I know it’s Daniel behind me, but I still feel the fear rush through me when his hand closes around my elbow. I still try to scream for Deo to keep running, but all that comes out is Deo’s name.
“You’re going the wrong—”
The gun is loud. Not as loud in the open as it was when Deo fired it in the lab, and it’s also competing with the screech of brakes from the car on the road, maybe twenty feet below us.
But it still echoes.
And then Deo is yelling an anguished “No!” as Daniel and I slide the rest of the way down the hill.
CHAPTER TWENTY
My shoulder crashes into the chain-link fence at the bottom of the hill. A split second later, Daniel collides with me, and I’m shoved into the fence a second time.
The path downhill was rock and brambles, some of which we carried with us. One long vine of briars is wrapped around my shoe.
Deo comes scrambling down the steep incline after us.
“I’m sorry!” Deo says. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, man. I thought . . .”
That’s when I notice the blood. Daniel is clutching his chest a few inches below his neck.
He reaches out his free hand and grabs Deo’s arm. “Thought I was Cregg. I know. Where’s the gun?”
“I . . .” Deo looks back uphill. “I dropped it. I didn’t want to touch the damn thing after . . .”
“Get it . . .” Daniel’s eyes close and his head collapses back against my shoulder.
“Go!” I tell Deo. “Hurry!”
Now that my pulse isn’t pounding in my ears quite as loudly anymore, I can pick up the faint bwee-om, bwee-om in the distance.
Daniel’s shirt is turning red alarmingly fast. I yank off my sweater, which I notice is now ripped down the back from the briars or maybe the rocks, and press it against the wound.
A familiar flash of purple catches my eye. It’s the car whose brakes I heard squealing a few moments ago.
A Jeep, actually.
Two doors slam, almost in unison.
“Anna!”
“Aaron! Call 911!”
“The ambulance is . . . coming. Oh, God. No.” Aaron curls his fingers through the fence, and shakes his head, unbelieving. “I knew . . . someone. I just didn’t . . . Daniel? What the hell is he . . . ?” He stares up at me, his fingers brushing the side of my face. “Are you okay? Where’s Deo?”
Taylor shoves something at Aaron. It looks like . . . bolt cutters? Then she drops to her knees on the grass and reaches through the fence toward Daniel.
“What happened?” Her eyes are frantic. “Why is he even here?”
Daniel’s eyes flutter, and he pulls one hand up to hers. “M’okay, Taylor. I’ll be fine.”
Sounds like me talking to Deo. Making promises that may be beyond his power to keep.
“Hold still.” The bolt cutters make quick work of the fence. Aaron stops about halfway up and then starts cutting parallel to the line of barbed wire strung across the top. By the time Deo comes down the hill, Aaron has nearly cut away a section large enough to get Daniel through.
I reach up and take the gun from Deo, who’s holding it away from his body like it could go off at any second.
“I’m so sorry. I thought . . . I thought it was Cregg. I couldn’t let him . . . not again.”
“It was an accident, D. They’ve already called the ambulance. And it was my fault. I’m the one who said I thought it was Cregg.”
Even when I knew it wasn’t.
Why couldn’t I have told Deo that before, when we were trying to get out of the building?
Stop kickin’ yourself. Like I told you, nothin’ changes. Nothin’. If you’d tried to tell him earlier, you couldn’t have. I couldn’t stop my cousin from getting killed in a car wreck. Knew he was gonna die when he was getting into the car, but my stupid mouth just keeps sayin’ I’ll see him on Friday.
I know Jaden is right. I felt it happen. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to change it.
Daniel opens his eyes for a moment. “Wipe the gun clean. Throw it back. Don’t want the kid caught up in this.”
Deo stands there shivering in the cold, the round bandage pale against his tanned arms. How much of his jumpiness is the aftereffects of whatever they shot into him? Of course, it could also be the aftereffects of being kidnapped, having someone rake through your brain, watching three people get killed, and having a crazy man take over your body and make you point a gun at your head. I’m pretty sure Deo is completely caught up in this no matter what we do, but yeah, he doesn’t need legal trouble on top of everything else.
I start to wipe the gun off with my camisole, but Taylor takes it from me.
“I’ve got it.” She flips a switch on the side—the safety, I guess—then starts wiping it down with her sweatshirt.
“Deo, Anna, help me get him into the car.” Aaron bends back the section of the fence he snipped. “The ambulance will come up Route 222—it’s the only main road through here. We need to intercept it.”