“What do you—?” My dad’s question is cut off by the deafening sound of a gun firing.
My racing heart stops in my chest as I watch my dad crash to his knees, clutching at his stomach where his white t-shirt is quickly turning crimson with his blood.
I scream and hear my mother and sister do the same inside the house, as I try to reach my dad to put pressure on his wound, to keep him from bleeding out, to keep him alive.
A fist grips my hair and yanks me back twisting my neck so I’m forced to look into the covered face of the man who shot my father. His eyes are a dull brown and that’s all I see.
“Where’s the list that bitch Trixie gave you?” he asks harshly.
“She didn’t give me a list,” I scream. “What did you do? Let me go?”
“We don’t do this here,” another man hisses at the one questioning me and the next thing I know, I’m getting dragged along the dewy grass by my hair, the pain in my scalp nothing compared to the one ravaging my chest. Especially as I hear another man growl. “Kill the mother. Bring the sister.”
Which is followed by another shot and my scream which melts into Ariel’s, amplifying it.
The man is holding me with one arm like a vise around my throat and another across my middle as he drags me through the garden gate and onto the street. I scream and thrash around, but his grip on me is too strong for that to do any good.
Neighbors up and down the street are coming out to see what is going on. And quickly running back inside as the men abducting us growl and point their guns at them.
Ariel is screaming too and fighting so hard that it takes two guys to throw her into the back of the black windowless van waiting for us.
Right before I’m tossed in the back too, I catch a glimpse of the electrician’s van that’s been parked across the street from our house all day. The back of it has been sealed shut by a crowbar and the side windows are smashed. Possibly by gunfire. But the van is not empty. Men are inside, shouting and banging on the sides so hard the whole thing shakes.
The men Chance left to watch us?
It didn’t work. They didn’t protect us.
I grope in the darkness of the back of the van for my sister’s hand. And find it firm and warm.
“They shot Mom,” she says in a shaky, hoarse voice.
“And Dad,” I respond in a faint one. In my mind, I keep seeing him crash to his knees, his stomach covered in blood over and over again, like it’s on repeat.
“I’ll die before I let them chain me to a bed again,” Ariel says venomously. “And I’ll kill as many as I can before I go.”
I pull her to me and hold her tight. I could tell her everything will be OK, but it’d be a lie. I could tell her that we’ll get away and that mom and dad will make it. But that would be wishful thinking at best.
So I don’t say anything. Just try to calm my racing thoughts as best I can to come up with a plan that might just give us a fighting chance.