I SPENT most of the conversation staring at my brother as he lay on the sofa, a bruise developing on the side of his forehead from where I’d knocked him unconscious in the basement. He’d woken up again after I’d first gotten back to the house and made such a fuss that we’d sedated him by more peaceful means. Now he lay limp as a noodle.
Julius stared down at him with a frown. “I understand that you wanted to give him a second chance, but we’re having enough trouble keeping ahead of the Blood Hunter on our own. He’s an unneeded complication.”
“I couldn’t leave him at the house,” I reminded him. “He’d have been calling the cops on me, and then my mug would be all over the news too. It was either bring him here or kill him, and… he’s just a kid, really. My family messed with his head, but maybe we can un-mess it.”
“He’s a kid who’s taken part in killing other kids,” Garrison put in with an edge in his tone. “I say that we let him suffer the consequences. Even after you gave him a second chance, he jumped up and tried to attack us. Poor Blaze nearly kicked the bucket yet again.”
I glanced over to where Blaze sat in an armchair with his laptop. He raised his eyebrows. “Poor me?” He pointed at Talon. “He was the one who caught a fist.”
I could tell from Garrison’s sly expression where this was about to go, and I didn’t have the time to stop it. “Talon can handle a hit from a teenage boy. He elbowed you trying to get out. Are you okay?” He dragged out the last word with faux concern.
Talon looked as emotionless as he’d been the day I met him, but I’d swear he was restraining himself from rolling his eyes at the bickering. Garrison was right about him catching one of Carter’s fists, but it hadn’t seemed to faze him any more than Blaze had appeared injured by what had really been just a graze of an elbow.
I stepped between them before they could take the heckling any further. “This is on me. He’s my responsibility, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t become too much of a liability. Okay?”
Julius inclined his head. “As long as you understand that if the situation gets rough, my priority is going to be getting the rest of you through it, not him.”
“Understood.” I looked at Garrison. “And you? Stop picking fights. We have a lot of shit to worry about, and you causing unnecessary drama isn’t going to be on that list. Understood?”
“I’d consider it unnecessary fun, but—”
“Garrison.”
He let out a huff and smirked at me. “Fine. Serious matters only. Got it.”
I looked back down at Carter. He’d be out for hours if the sedative worked as expected, but I couldn’t keep him unconscious forever. He was going to need to eat and relieve himself… and I could hardly make a case to him about changing his sense of morality while he was dead to the world.
“Julius is right,” I said. “We’ll keep him with us if we can, but we’re not protecting him above ourselves. Hopefully, he can figure out that what he and his family did was wrong so we can let him go and start his life sooner rather than later. I know we don’t really have time to deal with this, but thank you all for trusting me.”
Garrison folded his arms over his chest. “Now are we going to talk about the fact that your family kidnapped and drugged you?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing to talk about. They tried to kill me, and it didn’t take. Now they’re all dead except my brother, and I’m still here. End of story.”
“Dess took care of herself like she always does,” Talon said in a voice that dared anyone to continue pursuing the subject.
“Indeed she did.” Julius sighed and pressed his hands together. “Let’s get down to business. We were going to hash out a strategy after Dess got back from her run. We have information on a few more of the Blood Hunter’s associates. Who’s our best next target? Has there been any sign of retaliation from the Blood Hunter in response to our efforts so far?”
Blaze was quick to answer. “Nothing that I’ve seen. We can’t even be sure that the general has pulled his support. He sounded upset when I prodded him yesterday, but you never know—”
With a bang that echoed through the floor, the front door flew open. One of the side windows shattered at the same instant. Heavy boots thumped onto the wooden floor all around us, crunching the fresh shards of glass beneath them. Just like that, we were facing off against men dressed all in black and armed to the teeth.
We’d been prepared that we might need to leave the house, but we’d expected more warning than this. Most of our weapons were stashed in the closet near the front door. Our attackers stood between us and it. And the hillside that guarded the house’s rear now blocked us in. There was no back door to flee through, and they’d cut us off from the windows too.
As the men opened fire, Talon launched into motion, yanking me down behind the sofa and firing off a few shots from the one pistol he’d kept on him over the top. Garrison leapt over beside us. As far as I could tell, he was unarmed.
Blaze ducked behind the armchair, hugging his laptop to him and jerking out a pistol of his own with his other hand. Julius flipped the dining table for additional cover, dropping behind it and taking a few shots around its side.
How much ammo did any of them have on them? I didn’t have a gun at all, only my usual knives that the Maliks had taken off me in their basement room that I’d retrieved before I left. I tugged one into my hand, ready to throw or stab when a good moment presented itself.
Stabbing was better. Stabbing meant I could use it again.
The men who’d come for us obviously didn’t have any concerns about their ammunition supply. They flooded the living room with bullets that thudded into the furniture and walls. I didn’t think the gangster brothers who’d lent us this place were going to be happy about the violent renovation.
And through it all, Carter lay still and slack on the sofa, protected by its back but utterly unaware of what was going on around him. Shit. How was I going to protect him too?
The thought popped into my head that the squad attacking us now might not be so different from Petrov’s. The Blood Hunter obviously made a habit of getting any skilled people he could under his thumb. Was he blackmailing these men? Threatening their families?
“We don’t want to fight you,” I hollered over the sofa. “We know how the man you work for operates. You don’t have to do what he says. We’re trying to take him down so you don’t have to follow his orders anymore. Let us go, make it look like you did your best, and we’ll both win.”
One of them snorted and let off another few shots. “As if we can trust you to have our best interests at heart.”
“We both want the same thing,” Julius said, adding his appeal to mine. “To live without the Blood Hunter lording it over us. Why shouldn’t we work together instead of letting him divide us.”
“We don’t have any choice,” someone snapped back. “Someone’s got to die here, and it’s going to be you, not us.”
