My heart beats double-time, ramming against my ribs hard enough to cause pain. The sound of soft footsteps coming from behind me catches me by surprise. I half expect Dante to materialize before me, lethal, ruthless, and unforgiving. I scramble to my feet, my body feeble, fragile. Pulse throbs in my ears when I spin to stand face to face with Jean.
“Are you insane?!” she booms, hands akimbo, murder in her eyes. “Why did you call him?!”
“You told me to say goodbye, remember?” My voice mirrors the emotions rolling inside me—fear, helplessness, defeat.
She grabs my arm and tugs hard, manhandling me back toward the bar. “Yeah, but I was just teasing. I didn’t think you’d actually do it. Shit, Layla, what the hell were you thinking?! Did you tell him where you are? Is he coming?” An unhealthy dose of panic pushes her voice higher an octave.
“I didn’t tell him anything. I cut the call the second he realized that it was me calling.”
She stops to turn my way, or else I’d miss her beautifully cocked eyebrow and how she’s scrunching her nose at me like I’m certifiably insane. “You didn’t talk to him? Then why the hell did you call him? Jesus, Layla, you’re so fucking confusing! You called him, so you might’ve as well said goodbye.”
I’m confusing? Can she hear herself when she speaks?
“I can’t keep up with you. First, you tell me to call him, then you’re pissed off I did. What did you expect me to do?”
“Let me think,” she mocks, tapping her chin with her long, red nail, a condescending look on her ghastly pale face. “Either call him back and apologize or stop living in the past and get a grip! He’s not going to kill you! It’s been two weeks, but no show. He doesn’t want anything from you anymore.”
As cruel as that sounds, as deep as her words cut, Jean’s right. Dante’s unlike any man I ever crossed paths with. With his connections, money, and several skilled men at his command, he has the means to find me but chooses not to.
It’s time to face the music. Accept, that the three months we shared were all fate had planned for us.
Jean tugs my arm again, discreetly jerking her head toward the building. Archer’s there, leaning his back against the wooden wall. He lights a zippo and touches the flame to the cigarette’s tip, pinched between his lips as he scans the lot with a hunter’s look. We’re fifty yards apart, but I swear he’s staring straight into my eyes. Straight through my eyes, into my mind. A disturbing gesture follows the short stare-down.
A signal.
A nonverbal order not to move. He slides his right hand under the jacket, adjusting what I’m sure is a gun tucked in the holster. I can’t see it, but it’s there. I know it just as I know that one bullet has Layla written all over.
Dante’s face flickers before my eyes. Hope vanishes, undermining everything I conditioned myself to believe. Pure fear starts in my chest and ripples in all directions. I deserve what’s coming, but I hate Dante’s cowardice. He should be the one to pull the trigger. Not a hired hitman.
“Get inside,” I tell Jean, my gaze fixed on Archer, my voice artificially calm.
There’s no reason for her to witness the execution. She doesn’t deserve the trauma and doesn’t deserve to die if Dante’s orders are to leave no witnesses.
Before Jean can ask why the door on Archer’s left flies open. Rick exits the building, shoulders square, spine straight. Tayler trails close behind, and they split up immediately. Rick marches straight ahead, Tayler veers left toward his pickup, his steps rushed. I think he can barely stop himself from breaking into a sprint. Rick is ruthlessly focused, eyes on me as he crosses the lot, every step calculated to perfection.
“We’re leaving.” The powerful, commanding note in his voice could rival Dante’s tone. “Right now.” He looks over his shoulder, taking half a step to the right.
My mouth falls open because I know what he’s doing. He’s shielding me with his body, purposely stepping into Archer’s line of shot. Fear grips me by the throat. Cold, dead hands squeeze hard enough to cut off my air supply. My face tingles, and goosebumps cover every inch of my skin when I step aside, back into the line of Archer’s shot.
“You should go,” I tell Rick and Jean, eyes on Archer.
He just stands there, watching, waiting. Lethal. Determined. There’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
I’m a sitting duck.
“I’m not leaving you here.” Rick grips my arm to hold me in place as he steps in front of me again. I peek over his shoulder, wriggling out of his grasp, but his hold tightens.
Archer grows tired of waiting. He draws the gun aiming it at the back of Rick’s head. An earsplitting roar of Tayler’s tired pickup truck cuts through the tense silence. He’s too far away to reach us before Archer pulls the trigger.
Five bony fingers clamp around my upper arm as Jean inches closer to whimpers in my ear, “he’s got a gun. He’s got a gun, Layla.”
Time fails to slow down. This is nothing like in the movies. No slow-motion action sequence. Only me and Archer, eyes locked as he slides his index finger to the trigger. I shove Rick away with all my might but feel him jerk me to the side by the arm he’s still holding.
