62. Rafe
I watched Nolan collapse on the roof in slow motion. “What the fuck ?”
Jude rushed toward him. “He didn’t take his meds.”
“Meds?” There was panic in Lilah’s eyes.
Jude picked up Nolan and moved to the edge of the roof. “I’ve got him.”
He’d just strapped Nolan to his body when the door from the staircase flew open.
The guards rushed onto the roof, guns drawn.
But they weren’t alone.
There was a man with them, cloaked but unmasked. A man with a hard face and harder eyes, his hair still cut high and tight.
Sandoval.
I grabbed Lilah and pulled her close against my body.
“You’re making a mistake, Maddox,” Sandoval said.
The guards were pointing their guns at us, but Sandoval was obviously in charge, and they weren’t about to shoot while he was talking.
“And you’ve already made one,” I said.
“We’ll come for you,” Sandoval said. “And we won’t stop coming.”
I held his gaze. “I’ll be waiting.”
Then I pushed off the roof, Lilah clinging to my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist as we descended, Jude next to me with Nolan, unconscious and strapped to Jude’s chest.
My feet hit the house’s stone facade halfway down. I kicked off and slid further down the rappelling rope, then dropped to the ground with a thud.
Jude was a second behind me. We’d barely unclipped our harnesses from the rope when gunfire peppered the ground around us, the guards firing their weapons from the roof.
Jude threw Nolan over his shoulder as I grabbed Lilah’s hand and pulled her toward the trees beyond the landscaped clearing around the house.
Bullets tore up the grass around us. I held my breath, half expecting one of us to fall. But it was dark and we were moving targets, the guards clearly not snipers trained for these conditions.
We cleared the tree line in one piece and dove into the forest surrounding the house. I didn’t need a compass to know where we were going, and I ran for the Jeep we’d hidden in the woods, pulling Lilah behind me, listening for the sound of the guards giving chase.
It would take them a few minutes to gather a team for the woods, but they would come.
Sandoval’s face flashed in my mind but I didn’t have time to think about how he was connected to Imperium Fratrum. One thing and one thing only mattered: getting Lilah out of there in one piece.
We were almost on top of the Jeep when we found it, hidden under fallen tree limbs and brush just the way we’d left it.
“What’s wrong with him?” Lilah shrieked, looking at Jude, loading Nolan into the back seat. “Oh my god…”
“Get in the car, Lilah,” I ordered.
She scrambled in after them instead of getting into the passenger seat and I hurried to the driver’s side and pushed the button to start the car, half expecting it not to start even though we’d left the key fob in the console.
The engine turned over and I put the car in gear, then hit the gas, barreling through the narrow path in the trees that had gotten us there.
I dared one glance in the rearview mirror at Lilah, holding Nolan’s head in her hands. His eyes were closed, his face pale. I had no idea if he was even breathing.
“What’s wrong with him, Jude?” Lilah shouted as we bounced over the rough terrain. “Why isn’t he waking up?”
“He has diabetes,” Jude said. “And he didn’t take his insulin.”
“Wait… what? What ?!” There was a pause as Lilah took in what Jude had said. "Will he… will he be okay?”
Jude didn’t answer right away and I tried to focus on the path through the trees, on getting us out in one piece so we could get Nolan to a hospital.
“Jude!” Lilah shouted, her voice breaking on a sob. “ Will he be okay ?!”
“I don’t know,” Jude finally said. I heard the resignation in his voice when he spoke again. “I don’t know.”
Thanks so much for reading to Hell to Pay! Next up: Shame the Devil, the sexy, thrilling conclusion to the Blackwell Bastards series.