“I was the one who was shot, you mean cow!” she snapped when she released the chunk of flesh she’d embedded her teeth into.
As neither of us was keeping up the pretense of being tied up, I scooted us deeper into the corner behind where we’d been dumped and watched the man spitting every time he spoke to whoever was on the phone with him.
Glancing at Sadie, I noticed the sweat on her forehead and how pale she looked. I’d never been shot—touch wood for luck—but I figured if I had been, I’d look the same way. Still, if I distracted her frequently, hopefully she wouldn’t go into shock, because that’s what happened, wasn’t it? “Do you recognize that voice?”
The look she shot back was incredulous like she was expecting me to be joking. When she realized I wasn’t, she snickered weakly. “That’s putting it mildly. If I were in that fuck face’s shoes right now, I’d be shitting my pants.” I wasn’t in his shoes, but I’d almost done it twice in the last hour, so… “That’s my dad.”
“Well, Moodie, I think you’ve got a bigger problem on your hands than we do. See, I know I’m getting my daughter and her friend back tonight. I also know they’ll both be breathing. Even more, I know you’re going to get what you deserve for everything you’ve done to both of them.”
“Really,” Moodie sneered back. “Seems like you might want to look at who has the power here, Dahl. You’re on one side of this phone call, and I’m on the other, except my side is in the same room as your daughter and her friend, where I have a gun in my hand that I’ve already proven I’m good to use.”
“I don’t think your dad should provoke him,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth as he came closer to us, his hand shaking so hard it looked like he was going to drop the gun.
He was just raising it, his finger on the trigger, when the door burst open behind him, and a shot was fired. I’ll never know how I moved as quickly as I did, but I had Sadie on the ground under me before I even knew what I was doing, my arms wrapped around our heads.
All the times I’d rolled my eyes at my cousins was for shit because I reacted in the way I reacted as screams and shouts filled the room around us—I asked Sadie for her favorite song, and we both started singing it. I shit you not, her with a hole in her leg, me waiting for a bullet to hit me, we started singing a song she’d been listening to in the office three days ago—Soup Dragon’s Divine Thing. The problem was, neither of us knew all the words, and just humming the tune wasn’t cutting it, so I yelled out the next one for us to move on to.
Here’s a little something I will say about our coping mechanism—we both needed to learn more than a few words of the verses and only the chorus of songs because that happened each time we chose a new one. Whether it was nerves or fear clouding our minds, I don’t know, but we were shit at remembering them. There’s also the fact that I was tone-deaf, and she was struggling to sing with my weight on top of her, but by the time someone shook my arm gently, it was pretty obvious we’d never get a recording deal. Ever!
“Ari?” Parker shouted, sounding frantic as he shook me again.
Lowering my arm, I raised my head slowly in case the psycho guy was still holding his gun or Chantal had come back from the dead. With what’d happened here today, anything was possible.
“Is he gone?”
Collapsing on his ass on the floor beside us, Parker croaked, “Yeah, Connor has him outside. Are y’all okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay, but Sadie—”
“Can’t breathe,” came her muffled response, reminding me I was still lying on top of her.
Rolling off her, I used both arms to wave oxygen toward her—we’ll put that stupidity down to shock. Two strong arms banded gently around my upper arms and pulled me away from her as Elijah bent down and carefully rolled her onto her back.
“Are you injured anywhere?” Parker asked gruffly, skimming his eyes over me. When I shook my head, he moved across to Sadie and looked at the bloody blouse on her shin. “Did the bullet go all the way through?”
When I just looked blankly at him, he raised his eyebrows and looked back over at my cousin. Rolling his eyes, Elijah leaned over her head. “Sadie, do you know if it went all the way through?”
“How the bloody hell am I going to have the answer to that? All I can tell you is I’ve got a flipping hole in my leg that wasn’t there when I ate lunch, and it’s also ruined the blouse Ari was wearing, which was a really pretty one, too. Oh, and the bastards knocked me out, so my head feels like it’s a dinosaur egg from Jurassic Park, and any second a bleeding massive dinosaur’s going to come popping out of it.” As she ran out of steam, she made a farting noise with her mouth and sat up, bringing a gun with her and waving it around. “Also, when the big bastard was shot, his gun skidded across the floor, stopping right under my tits just as Ari landed on top of me. I thought my nipple was a goner!”