I couldn’t explain it. I felt watched. I felt like a gun was pointed at me. I felt like the world was about to explode. Shayna grabbed the door handle on the truck and I jumped at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The truck. I think it’s wired.”
For some reason, what Fiore had said to me before came crashing back.
“So don’t fuck anything up. I wouldn’t want anything to explode, you know?”
What had that meant?
Did Fiore somehow think I’d go to his family?
My paranoia was going crazy.
“Walk to that tree there and wait,” I whispered. “Okay? Let me go check something out.”
“Finn…”
“Just listen to me.”
I waited for Shayna to walk away and I dropped to my knees. I looked under the truck, not sure what the hell a bomb would look like. Or what I would do if I found one. I touched a few things that all seemed to be part of the pickup truck.
The feeling hadn’t gone away yet.
I rolled to my stomach and looked under the truck out to the woods.
That’s when I saw a black vehicle approaching.
“No,” I whispered.
I started to push myself back, but a second later, the entire cabin blew up.
38.
(Shayna)
I turned my head for a second.
I saw a black SUV slowly creeping forward. The man behind the wheel had something in his hand with a red blinking light. It took me a second to register what was about to happen.
I had seen something similar many times.
A bomb detonator.
I managed to turn and jump behind a tree. I didn’t need to see the guy press the button. But I felt it. It was like the entire ground shook with fury. I expected to have shards of the truck - and Finn - come flying past me. But I didn’t. It was an explosion, the ground rumbling, then crackling.
When I jumped up and turned, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The cabin was destroyed. Whatever they had used basically made the cabin implode. Which seemed like a genius move considering it was in the woods. That meant the rest of the trees wouldn’t catch on fire, and the smoke that rose up from the cabin was so minimal that anyone who saw it would think it was just a regular fire. Someone burning their trash or something.
But the entire cabin was gone.
I put my hands to the tree and waited for Finn to appear.
That’s when I saw the movement under the truck.
Finn was under the truck!
He had protected himself from the bomb. He thought the truck had been bombed, but it was the cabin. The cabin he had built for someone else. The cabin he had wanted to share with his entire family.
My heart instantly ached for him. All of his dreams were now gone and dead. Because of me. Because of what I had done.
I stepped back from the tree as Finn slipped all the way under the truck. He was hidden. He didn't come out and save me. He didn’t race to me and hold me and tell me it was going to be okay.
Finn had just gotten rid of me.
And why not? I was the reason his cabin was in rubble.
I took another step back. I was on my own. I needed to run.
Run! Shayna! Run!
One more step back.
Something rammed into my ribs, making me cry out. A hand then covered my mouth.
“Don’t fucking try a thing.”
~
Zander had me.
That was my initial thought.
Zander had come again, found me again, and now he had won.
Two men in suits and black masks raced by me. They went right by the truck. My eyes went wide and I hoped to see Finn make his move. He was a master at it.
Finn didn’t move. He remained hidden under the truck.
The two men charged into the rubble of the cabin. They then both stopped at the same time. They looked at me - at the man behind me - and they gave thumbs up.
“Confirmation?” the man holding me yelled.
“Yes!” one of the men said. “There’s not much left, obviously. But it’s him.”
“You got lucky,” the man whispered into my ear. “You came out just when we needed you to do so. We were going to call you, Shayna. Lure you out. What the fuck were you doing out here?”
The hand slid off my mouth. I took a few breaths, hoping for Finn…
“Wait,” I whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Ah, you’re in shock,” the man said. “Let’s go for a ride then.”
The two men waved their hands from the rubble. “Want us to bring a souvenir?” one of them yelled.
“No,” the man behind me yelled back. “You’ve got confirmation. Finn is dead. That’s all we need.”
Reality crashed down on me. It was like a boulder to my gut. I hunched forward and felt ready to throw up.
Finn wasn’t dead. Finn was under the truck, hiding.
Finn wasn’t in the cabin when it blew up.
Cormac was.
That meant…
Cormac was dead.
~
The door opened to the SUV and I froze. My knees locked tight as though my kneecaps disappeared. I stared at the man in the back of the SUV.
It was supposed to be Zander, right? He was the one after me. He wanted to get me, hurt me, probably kill me even. After all, I had taken an engagement ring from him. He had offered his own sick version of protection. I had really fucked him over by leaving, by ending up with Finn, and not to mention everything was a giant lie. My intuition had been to find my sister and save her.