Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WREN
I half expected to find us surrounded, the whole ordeal over.
Maybe the bad guys standing quietly with their arms raised above their heads, guns tossed to the ground.
Instead, we were met with darkness, broken by the occasional light in the distance.
The only sounds? The crunch of our shoes on the road and the pounding of blood in my ears.
The bus' engine popped softly a couple of times as it started to cool.
From this side, it looked intact, undamaged.
The other side rested against the trunk of a tree.
Several branches hung at an angle over the back of the vehicle, threatening to fall and cave the roof in.
Another good reason not to stay on board.
"Where are they?" I whispered.
I squinted into the shadows. They couldn't be too far away. Hiding a full-sized hockey player was difficult, much less several of them.
"Be careful," Lex said, his voice low. "Stay close."
I caught a flash of his expression in the moonlight.
He looked like he might order us to get back on board, branches or no branches.
I suspected the only thing stopping him was the fact we'd be sitting ducks inside a tin can.
The windows were bullet-proof, but we’d fucked if they got in through the door. The bus was too mangled to drive, or we would have left on it already.
No, the only way out of here was on foot.
I froze at the sound of a scuffle. Listened, trying to identify the direction and distance.
A gunshot sounded, followed by a grunt and a thud. The sound carried through the night, eerie as hell.
My heart hammered faster. Sweat sprung up on my palms and under my arms. My mouth was drier than the Simpson Desert in the middle of summer. My stomach churned with anxiety.
With everything in me, I wished like hell that wasn't Tiger or one of the guys from the team that hit the ground. If it was…
My heart broke a little at the idea of it. I blinked away tears that had no business pooling in the corners of my eyes.
I dashed them away.
Fuck nope, I told myself. It would take a lot more than that to bring down a guy like Tiger. Or any of the others, for that matter. Whoever now lay on the ground in the cold of the night, it wasn't Tiger. It couldn't be.
Besides, if he or one of the guys just died, the others would immediately end whoever did it. The thud was followed by a lengthy silence.
I'd like to say I was reassured, but a sliver of fear was starting to expand into something much bigger. I didn't mind admitting I was scared. Hell, I'd surrender my badass card right now if it meant we all walked away in one piece.
"This way," Lex whispered. He gestured us forward with his good arm.
Even his breathing sounded pained, but he was doing his best not to let on.
If I handed in my badass card, I'd give it to him.
He deserved two of them. Two at least. And a dozen blow jobs.
And a bunch of other things I couldn't think of right now.
I found myself almost surrounded, with Elenna on my left, Sinclair on my right and Bray right behind me.
"Come on, Socks," Bray whispered. "We've got some goonholes to deal with."
I held back a snort. Goonholes? That was a new one. I liked it.
"You come on, Bray-Bray," I whispered back. "Don't get yourself killed."
"You too, little birdie," he said. "And try not to kill me."
Now I snorted, but softly. "I make no promises." Honestly, I didn't know how we could joke at a time like this. Apparently dark humour was a good coping mechanism, but it was a strange one, for sure. For us, it was basically par for the course. If it helped to keep us sane, then that was a bonus.
Realistically though, if anything I did resulted in his death, I'd never forgive myself. For a guy who used to be the biggest pain in my ass, he meant a lot to me now.
If I was honest with myself, I'd admit he'd meant a lot to me for a long time. The expected reactions from other people stood in our way for too long. Not to mention our own stubbornness. One thing we'd excelled at, was getting in our own way.
I was grateful we weren't doing that anymore, I just hoped he didn't stop giving me shit and taking it back. I'd miss our banter and mock arguments.
Or real arguments, but for those we had make up sex. I might keep calling it hate sex, to get under his skin.
"I could shoot you in the ass right now and leave you here," he offered.
I glanced back and smirked. "You wouldn't do that."
"Only because Elenna and Sinclair would choose a cheek each and shoot me in retribution," he replied.
"Yes, we would," Sinclair said.
"Then a ball each," Elenna added.
"Sinclair isn't looking at another man's balls," Javey snapped.
"Not for long," Sinclair agreed. "It would be for a good cause, not because I want to touch them."
"My balls are starting to feel uncomfortable about this conversation," Bray said.
"Sorry, not sorry," Sinclair said. "If you're lucky, Wren might kiss them better later." Her smile was a brief flash of white in the darkness.
My pale skin was probably visible from a kilometre away. I should smear some dirt over my face if I got the chance. Getting shot because I was a pale-skinned redhead would suck. The fact my death would be avenged quickly wasn't as much consolation as you might think.
