The Risk (Kings of Linwood Academy 3)

s still and quiet.

The whole room goes quiet.

For a half-second, I think it’s just that my mind has stopped processing sounds again. But then it slowly dawns on me—no one else is shooting. No one else is screaming.

Dax is straddling the man who shot his brother, and the guy’s face is almost unrecognizable.

God. His brother.

Chase!

I scramble up—or try too. The blow to my head makes the whole world tilt and darken in my vision, but I don’t stop trying to reach him, crawling across the floor as Dax joins me.

Judge Hollowell wasn’t dead. He was shot, but he wasn’t dead yet. Maybe Chase isn’t either.

Whether or not Hollowell is still alive now, I don’t know. And I won’t be the one to find out, not until I know if Chase is alive.

Dax meets me halfway, and the two of us half crawl, half stumble over to his twin as sirens cut the air in the distance.

Maybe they’re coming for us.

Please let them be coming for us.

Because the pool of blood under Chase is too big. Too fucking big.

And it’s growing.

25

“Fuck. Chase. No.”

The words are a primal grunt as Dax falls to his knees beside his brother. The two boys who usually appear so alike look as different as night and day right now. Chase’s golden skin is pale, washed out, and he looks thinner somehow.

Is that possible? Or is it just the slackness of his face that makes him seem that way?

There is one way they look similar—they’re both dressed in red. The wound in Dax’s shoulder pours blood, and even though he hasn’t lost nearly as much as Chase, it doesn’t look good.

“Put pressure on it!”

My voice doesn’t sound like my own as I glance around wildly, but River is already there, pressing the heel of his hand hard to Dax’s shoulder. Dax is trying to get to Chase, but with the way his right arm is hanging limp, he won’t be able to put enough weight on his brother’s wound to staunch the bleeding.

I lean over the copper haired boy with the too-pale skin, my fingertips slipping over slick red blood as I try to find the bullet hole. It’s high on his chest on the left side, but it can’t have hit his heart. It can’t have. A pulse flickers in his neck, fluttering beneath the skin, and I press both my hands to the place where blood seeps from him.

But I can barely keep pressure on it either. I’m not hurt like Dax is, but my vision is still swimming from the blow to the head, and my arms are shaking so badly it’s hard for me to keep my elbows locked.

“I got it, Low. Let me. Let me, baby.”

Lincoln’s voice in my ear is like a healing balm to my soul, and I fall back onto my butt as he takes over. His knuckles are bloody, and his face is bruised, a trail of red trickling from the corner of his mouth where it looks like he split his lip, but his expression is a mask of concentration as he finds Chase’s wound, then tears off his own shirt and wads it up, holding it firmly against the bleeding hole.

“Hollowell…” I mutter raggedly, unable to tear my gaze away from Chase’s face. River and Dax watch him too, all four of us pouring our concentration onto him as if we could heal him with our love alone.

“Dead.” Lincoln’s voice holds no emotion. “I already checked. And I called 911. They’ll be here soon.”

Soon.

That word holds no fucking meaning when your world just exploded into violence, when someone you love is pouring his lifeblood onto a cold, unfeeling floor.

But soon is all we have, so we wait, still and quiet, our voices strangled with fear, as the wail of sirens grows louder.