Archer doesn’t pause. He doesn’t hesitate. There’s no loud bang, just a quiet hiss when the bullet leaves the chamber, slicing the air as it heads straight for my heart. It falls short of reaching its destination…
Rick’s attempt at moving me out of the way worked to some extent. The bullet goes through and through, half an inch below my collarbone. I’m in no state to stop and register the pain that screams up and down my arm like a lightning bolt, settling into the gunshot wound. Jean yelps, a high-pitched, horror-movie kind of sound. She ducks for cover when Tayler slams the brakes, stopping the pickup behind Rick’s back. The rusty piece of metal serves as a barricade, separating the hunter from the hunted… but it isn’t bulletproof. It won’t hold Archer off for long.
The passenger side door flies open. “Get in!” Tayler booms, his voice higher than Jean’s.
She’s inside before the words fully roll off Tayler’s tongue. She jumps onto the passenger seat, slides to the floor, and folds her arms and legs to fit in the space under the dashboard. Rick hauls me into the back, arms wrapped around my middle.
“Go, go, go!” Jean yells.
The back door is still open but slams shut when Tayler hits the gas. Chaos erupts all around. Jean cries Tayler swears, the old engine blares louder than a rocket as the car gains speed, and tires squeal when we jump from the gravel of the parking lot onto the asphalt of the interstate. Adrenaline mixes with fear, zapping my nerve endings, and works as a decent ad-hoc anesthetic. I push away the panic, forcing my eyes to stare ahead, not glance at the warm blood wetting my t-shirt, or my mind will cease to work.
“What the fuck did you do!?” Rick tears his shirt off his back, scrunching it into a ball to press against the gunshot wound. He applies enough pressure to balance on the verge of breaking my bones, trying to stop the bleeding. His face shows something other than cold calculation or moderate interest for the first time since I met him. He’s worried. His eyes jump between my face and his hands as if he’s watching a game of tennis. “You could’ve died!”
“Better me than you. I’m the one Archer wants. You shouldn’t have tried to save me. Tayler, stop the car. Let me out.”
“No fucking way!” Rick grips my wrist as if he half expects me to jump out of the moving truck. “Keep driving.”
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Jean chants, tears streaming down her cheeks, tiny rivers of mascara. “What is happening?!” She peeks between the front two seats, scrambling off the floor to look at me, but looks out of the back window instead. “Oh God! He’s behind us!”
Rick turns around, checking briefly before his head snaps to Tayler’s pale face in the rearview mirror. “Put your foot down. Get us to the city. Somewhere public. He won’t shoot with witnesses around.”
“How did you know he was going after me?” I ask to redirect my thoughts away from my blood and the sudden onset of blinding pain ripping my arm wide open.
“I didn’t like how he acted since he saw you.” He glances at me briefly but returns his attention to the back window in a heartbeat. “The way he was looking at you… I’ve seen that look before, and I don’t fucking like what follows. Listen… I know we’re both thinking this, so I’ll just go ahead and say it. You’re not safe in Texas anymore. Dante knows you’re here. We need to get you out, hide you better. My sister has a cabin near Montreal. Tayler’s pickup won’t make the drive, but—”
“You mean Dante hired Archer to kill her?” Jean gasps in the front seat, her processing speed slightly delayed.
Was the shooting not enough of a hint?
We’re doing about a hundred miles an hour. The car shakes, sputtering from the exhaust pipe, and the engine strains as if on the verge of giving up any second.
And then Archer whizzes past us on a black motorcycle as if we’re at a standstill. My heart kicks a riot in my chest, mingling fear with adrenaline, but it all dies down when nothing happens. Archer keeps going, speeding into the darkness of the night until he’s out of sight.
Tayler’s nervous chuckle fills the confined space. “Shit, that was… God! I feel like I’m in a fucking movie!” He takes his foot off the pedal, slowing the car to a more pickup-friendly speed. The road ahead is empty as far as the eye can see, but a faint glow of city lights looms in the distance.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Rick says, voicing my thoughts.
And then fuck! booms over other sounds. A silhouette of a man standing in the middle of the road comes into view. Archer holds his arm outstretched, aiming his gun at the pickup. Panic curdles the blood in my veins. Clots jam every major artery. I watch in horror as he pulls the trigger.
The front tire of the truck blows up.
The car goes airborne…
This time, it does feel like in the movies. Time slows down; sounds mute. The car flips onto the side, then the roof, and keeps rolling fast. Too fast to comprehend which way is up. Rick holds me in a vice grip of his arms only for a moment before the centrifugal force throws him against the window.
The world unmutes. A deafening clatter of metal bending, glass breaking, and Jean screaming pierces my eardrums like steel splinters. Raw, intense pain resonates all over my body when I bounce off the seats, the roof, and the windows.
The car stops rolling, swinging on the roof several times before it stills completely. Clouds of smoke hiss from under the bonnet.
And then, everything fades to black.
