There’s a man hanging out the window with his mask pulled up to his forehead, clearly irritated with his lack of visibility. His gun is pointed right for the car, countering every shot the guys take. As the driver watches the boys carefully, he dodges and swerves just as well as Carver does.
“This asshole just won’t give in,” Cruz grunts, leaning onto the backrest with his gun out and helping the guys as best he can. “They’re too good.”
A string of curses comes flying out of Carver’s mouth as he tries to put some distance between us, but nothing works, they keep up with us at every turn.
I need to help them, but how? We can’t keep going on like this. There are too many people in our car and soon enough, one of us is bound to get hit.
I need to distract them. I need to do something to draw their attention away from the boys so that we can get our hit on them and finally take them out.
But what?
My mind whirls with ridiculous possibilities, each one as moronic as the last when I remember the gun in my hand, and without a second of hesitation or thought, I scramble across the front seat, launching myself across Carver’s lap until my head is thrown out of the window.
I see the truck just as Carver’s hand curls around my thigh, preparing to yank me back. The driver of the truck spots me immediately and it’s all I need to pull my gun, aim and shoot before Carver yanks me back in through the shattered window.
My shot goes wide, just as Cruz had expected. But the small distraction is enough for Grayson to take the shot he needs. A sense of relief fills me as the last truck flies over the guard rail and soars off the small cliff into the thick trees below.
The boys breathe heavily as Carver tosses me back into the front passenger seat, my back slamming against the door as I stare at him in shock. His stare rests heavily on mine, his brows furrowed in shock, not believing for even a second that I actually just did that. Hell, I kinda don’t either.
The guys make themselves comfortable, checking over themselves and making sure everyone is alright as Carver takes a turn down a familiar road. “We’re going to King’s cabin?” I ask, my eyes widening in surprise.
Carver just looks back at me, his brows still furrowed. “My mother really said that she’d kill my unborn child?”
“Umm … what?” I grumble. “We’re back on that? I thought we already cleared this up?”
“I wasn’t focused before. I am now,” he says. “I need to know what she said.”
I let out a deep breath, getting comfortable in my seat and curling my arms around my body, the cool air flowing in through the shattered windows freezing me from the inside out. “That’s exactly what she said. If we were to have a kid, which I really don’t intend on having any time soon, for the record, but if you knocked me up, she’d kill it and me before it had the chance to even see life.”
“Dude,” Cruz mutters darkly from the backseat, leaving the single word hanging in the air, the weight of it resting on each of our shoulders.
Carver sits in silence for a second, rubbing his hand over his face before looking back at me again. “And she said that if you were to speak a word of your conversation to me, that she’d slit my throat and make you watch, just like my father did to your parents?”
I nod. “She’s a great role model, isn’t she? Perhaps we’ll only visit on big holidays.”
“Fucking hell.”
The silence that follows is way too thick for me to stand and I let out a low breath. “Sooo …” I start. “The cabin, huh?”
King nods in the backseat and I look around to find all three big guys squished in side by side. “It’s our backup plan,” King explains. “No one but us knows that’s where you’ll be. It’s our safe house.”
“So, we’re just going to chill out there for a few days until everything dies down?”
Cruz shrugs his shoulders. “Honestly, we’re just playing it day by day,” he says before a stupid grin stretches across his face. “Think of it as a vacation.”
I roll my eyes and sink back into my seat, making myself comfortable.
We drive for another fifteen minutes before we pull down the long dirt road leading to the cabin, and the closer we get, the more memories of the last time I was here surface through my mind. It was a great eighteenth birthday party until it wasn’t, but this time is going to be different.
We pull up a minute later and the guys pile out of the car. “Wait here,” Carver says, walking toward the cabin with Grayson. “We’re just going to check that it’s all clear.”