TJ’s hands shook as he released me. My knees gave out, my limbs sagging limply.
He stepped over Reece, steady and sure-footed without his brace. He raised his hand slowly in surrender, the gun still gripped in it. It was over. He couldn’t run. He’d have to kill all three of us and that wasn’t in his plan. He already had two extra bodies to deal with. His head turned to the rolls of money, uncertain. He bent, eyes fixed cautiously on Lonny while he reached for the cash.
“No.” Lonny’s sharp command froze TJ where he stood. “Boswell made you a pretty sweet deal, but I have a problem with that. See, I’m still missing something. You owe me, and I’m not feeling so generous.” His knuckles whitened around the knife.
TJ drew himself up slowly. “What do you want?”
Lonny yanked Emily’s hair back and she sobbed, tears spilling down her face.
A stab of regret unsettled me. I’d called Lonny because he was my last resort. But he hadn’t come for me. Lonny was here because my wolf had killed his girlfriend. Lonny was here for revenge.
“You couldn’t kill your own girl, but it was easy killing mine, wasn’t it?” His voice rumbled deep in his throat. “Was it easier, watching Kylie bleed out in the street after you’d killed the rest of them?” The gun shifted in TJ’s hand, his fingers curling and uncurling over the grip.
“Yeah, I get that. See, we’re alike that way. I know how it is. How that first one takes you over an edge. Makes you numb to the rest and then it’s all, hell, what’s one more?” Lonny bared his teeth and jerked Emily’s head back hard, blood trickling down her neck. “Now put. The gun. Down.”
TJ lowered his arms and Lonny relaxed by a fraction. But I knew something Lonny didn’t. TJ didn’t care about Emily anymore. She’d become expendable to him the minute he’d seen the photo of her and Vince.
I braced myself. A cold hand slipped under the hem of my jeans and gripped my ankle. A minty calm that wasn’t mine poured through me, cooling the instinct to duck or run. Confidence flowed through me and whispered “Trust me.”
TJ turned, lightning quick, and leveled the gun at my head. Even twenty feet away, it felt like a solid cold pressure against my skull, but I didn’t flinch. I stared down the barrel as he said, “You’re right. It does make it easier.”
TJ pulled the trigger.
Lonny shouted.
Something rushed at me, stealing my breath.
Pain ripped through my skull.
And my world faded to black.
44
It’s strange, the things you remember, but more so the things you forget. I didn’t remember the arrival of the police or the ambulances in the cemetery. I didn’t remember the handcuffs clicking shut over TJ’s and Emily’s wrists.
What I did remember was a voice. A frantic and desperate voice, calling my name over and over. A voice I could almost touch with the tip of a finger before the darkness swallowed me whole.
I awoke in an itchy hospital bed. The room was dark, curtains drawn over the window. Electronic monitors beeped near my head. The only clock in the room said it was four. Day or night, I didn’t know.
My eyes adjusted, and I saw Mom asleep in a chair at the foot of my bed.
A nurse padded into the room.
“Oh, good. You’re awake,” she whispered. She wrapped her fingers around my wrist and watched the second hand drift over the clock. Her touch was soothing, like warm herbal tea, and she smelled like baby powder. “How are you feeling?” She checked the monitors and took some notes on a clipboard.
“My head hurts.” I prodded a tender line of prickly threads in my hair.
“You’ve got quite a few stitches back there.” The nurse poured water into a foam cup and held the straw while I struggled to sit up. The effort left me nauseated and dizzy. “I’m giving you something intravenously for pain. You probably feel a little fuzzy.”
I set my head back against the pillow. The last thing I remembered was TJ’s gun. I recalled with sickening clarity the hideous expression on his face when he pulled the trigger. And the peculiar calm before everything exploded.
“Reece!” I sat up too fast. A blinding pain paralyzed me and I breathed slowly through my mouth to keep from being sick. The nurse rushed to settle me.
“Your friends are fine,” she coddled, smoothing my panic and straightening my blankets.
“But Reece?”
“They’re all fine. You just sleep now.” She rested her warm baby powder hand on mine. The pulse monitor slowed, my heart beating steadily. All fine . . . But how?