Then he took it back, snuffing it out and tucking it back in the box. “Let’s go.”
We left our hogs and ran, Saint leading me across the fields and into the forest, following a trail that didn’t exist to anyone but him. Alexei and Folk had gone in the opposite direction. And if we were wrong about Locke escaping, there was every chance he was still with Priest—still hostage to that cunt and the gun he’d fired at us earlier, and I was running the other way.
But Saint, man. He felt something, and whatever the fuck it was, some part of me felt it too.
We ran and ran and ran, and of course, it began to rain, stealing the moon and soaking us, even through the thick canopy of trees. My boots squelched mud. My knee fucking hated me. But I followed Saint, matching his every step until we came to the river.
It was high and fast, frothing in the starlight as it split in two, disappearing into the night as Saint stood on the bank, his head whipping in both directions, hesitating for the first time since we’d sprinted away from the prefab murder scene.
East or west.
Sink or swim.
He didn’t know the answer, and neither did I.
I crouched, lowering my hand to the frigid water. Ice enveloped my fingers, pain jolting my nerves and muscles, rocketing up my arm. “How wide is it?”
Saint rotated to look. “Same as the long side of the sea pool.”
I didn’t know what that meant in numbers. But I pictured the pool where the kids swam, and horror swamped me. No one could swim this and survive it. Not even Folk.
Bracing my knee, I rose to face Saint. His expression was complicated, but I already knew if he made a move to enter the water, I had to stop him. For the sake of so many people I loved, but none more than Locke. How many times had I heard him patiently explain to Ivy and Liliana that just because Folk did something, didn’t mean anyone else could? It didn’t meanSaintcould, and even if Locke was already dead, losing Saint to the water would kill him all over again.
You could, though. A devil on my shoulder taunted me. I was a good swimmer, and I didn’t have Saint’s weakened immune system. If I could?—
“No.” Saint shook me. “If you go, I go.”
“Fuck!” I shoved Saint away and shouted to the damp clouds above us. “You go east, I’ll go west.”
It was all we had, and we split up, tearing away from each other, and without Saint to guide me, hysteria found me again. I ran like I was possessed. Like I was super-fucking-human. But there was nothing heroic about me as my boots pounded the earth. There was only desperation, a frantic fear that if we didn’t find Locke tonight, no matter what fate befell Priest, he was dead. A crazed terror that kept me running and running until my legs gave out and I was alone in the woods, save the distant rumble of bikes.
Locke, man. Where are you?
I couldn’t survive another night, another fuckingsecondwithout knowing. And then it hit me that maybe Folk had been right the first time. That this was it. Forever and always, we were too fucking late.
10
LOCKE
Drip. Drip. Drip.The sound was my new best friend. It let me know I was still alive as we crouched in an overgrown ditch, rain pelting a nearby grit bin, the wind just cold enough to keep me awake.
That and the terminal throb in my arm, the ringing in my ears, and the harsh reality that the longer we sat here, the more chance there was of whoever was still out there finding us.
Beside me, Viktor shivered. It was a full moon. When the rain clouds parted to let it shine, his eyes gleamed beneath the light of it, a weird gecko green that made him look like a mad scientist. Combined with the gun clutched in his blood-stained fingers, it was a hell of a fuckin’ look, and I was willing to bet I wasn’t much better off.
That gun, man.
I couldn’t stop looking at it, a beacon of pure fuckin’ evil, more than Priest himself.
It’s his gun. He’d end you in a heartbeat.
I knew that. He’d told me often enough that in my weakest moments, when I lay alone in my bed at the Rebel Kings’ compound, I still heard his voice in my head. And I heard him now, laughing around his rancid teeth, leering as he said the worst fuckin’ things about my kid, my woman.
About Nash.
We need to move.An urgency made more potent by the absolute state of a battered Russian mobster running on empty. It was only a matter of time before adrenaline deserted him and his broken body called in the loan.
“Come on.” I eased Viktor to his bare feet. “We need to go.”