27. One Day Until Bonding
Chapter twenty-seven
One Day Until Bonding
Carrson
Everyone is quieter when we leave the club. Nearly half of us are missing, but I know who stayed behind, which rooms they disappeared into, and which drivers will bring them home. The rest are rumpled and glassy-eyed, too tired or drunk to keep shouting over the music inside.
Laurel and Samantha sleep with their heads resting against each other. They’re back in their regular clothes, having left the ones they borrowed back at Sinners.
I keep looking at Laurel.
I tell myself I’m checking that she’s all right, but every time I close my eyes, I see her standing in front of me with my dagger in her hand. I remember how she looked when she came and the relief of letting someone else decide what happened next.
For a few minutes, no one needed me to lead. No one needed an answer, a threat, or a plan.
I only had to trust her.
She knew I needed that before I did.
Laurel has a way of taking the thoughts I’ve kept locked down so long I no longer recognize them and saying them aloud. Once I hear them, I can’t pretend they aren’t mine.
Before we got into the limo, she said, “I heard you’re the future president.”
She left the words there, but Laurel never asks only one question. I could see the others crowding behind it.
Is that what you want?
Did you choose it?
What happens to us if you do?
Wesleyson interrupted before she could voice them. Tipson had passed out in the bathroom and needed help getting to the car.
I sent the first limo ahead, watched its red taillights pull out into the road and disappear.
The second limo waited for us while Wesleyson and I went back for Tipson.
I was grateful for the excuse because I didn’t know how to answer her.
The presidency has never felt like a future. It’s an instruction Carr and everyone else have been repeating for as long as I can remember. Most of my life has been arranged that way, a path drawn by other people and called destiny until refusing to follow it became impossible to imagine.
Laurel shifts in her sleep. Her lashes flutter, and her hand slides closer to mine on the seat between us.
She’s the only thing I’d ever deliberately chosen for myself. The only time I’d ever really gone against the Brothers. They’d argued against saving her. Said it was reckless. Unwise.
Watching her sleep, I can’t say they were wrong.
But I’m glad I didn’t listen.
She’s the wisest unwise choice I’ve ever made.
Telling her I love her should have made me feel exposed. Instead, the words left me lighter. Then she said them back, again and again, and I wanted nothing beyond what I already had.
I scan the limo, checking on everyone else. Tipson’s awake now, more alert than I expected. Abbie and Cicley are talking with Brentson. Thomson is quiet, which isn’t unusual, but he hasn’t looked away from the window since we left. I’ll ask him what’s up later.
Dawn breaks through a yellow haze by the time my father’s house comes into view. Hundreds of cars cover the lawn and the field beside it. I’m not surprised. Every guest room in the mansion is occupied, and Order parties rarely end after a single night.
“We’re here,” I call, shaking the people closest to me, rousing them. We all tumble out of the car. I watch the limo drive away and head inside.
The first clue that something’s wrong is the lack of security guarding the doors.
The second is the sound of gunshots.
I shove Laurel behind me and spread one arm across her, blocking her. “Stay back.”
“What’s happening?” Her hand closes around the back of my shirt. “Carrson?”
“I don’t know.” I’m already pulling out my dagger as I check on the rest of the crew. Every trace of drowsiness is gone. Jackets open. Hands disappear under waistbands and reach toward ankle sheaths. Guns and knives emerge from places no one outside The Order would have thought to look.
A few seconds ago, we were exhausted college kids stumbling home from a party. Gunfire strips that away, leaving behind what we were raised to be.
Children of The Order.
I lift two fingers and point left, close my fist toward the right, then circle one hand through the air.
Spread out. Check the perimeter. Find the threat.
We invented the signals while playing war in the woods behind this house when we were ten.
No one hesitates now. Sam takes two Sisters around the left side of the mansion.
Thomson and Brentson disappear around the right.
The others divide behind them while I approach the front doors with Laurel close to my back.
Laurel tries to peer around my shoulder. I move with her, keeping my body between her and the rest of the house.
“Stay behind me.”
“I can’t see what’s happening.”
“That’s the point.”
I ease the front door open a few inches, holding my body off to the side, then nudge it wider with my foot. Laurel stays close behind me.
The first bodies lie just beyond the entryway.
