Chapter 79
ELI
“Stop! Stop!” The shrill screams spur my feet through the gap in the trees.
With one hard push, I jump over the ratty rail fence. Jayden’s bounding next to me, a slew of curses spitting from his lips when we break into the clearing.
A familiar truck is parked right in front of us. Doors open. A trail of blood stains the cream leather of the driver’s seat.
The movement ahead catches my eye at the same time as Jayden pushes forward. My already cold blood freezes over completely when my sight lands on our girl. Crumpled on the ground.
Ryker’s kneeling in front of her, shirt drenched in crimson. Gun to his head as he turns and swivels with Presley’s steps.
“Get out of the fucking way,” the bellow echoes through the stark silence around us. Ricocheting through the trees.
Running to Jayden, I grip his arm, tugging him behind a cluster of thick trees.
“Shhh…” I hold my hand over his mouth when he starts to argue with me. “We can’t just run in. He’ll hurt Fin before we get to her.”
Back in Havenview, when we used to hunt elk and deer, my grandfather taught me a trick.
A cheat of sorts. While he used to take his mark in the bushes, he’d send me in the opposite direction.
I’d crack a stick, and the noise was enough of a distraction for my grandfather to take the animal down in one shot.
One shot.
The ground quakes beneath me at the endless crack. Like thunder cutting the sky open.
And my hand grips Jayden’s hip tighter, pinning him to the tree as I tell him the plan.
“Don’t argue with me,” I snap when his mouth opens, sucking in a breath that draws his brows right over his eyes, darkening them to a pitch black storm when I let him go and point in the direction he needs to run in while I go in the other.
“I don’t know where she is!” Finley screams, her voice is wet with fear, and as I hold her in my sight through the trees, blood pours from her nose and a large gash on her forehead.
He’s going to pay for that. For every drop of blood he’s bled from her.
“You have exactly five seconds,” Presley warns, taking a step closer, the gun in his hand pointing directly at her face.
“I don’t—I don’t—”
“Four!”
Fuck.
Grabbing the closest stick I can find in the brush around me, I grip it tightly in my hand before I tap my wrist once, waiting for Jayden to tap back in response.
“Where is the whore?” Presley enunciates each word with a purposeful step.
Defiant as ever, Fin clambers to her feet. One arm is wrapped around her waist when she limps back a couple of steps.
“I don’t—” She shakes her head, eyes flitting around her, looking for a way out.
When they land on mine, tears rain down her face with a sob that rattles her entire body.
I don’t know how I do it, but I manage a smile. Giving her a reassuring wink as I hold my finger to my mouth and she takes her focus back to Presley.
“I don’t know where Salem is.”
The upswing of Presley’s free hand cuts through the dry breeze with a whistle that shatters with Finley’s howl.
“Two!” He touches the muzzle between her eyes at the same time as my wrist vibrates.
I charge forward faster than ever. The breath in my lungs frozen solid. My pulse one continuous beat, stabbing through my chest.
My hands grip the stick harder, holding it strongly as it crashes against the side of Presley’s head. Followed by the slam of my body to his.
My ears are screaming with the rebounding vibration of gunfire. I can’t scramble off the bastard fast enough to look for Fin. For Jayden.
The one continuous throb, pitching my chest into an endless keen of horror.
“Eli!”
“Eli!”