Well, if that was how they were going to be about it, we didn’t have a whole lot of choice either. Just like when faced with the remainders of my family, I intended to see my crew survive, no matter who I had to go through to ensure that.
“Come out and fight like men,” a third man growled.
I sputtered a laugh. “You’re in for a cruel surprise if you think a man is the worst threat you’re going to face.”
I bobbed around the side of the sofa and whipped one of my knives across the room. It sank straight into one of our attackers’ throats, and he crumpled. The crew fired into the crowd again, and one of the men near the back yanked something out of a bag he was carrying.
“We can do things another way then,” he barked, and tossed the canister into the middle of the room.
The attackers immediately surged out the door. A faint shrieking sound carried from the container, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose.
“It’s a bomb!” I hollered. “Get out of the house!”
Julius and Talon barreled forward first, Talon taking a few precious seconds to yank open the closet door and heave a backpack full of weapons and ammo over his back. I scooped Carter off the sofa as quickly as I could and slung him over my shoulder like before. Garrison darted ahead, snatching my knife from the fallen man’s neck and tossing it back to me. As Blaze hurried after us, I snatched the handle out of the air and shot Garrison a grateful smile.
Of course, we were fleeing the bomb into the street where our attackers were waiting. Julius and Talon started shooting as they burst out the door, forcing the black-clad men to fall back. The rest of us dodged to the side, ducking behind our rental car. Julius managed to pick off two of the men who were closest to the vehicle just before a furious boom reverberated through the house behind us.
The ground rocked beneath my feet, and fire shot out the windows. I ducked my head even lower, feeling my hair singe, covering Carter with my body. The brothers were really not going to be happy about the new state of their guest house.
The blast had thrown a few of our attackers off their feet. The Chaos Crew recovered first, Talon digging a fresh gun out of the backpack and tossing another to Julius. But as they took their next shots, an even less welcome sound reached my ears.
The wail of a police siren started up, way too close for comfort. It sounded like it was only a block or two away.
Blaze swore. “There’s no way they could have responded to the fight that quickly without advance warning.”
I glanced at him. “You mean the Blood Hunter tipped them off?”
Even as I said it, the sense that strategy made clicked in my head. The Blood Hunter wanted us disposed of by any means necessary. He hadn’t trusted the squad he’d sent after us to get the job done after we’d escaped similar attacks in the past, so he was counting on the cops to finish the job, just like we’d let the police wrap up our assault on his business at the airfield the other night. All he’d need to do was call in an anonymous tip, just like we had.
There definitely wouldn’t be any reasoning with cops. And I didn’t like the idea of being arrested any more than I wanted a bullet in my skull.
“Get in the car!” Julius bellowed. “Talon and I will cover you.”
They pulled their triggers, and the rest of us hauled open the passenger side doors. Garrison dove over the gear shift into the driver’s seat, fumbling with the keys. Blaze leapt in next to him. I dragged Carter into the back, bracing him on my lap like I was a mother cradling an immense baby. It wasn’t the most comfortable position I’d ever been in, but I didn’t have time to find a better place for him.
As Garrison gunned the engine, Julius flung open the door on the other side of the back seat. Flashing lights were just racing into view in the rearview mirror. Julius and Talon hurled themselves into the back, cramming in with me and Carter, and Garrison hit the gas before they’d even slammed the door closed.
We tore down the street. I couldn’t tell what had become of our original attackers, only that the bangs of gunfire had cut out. Had they taken off too to avoid their own arrests?
“The cops are following us,” Julius announced, craning his neck to peer out the back. I followed his gaze and spotted two police cars roaring after us, their sirens blaring away.
Garrison whipped around a turn.
“Can you lose them?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, taking a second sharp turn. “But I have an idea.”
“They’re gaining on us fast,” Blaze said. “This car doesn’t have the horsepower to outrun them.”
“That’s fine, if this works.” Garrison’s hands clenched around the wheel. “Hold on.”
I gripped the handle above the window with one hand, unable to stop Carter from slumping over the other two men’s laps. There hadn’t been time for seatbelts.
As Julius and Talon braced themselves, Garrison wrenched the wheel in a last-second turn into a parking garage. He blew through the security gate and zoomed up the ramp to the second floor. One of the cop cars hadn’t been able to turn in time, but the other swerved after us, hot on our trail.
Garrison simply hit the gas. When I saw where he was heading, my eyes widened. “Garrison…”
There was a boarded-up section of wall at the far end of the garage where it looked like there’d once been some kind of exit, maybe only for pedestrians onto a second-floor passage between buildings that’d been taken down. Garrison must have noticed it from the outside in his explorations of the neighborhood. He sent the car hurtling toward it at top speed. I gulped and squeezed the handle tight.
The hood screamed as we rammed into the plywood, but the boards smashed apart with the impact. For a few seconds, we were soaring through the air, nothing at all beneath the wheels.
The car hit a road below, the tires squeaking with the impact. Then they screeched as Garrison hit the gas again.
My heart was still beating so fast I half expected it to burst through my chest. I could hear the faint whistling of one of the tires starting to deflate, but Garrison didn’t let that slow him down. He sped through the streets, no cops behind us now since none of them were crazy enough to follow us in that crazy jump. Just as the flattening tire started to bump against the asphalt, he pulled off onto a side street where a few other cars were parked nearby and drove into an alley.
“Now we steal another,” he said with a rasp of ragged breath.
We all scrambled out, Julius helping me haul Carter. Talon shook his head at Garrison. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch.”
Garrison flashed him a wide smirk. “Only when I need to be. It got the cops off our tail, didn’t it?”
A hoarse laugh escaped me, but I couldn’t hold on to that humor for long. Julius glanced around with a grim expression.
“For now.”