A man and a woman. His arms are flung around her, his body twisted over hers as though he tried to shield her before they fell.
I recognize the brown hair first. The slender hand that once held a flute.
Juliette.
Stretson lies across her, his fist tangled in the fabric of her dress.
A few hours ago, she was walking her fingers up the buttons of his shirt and promising the club might give her new ideas. He’d pulled her against him and laughed.
Now his eyes are open, fixed on nothing.
For a heartbeat, the gunfire deeper in the house sounds far away.
I know these people.
I know Stretson’s laugh and the way Juliette closes her eyes when she plays. I have stood beside them at ceremonies, parties, and funerals, never considering that one day I might find them like this.
They left in the first limo while I went back inside to help Wesleyson drag Tipson out of the bathroom. By the time we got him into the second car, Stretson and Juliette had already been on the road for fifteen minutes.
I sent them here ahead of me.
If I had kept everyone together, I might have noticed the missing guards before they crossed the threshold. Heard the shots. Stopped them at the doors.
Instead, Stretson died with his body over Juliette’s.
The others who rode in the first limo with them are nowhere in sight. I don’t know whether they made it farther into the house, were taken, or are lying somewhere I can’t see.
“Stretson! Juliette!”
Laurel slips around me before I can catch her. She crouches beside them and presses two fingers to Juliette’s neck, then Stretson’s.
I already know what she’ll find. There’s too much blood. Neither of them is breathing.
“They’re dead.” Laurel looks up at me, tears gathering in her eyes. “Carrson, they’re dead.”
I haul her upright by the elbow and pull her behind me. Anger flashes through me because she crossed an open doorway without checking for a shooter, but it disappears when I see her face.
I forget death shocks her.
She’s volunteered in hospitals since she was sixteen, but the only corpse she’d seen before The Order was Trent Riveria, the drug dealer I killed the night we met. When she told me that, I couldn’t comprehend a life where death was an exception instead of a possibility.
Behind her, Stretson’s hand remains knotted in Juliette’s dress.
I want to kneel beside them. Close his eyes. Move him so Juliette isn’t trapped under the weight of the man who died trying to protect her.
There isn’t time.
Gunfire cracks from deeper in the house. Whoever killed them may still be close enough to kill Laurel too.
I know the attackers are responsible. I know sending one limo ahead didn’t put bullets in their bodies.
That offers no relief from the guilt I feel. It doesn’t ease the burning in my lungs or the vice tightening around my chest.
Laurel lets out a soft sob, and I consider sending her back outside, somewhere she won’t have to see what waits deeper in the house, but I don’t know where the attackers came from or if more of them are prowling the grounds.
For now, the safest place for her is with me.
There’s a staccato burst of gunfire from the back of the house. I follow it, moving through the hallway with Laurel on my heels, checking each doorway and corner before I expose myself.
A man in a server’s uniform barrels out of the dining room.
His right hand is held low against his leg. There’s a flash of silver. A blade.
I step outside the path of his charge and catch his wrist before he can drive the knife into my stomach. His shoulder slams into mine. I turn with the impact, wrenching his arm behind him until the joint gives with a dull pop.
He doesn’t cry out.
That tells me more than the weapon does.
A member of the household staff would panic. Beg. Freeze.
This man drives his head backward, trying to break my nose.
I avoid the blow and bury my fist in his kidney. His body folds enough for me to hook an arm around his neck and drag him off balance. The knife falls from his hand and skitters across the marble.
He reaches inside his jacket.
I drive my dagger through his palm before he can pull out whatever he has concealed there.
His mouth opens on a garbled yell. I rip the blade free, turn it, and shove it under his ribs.
His body jerks once.
Then his weight falls against me.
Laurel makes a sound behind me. A broken inhale that raises the hair along my arms.
I look back.
She stands against the wall with one hand pressed over her mouth. Her face has gone pale, and her eyes move from the man hanging on my blade to the blood running over my knuckles.
She’s seen me with blood on my hands before but has never watched me kill.
I see myself through her eyes. The dagger buried in another man’s body. The lack of hesitation before I put it there.
Only hours ago, she held this same knife without fear and told me she loved me.
Now she’s watched me use it to take a life.
Will she be scared of me after this? Will she still love me?
A gun fires from the dining room.
There’s no time to find out.
