attitude. Me, I feel a smile twist at my lips. I’ll take it as a victory that she still has the energy to snarl at me and defend her own pride.

And because we’ve spent the last year as enemies instead of friends, instead of whatever we could have been, I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt at biting back.

“Not used to all the running, I imagine,” I say airily. “Don’t worry. I’ve got some experience by now.”

I glance over just in time to see Fantasia wrinkling her pretty nose in disgust. She turns her glare on the window when she catches me looking.

“Besides,” I go on, “it’s kind of nice not having to be hunted alone this time.”

That earns me seething silence for the rest of the trip.