18. Niko
Niko
The ride back to Clearhaven was silent and tense. Our emotions mingled with whatever classical music Dominic played over the radio, making me feel like I was crawling out of my skin. Everyone’s mood was morose, but Cam’s was worse somehow. His expression was unreadable even to me as he stared at his hands clasped in his lap.
I nudged him with my elbow, hoping to get his attention, but even that didn’t work. Whatever demons he was fighting in his head were obviously louder than Tchaikovsky streaming through the air. In the end, I left him alone with his thoughts.
In my head, I ran through everything that we had discussed. The Order’s annual New Year’s party was being held at an old mansion on the outskirts of town. Everyone had assumed that it was abandoned years ago, but it turned out that wasn’t true. It only appeared to be empty.
The plan was simple enough. In the back of the SUV, there were enough explosives to demolish the house. Our only job was to plant them in areas that we had predetermined, set the timer, and meet back at a specified place before midnight. The explosives would go off as the ball dropped, hopefully taking most of the members out, including Vance.
On paper, it sounded good, but I worried as I shifted in my seat. We had never used explosives before. There was a first time for everything, but I didn’t know that the first time would feel like the weight of the world was pressing down on me. That there was a time bomb ticking, waiting to explode inside of me. I frowned at the analogy as the SUV slowed and wiped my hands along my black pants.
Black. The color of everything was always black when we worked under the cover of night. Thankfully, the moon wasn’t full, giving us even more cover. The estate where the party was held was massive. Once upon a time, it would have been beautiful, with sprawling gardens and statues. Now, it was something ripped out of a horror movie with vines that tangled and knotted, unkempt for decades. Ivy grew up on the side of the facade’s exterior cracks, undeterred by the late December temperatures.
“Ready?” Dominic asked. “Does everyone remember where we’re meeting back up?”
We nodded at him silently, each of us holding our breath. It was as if we were afraid to utter a single word. If we did, the spell cast over the night would be broken. I grabbed Cam’s hand and gave it a squeeze, hoping to convey things solely through touch. It was to say that everything would be okay. Keep your chin up. Even if I was mad at you, I still love you.
His grip was weak when he squeezed back, and I didn’t know if he understood. I could only hope he did as we gathered around the SUV’s hatch. The bundle I was handed wasn’t heavy, but it felt like an anchor pulling me down beneath the ocean’s surface.
This was the best course of action for my family, the one that we had formed. This was the best way to keep Ivy out of their clutches. Still, it felt bad. Most people inside, drinking expensive champagne and wearing fancy clothes, were guilty. I knew that.
But there were others. Other people who were like Ivy, whom I knew weren’t guilty. They were trapped as much as we were.
And there was a real possibility some of them wouldn’t make it through the night.
I pushed all the thoughts from my head as I began trekking through the tree line to my destination. I had been assigned the far right corner of the house, near the edge of the abandoned garden. My task was simple enough. All I had to do was not get spotted by the guards, who were surely watching the party, making sure trespassers stayed away. When I arrived at the area, all I had to do was set the timer to go off at exactly midnight.
Sneaking around in the still of the night was easy for me. Hell, I could have snuck into the party itself undetected. Cam was the one I worried about the most. He was the one who had to slip into the cellar beneath the house, hopefully collapsing the foundation. There was an external door hidden by the shadows, which gave me a small amount of reassurance. I’d almost asked him to swap with me, but it was too late. I just hoped no one saw him or there would be other issues to deal with. The type that involved guns or knives.
There would be enough bloodshed tonight without that.
My footsteps were silent as I attempted to avoid the dry leaves scattered around the estate, left from years of neglect. When I was living in Clearhaven, I never would have thought that this property was where the Order held anything. Residents had always wondered why it hadn’t been purchased and renovated. Or why it had never been condemned and demolished by the city.
I held back in the shadows, braced against a tree as two guards sauntered, leaving me unnoticed. I waited until they were out of sight and counted to ten before creeping out of my hiding spot. The ground was hard and cold as I knelt, pulling out the bundle of explosives Dominic had carefully packaged. After setting the timer how I had been instructed, I rushed back to the shadows.
Fifteen minutes . That was all we had until the entire thing would turn into a ball of fire, consuming everything in its path. I broke into a run to the meeting place, trying to believe that everything would be fine. Everyone would be okay. Things would go off without a hitch, and soon we would be reunited.
But even the weeping willow that hung over my head made me feel like the night was doomed from the start. That maybe fate or destiny had already damned us. Why had we decided this was the place to meet? Willows were associated with heartbreak and grief. We’d had enough of that.