I twist, using the dead man as a shield. The bullet punches through his back. Laurel screams as I drive both of us toward the wall.
“Down!”
She crouches beside a marble console table while I shove the body away, pulling the dagger out.
Another server stands in the dining-room doorway, gun raised in both hands. He glances at the dead man at my feet like it doesn’t faze him at all. He adjusts his aim and advances.
I grab a heavy glass vase from the console table and throw it. He jerks aside as it shatters against the doorframe. His shot goes wide, tearing a hole through the portrait behind me.
I cross the distance before he can correct his aim.
My left hand knocks the pistol away from my chest. My right drives the dagger into the muscle above his elbow. His fingers open, and I catch the weapon as it falls before slamming it across his temple.
He staggers but stays upright.
I strike him with the gun again, this time across the throat. His breath cuts off. I hook my foot behind his ankle, wrench his injured arm across his body, and send him into the dining table hard enough to crack the wood.
He collapses beside it.
“Carrson.”
Laurel’s voice comes from behind me, high with warning.
I turn toward her, but a third man is already rushing from the hallway at my back.
Laurel saw him before I did.
He has a gun in one hand, the barrel swinging toward my spine.
Laurel steps toward him. Her left hand clamps around his wrist. She pivots outside the path of the weapon and drives her forearm under his elbow, using his momentum to force his arm upward.
The gun fires into the ceiling.
Plaster rains over us.
Laurel kicks the back of his knee. When his leg gives, she twists his wrist in the direction I taught her, forcing his shoulder against the wall and the weapon from his grip.
I recognize the move.
Back when Sam was trying to kill her, I drilled this exact sequence into her until she stopped trying to overpower me and learned to use my weight against me instead.
The attacker jerks free before she can retreat. His hand closes around her hair and drags her backward.
Rage surges through me.
I let go of the gun and reach him in two strides.
My fist connects with the side of his head. He releases Laurel, but I don’t give him time to recover. I drive him into the wall, forearm across his throat, and stab the dagger through the fabric of his uniform into the meat of his upper arm.
He grabs for my wrist.
I twist the blade. “Who sent you?”
He bares blood-streaked gums at me but says nothing.
I pull the dagger free and drive my elbow into his face. His head snaps against the wall, and he crumples at my feet.
Laurel stands a few paces away, breathing hard. Strands of hair have pulled loose around her face, but she appears otherwise unharmed.
Her eyes go to the body. Then to the dagger in my hand.
The shock is still there. So is a new awareness of me I can’t take back.
I wipe my bloody palm against my jeans, though the gesture is useless. She’s already seen everything.
I keep the dagger low at my side and touch her cheek with my free hand.
She freezes but doesn’t pull away.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“What were you thinking?”
“He was about to shoot you.”
“I told you to stay behind me.”
“You taught me how to stop someone bigger than me.” Her chest rises and falls. “Also, you’re welcome.”
I stare at her.
She stares back, frightened but stubborn, a loose curl stuck to the damp skin beside her eye.
I taught her those moves so she could escape men like him. I never imagined she would use them to keep one from putting a bullet through my back.
“Next time, get control of the weapon and retreat,” I say.
“Next time?”
Gunfire erupts deeper in the house.
Three shots. A pause. Then two more.
I retrieve the fallen pistol and check the magazine. Four rounds remain.
Laurel looks at the men on the floor. “Those are the servers from the ball.”
“They’re wearing the uniforms.”
“You don’t think they actually work here?”
“No server moves like that.”
I crouch beside the first man. Flesh-colored makeup has smeared along the side of his neck. Under it, black lines curve toward his shoulder.
A tattoo.
I tug his uniform aside, but the design disappears under the fabric before I can make sense of it.
A scream comes from the rear of the mansion.
Laurel turns toward it.
I catch her hand before she can move and place the fallen gun in it.
Her eyes widen. “Carrson.”
“Keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you intend to fire. Stay behind my right shoulder. If I move left, you move left. If I tell you to run, you run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“That wasn’t one of the instructions.”
I wipe my dagger against the dead man’s jacket and rise.
Laurel adjusts her grip on the gun. It is too large for her hands, but she holds it the way I told her to.
Ahead, blood marks the marble floor in a broken pattern leading toward the ballroom.
I close my hand around Laurel’s and pull her deeper into the house.