Bray grunted but fell silent. No doubt imagining me kissing his balls. Hopefully not enough to distract himself by forcing all of his blood out of the head on his shoulders and down into the one in his groin.
I smiled to myself. Sometimes it was too easy to get to him. On the other hand, we were all jumpy and on short fuses. It wouldn't take much to get to any of us.
If someone leaped out of the shadows and shouted, ‘boo,’ I'd probably scream. I couldn't afford to react like that. If I was on edge too much, I might make a mistake. None of us could afford that.
"You okay?" Sinclair whispered.
"As okay as I can be," I replied. "You?"
"I'm fine, but I wasn't the one who was drugged, shot at, and then almost abducted again by those two pricks. And then actually shot. It's okay if you're not okay." She took my hand and squeezed it.
She was right, I wasn't completely fine.
If this wasn't over soon, I was going to come apart at the seams. If not for my guys and my friends, I already would have.
They were the stitches keeping me together, bound tighter than the ones in my shoulder.
It would take more than a pair of scissors to break us apart.
I squeezed her hand back. "I'll be better when this is dealt with. Then we can get on with our lives and things can go back to normal. Whatever normal is."
"Normal is coffee and cake at our favourite café," she said. "And celebrating after games at Hazards. Not having to look over our shoulders wherever we go or whatever we do."
"Or being nervous to eat chocolate chip muffins," Elenna said.
"Especially that," Sinclair agreed. "No one should be scared of chocolate chip anything."
"If you keep talking about that, you're going to make me hungry," I joked weakly.
"If you keep talking at all, they'll know we're coming," Javey pointed out, his tone blunt.
We abruptly stopped whispering at both his words, and at the sound of another scuffle, closer this time. The shuffling of feet, grunts, the snap of twigs and the crunch of leaves underfoot.
"I know this place," Bray whispered. "There's a track leading off to a stream. On the other side of the stream is a cliff. If I was going to lead someone somewhere to deal with them, that's where I'd lead them."
I didn't ask how he knew; that didn't matter right now. Chances were, he saw the track and got curious one day. Took a walk down there and found the stream. He wouldn't be the first or last to do something like that.
"They might be heading into an ambush," I said.
"Aidan won't let them—" Elenna started.
Several gunshots rang out in the night, unexpectedly close.
For half a second, I expected to be hit, or for one of the people around me to fall to the ground.
We all dropped to a crouch. Ducking down on instinct, hours of training in our younger days, kicking in.
Yeah, this is shit kids in Dusk Bay learn, like they learn to read and write. The kids whose parents worked for mobsters anyway.
"Down there!" I recognised Aidan's voice.
"There's at least a dozen." That was Coast.
"Not for long."
I smiled at the sound of Tiger's voice. The smile was short-lived.
The men weren't making any effort to hide their presence. The enemy knew exactly where they were.
I blinked against the sudden glare as a pair of headlights came on, a high beam illuminating the bush ahead of us.
"Get back," Lex hissed. He waved us into the shadows under the trees by the side of the road.
My heart raced harder than ever. Had they seen us, or were they focused on Tiger and the others?
We stayed down low and waited. A minute passed. Two. Three. No one converged on our location.
Shadows danced on the very edge of the glare from the headlights. Barely visible as they passed between the trunks of massive gum trees.
People. All of them moving slowly, guns in hand.
"Gus," Sinclair hissed.
I glanced over at her quickly. "Are you sure?" All I could make out was a silhouette, flowing through the trees.
"Yes. I'd know that shape and movement anywhere," she replied. "It's definitely him."
She must have spent more time studying him while we were held in that motel room, then I had. That kind of attention to detail was her thing. It shouldn't surprise me she noticed. Or maybe she was more traumatised than she let on and she was projecting.
Fuck knows if that was him or someone else entirely. As much as I wanted to believe her, caution seemed wise. In the meantime, she had my complete support, like I'd have hers if the tables were turned.
"Then we need to deal with him," I said.
I glanced at Lex. Would he argue with me? Would he say we should stay here, out of sight? He looked like he was thinking it. I could barely make out his expression in the corner of the glow from the headlights, but it was enough.
He nodded. "If they herded our people to the stream, we can put the goonholes—" he smiled briefly at Bray for the term "— between us and them…"
"Let's do it." Bray was already on his feet. Javey too, a moment later.
Lex nodded and rose. "Let's get this done."