I gritted my teeth against the influx of emotion pouring from the men before me. Their bodies might form a wall, but their emotions did, too. Fear, obligation, unwillingness to get hurt regardless of what threats Cut had delivered.
My heart skipped a beat as the youngest of the men—just a boy—stepped from the line and raised his gun.
He aimed.
I drove faster.
He fired.
The explosion hurt my ears as the kid recoiled, his arm soaring upward from the kickback. Nila screamed as the bullet pinged off the bonnet.
“Get down!” Grabbing her neck, I forced her to bend over her knees.
“What about you?!” She looked sideways, frantic terror in her eyes.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Worry about them.
I swerved, placing my side of the car more prominent than hers. If anyone was going to get shot, it was me. I’d already survived one bullet. I could do it again.
“Jethro!” Nila disobeyed my orders and looked up. “Watch out!”
We stared down the barrels of guns. Machine guns. Shot-guns. All types of guns. Armed and cocked and ready to—
They fired.
We didn’t stand a chance.
The wheels blew, the metal carcass became pockmarks and mangled debris.
The car kept flying, but not on the ground. The front end crunched as the axis buckled, sending us tumbling through the sky.
Slow motion.
Loud noises.
Utter carnage.
The last thing I remembered was skidding, smashing into a boulder, and flipping end over end over end.
Then…
Nothing.
I LIVED IT all.
Jethro fighting with the wheel.
The rain of gunfire.
The buck and kick of the Jeep as its nose ploughed into earth and sprang upward into the air. I witnessed Jethro’s head snap sideways, his temple crunch against the windshield, and the bone-shattering landing when air turned to ground and the Jeep morphed from car to flattened sandwich.
Vertigo had affected me all my life. But this…the flipping, ricocheting, swerving nightmare was ten times worse. The hurl, the roll, the loop de loop forced our bodies to forsake our bones and turn into cartwheels of flesh.
Down was up. Up was down. And fate had well and truly abandoned us as we came to a teeth-chattering stop upside down.
I hurt.
I throbbed.
The engine wouldn’t stop whining. The shattered glass rained like fractured crystals. Blood stung my eyes, but I refused to tear my vision from Jethro.
Jethro…
Tears clogged every artery. Panic lodged in every vein.
We’d been so close…
He hung unnaturally still. Blood dripped from his temple, splashing against the roof of the car with morbid artwork. His side bled a rich scarlet while the gash on his forehead oozed almost black-red. His arms dangled, wrists bent and lifeless on the roof.
No…no. Please, no…
He couldn’t be dead.
He couldn’t.
Life wouldn’t be that cruel.
It wouldn’t bait hope before us and then yank it away as we reached for it.
It can’t be that cruel!
Jethro…
I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to speak and assure him. I wanted to pull him free and drag him far, far away.
But my brain had no power to send the message to bruised limbs.
So I hung there—a broken marionette held up by strings.
My lungs suddenly demanded breath. I gasped and spluttered. My seatbelt hugged me too tight, cutting my ribcage, keeping me pinned upside down. My hair hung around me, droplets of my blood tracing their way over my forehead, like incorrectly flowing red tears joining Jethro’s on the roof below.
“Ki—Kite…” I groaned as the word ripped me in two. I begged my arm to move to him, to see if he was alive.
But I couldn’t move.
Jethro didn’t move.
Nothing moved apart from the spinning tyres and settling dust, cocooning us in a cloud of yellow ash.
Blinking away blood, I sucked in another breath, willing the oxygen to knit me back together and revive me.
Come on.
We weren’t safe. I couldn’t remember why. But we weren’t safe.
Lions?
Hyenas?
Footsteps crunched closer. The click and snap of weapons being disarmed echoed in my skull. Instructions given in a language I couldn’t understand.
I suddenly remembered.
Hawks.
Someone tried to open my door, but it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t look at them. Keeping my eyes trained on Jethro, I wordlessly told him everything he deserved to hear.
I love you.
I trust you.
Thank you for coming for me.
I’ll follow you.
I’ll chase you.
This is not the end.
Horror that he might’ve gone forever consumed me. I’d watched him die twice. Twice.
I knew what it was like to survive without him. If he’d died, I wanted to go, too.
Tears streamed from my eyes, joining the blood dripping from my forehead.
More footsteps.
More crunching and conversation.
“Jethro…” I battled against the pain and misfiring synapses and managed to force my arm to move. Inch by inch, cripple by cripple, I reached for him.
When my fingertip touched his elbow, I burst into ugly tears. “Please…wake up.”
He didn’t twitch.
I poked him.
He didn’t flinch.
I pinched him.
He only hung there like a butchered corpse.
The windshield suddenly shattered. I screamed as a rain of safety glass pebbled in a waterfall.