The minutes crept by as I waited. Caleb was the first one back, out of breath, with ruddy cheeks. “I feel like I’m having a heart attack,” he mumbled, but I couldn’t bring myself to console him. I rocked back and forth on my heels, trying not to hold my breath.
Trey was next. I heard his footsteps as he ran in the darkness, and when he was close enough, I could see the grin spread from cheek to cheek. He was high off of adrenaline. Things like this gave him life. He didn’t speak as he doubled over, clutching his knees, trying to catch his breath.
With seven minutes left, Ethan and Dominic jogged in and scanned who was already present. “Where’s Cam?” Ethan asked. He didn’t look as disheveled as the rest of us. I lifted one shoulder as I chewed on the inside of my cheek, waiting.
“I’m getting too old for this shit,” Dominic said under his breath.
“You wouldn’t be if you joined me in the gym,” Ethan replied, almost as an afterthought.
As the seconds ticked by, I could feel my heart breaking. Every second, a piece of me crumbled. “Something’s wrong,” I said to no one in particular. “I’m going to find him.”
Things weren’t perfect between us, but the idea of leaving behind the man I loved, whom I had loved longer than I realized, wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t have been able to leave any of them, but Cam was different. We’d raised our siblings together and tended each other’s wounds. He was woven into my soul like no one else was.
“You can’t,” Trey argued, his hand reaching for me. I took off before they could stop me, ignoring their hushed pleas. Four minutes . My heart pounded in my chest as every scenario that could happen unfolded behind my eyes. What if they had found him in the cellar? He could already be hurt, or worse, captured.
Three minutes. The house came into sight, and I saw the small cellar door that was tinted red. The paint was peeling from the exterior, but the vines had been cleared. I just had to make it…
Two minutes . Forever, that would be the time engrained in my memory. 11:58 . The moment my life changed. It would be the moment that I would never forget, as somewhere close by, a boom echoed in the air. The ground shook, and the foundation of the very house creaked. Something collapsed in the distance, and suddenly, I was queasy. It was too loud. It was too hot. Everything was too much, including the emotions that warred within me.
I’d thought I’d had more time—sixty more seconds to do what needed to be done.
I didn’t know why, but someone’s explosives had gone off earlier than they should have. Was it a faulty timer? Had they set it wrong? Had someone tried to disarm it? Whatever it was, I still had a sliver of hope left. It was tiny and fragile, but still there. Maybe Cam hadn’t set his timer yet? Maybe he’d still have time to make it out.
Without looking for guards or thinking about what I was doing, I went to the door and pulled it. At first, it wouldn’t budge, and I placed more weight behind it to pry it open. Finally, it opened, allowing me to race inside.
The beams that held up the floor above blocked my way as I scrambled into the darkness. A few feet from the entrance, I saw him trying to push the enormous pieces of wood off his body. From the position he was in, it was obvious he was broken. His legs lay beneath him at unnatural angles, and a sheen of sweat covered his brow.
“Fuck,” he gritted out when he saw me. I dropped to my knees, trying to shove the weight off of him. If I could do that, then I could carry him. Everything would be fine. He shook his head at me. “You’ve got to go. The timer…”
Beside me, each second ticked away as I swallowed roughly. “No, we can get you out of here.”
He gave me a small smile, his eyes shining from either pain or grief. “You can’t. I set the timer right before the explosion went off. I left it where they told me to, in the back corner. The door was stuck, and I couldn’t get outside. We didn’t give ourselves enough time.”
I reached out to touch his cheek as something wet splashed from my eyes. “You can’t leave me. We just…”
His hand grasped mine. “Shh. It’s okay. Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve it.”
Without thinking, I pressed my lips to his, knowing that our time was up. The timer kept ticking. No one had told us how to disarm them. This was supposed to be easy. Instead, I was doing the hardest thing I ever had. “Please.” I didn’t know why I said it, but I did.
“I love you. Run,” Cam murmured against my skin, and that’s what I did. I was only a few feet out of the door when the last bundle of explosives went off behind me. The force propelled me further, throwing me into the air like I was nothing. When I landed, I scrambled to my feet, my body screaming at me.
It was nothing like the pain I felt in my chest, though. Nothing could be worse than that.
I was a coward, and Cam had just died alone in the darkness. There was no way he could survive that. No one could.
I wanted to scream into the night and rage with every breath, but instead, I ran, limping through the trees. Nothing would ever be the same. How did you survive the aftermath of something like that? How could you keep living knowing that your best friend was dead?