Xavier
I’ll never get used to the taste of blood.
The smell, sure. The sight, no problem. But there’s something overwhelming about the tang of it on your tongue, and so the first thing I do after turning onto my side is spit. My shoulder aches, my knife wound throbs, but my head is remarkably clear.
My heart, though … it stops when I see Silence.
“Q.” I push myself up and stumble over to her. She’s on her side, eyes closed, dirt mingled with blood seeping from a cut over her eye. “Q, open your eyes.”
A second explosion rocks the house, and I swear before scooping Silence into my arms and standing.
My balance is off for a moment, but I breathe through it.
Hoisting her higher in my arms, I step into the hallway.
The stairs are gone, and I can see the sky, snow cascading through the open ceiling and into the foyer.
I’m about to shout for Y and Z when I see men breaching the front of the house. Dozens of them.
“Fuck me,” I grumble, going back to the bedroom and into the panic room.
I lay Silence on one of the beds and go to the monitors.
Sweat clings to my skin as my eyes dart from one screen to another, desperately searching for my brothers and my dog.
I can’t count how many men there are, but I spot Y and Bullet making their way across the grounds toward the surrounding forests.
I go to the panel inside the panic room, flipping it open.
The glowing numbers stare back at me.
“Shit.” I rest my forehead against the wall.
“The code. What’s the fucking code.” My head swims, my balance tipping slightly as I close my eyes.
Sounds hum and sharpen, and I’m suddenly so fucking tired.
I press my hand to my stomach, to the blood seeping through the wound that might never fucking heal at this rate.
“Bullet’s birthday.” I punch in the numbers, scan my thumb, and pray Zayden is conscious to hear the warning sounds and get cover.
The fire alarm stops blaring, and a separate alarm sounds. One. Two. Three.
I slam my palm against the panic room button, and the doors slide closed, just as the fourth alarm sounds. For five long seconds, it blares—not that we can hear it in here.
The sound cannon blasts, and I watch the men on camera slap their hands over their ears and fall to their knees. The frequency it gives out is enough to render someone unconscious, but we still need to move fast. Anyone out of range can still shoot us.
I kneel in front of Silence.
“Sorry, Q,” I whisper, before pinching the muscle between her neck and shoulder. Silence’s eyes fly open, and she cries out. “Sorry, sorry, but you need to wake up. We have to go.”
She blinks slow, pressing her palm to her head. “What happened?”
“No time, Q.” I open one of the storage boxes and pull out a bulletproof vest. “Arms up.” She does as I ask, and I pull it onto her and tuck a small, disposable phone into one of the pockets.
I find spare shoes and slide them onto her feet, tying them, and then pulling on a pair of my own.
As I’m loading my weapon, Silence sways a little.
She watches me quietly, eyes half-shuttered. “What are you doing?”
“We need to run, but if we get split up, you use that phone and call the number saved in it, but you do not stop moving.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “Why would we get split up?”
“Silence, repeat what I just said.”
She breathes deeply, squeezing her eyes closed as if trying to recall the words. “Call the number. Keep moving.”
“Good girl. We’re going to run now, so stay low. You’re going to feel pressure in your ears, and you might feel sick. But don’t let go of my hand, and don’t stop moving.”
Silence nods, and I slide noise-cancelling headphones onto her head. They play white noise, blocking out as much sound as possible, but some will still slip through. I put mine on and take her hand, pulling her to her feet.
This is new. Too fucking new. I’ve never been in a position where I had to take care of someone. My brothers are different—they can fend for themselves. Silence might have had some training, but she’s relying on me.
No one ever fucking relies on me and it’s terrifying.
Silence squeezes my hand and I look back at her. Her eyes are wide, shining, and the blood from the cut on her eye is drying. She’s terrified, which means I can’t be. I lift her hand, kiss her knuckles, and allow myself three breaths.
And open the panic room door.
The high-pitched frequency is nothing compared to what the others will be hearing, but nothing can block out the sound entirely.
Silence squeezes her eyes closed and tries to pull me back, but I tug on her hand.
We stride through the bedroom and out into the hall.
A man is on his knees, hands over his ears, mouth agape, drool dripping down his chin.
He isn’t worth the few bullets I have, so we move past him.
The stairs are gone, and on the bottom floor are more men covering their ears. I release Silence’s hand, trying to calculate the drop from here to the foyer, but it’s not like we have a choice. I sit, gripping the stone as best I can, lowering myself and dropping onto the marble floor.
I look up and hold my arms out, gesturing for Silence to follow. Her brows bunch together, and she whispers something to herself as she mimics what I did.
She catches my eye, fear in her expression.
“I’ll catch you,” I mouth.
She lets go, and I grip her waist before her feet reach the floor. I take her hand, and we sprint for the back of the house, finally stepping into the now fast-falling snow.
Silence clings to my hand, her palm sweating, mine covered in blood, as we run toward the trees.
I tear off the headphones, and shouts echo behind us.
As the terrain changes, I slow so Silence can keep up.
Trees whip by us, and we’re escaping into almost total darkness.
The moonlight is hidden by the canopy, the blue-black dark pressing in on us.
The snow is still falling, and our breath fogs as we slow and come to a stop.
We crouch, and I take off Silence’s headphones. Her face is slick with sweat and blood, her eyes wide.
“You okay?”
“No,” she whispers. “Not even close.”
“I mean, are you hurt?”
She swallows and shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Where’s Zayden? Yale? Bullet?”
I glance into the forest. “I saw Yale and Bullet on the cameras, but not Zayden.”
“But …” She glances the way we came. “He could still be in there. We have to go back. We can’t leave him!”
“Zayden can take care of himself.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I kiss her, tasting the tanginess of her blood.
It seems sweeter than mine, and I press my forehead to hers.
“He would never forgive me if I left you alone to go back for him. This is not a discussion, Q. We have protocols for this.” She nods tearfully, and I lift my head to look back toward the house.
Zayden is tough. He’ll have gotten out, and he’ll meet us. There’s no way something like this has taken his life, and wouldn’t I know? Isn’t there some kind of triplet connection that would tell me if one of us was gone?
I have to believe that as I taken Silence’s hand and lead us deeper into the forest.
We walk for hours. The snow falls in thick, heavy flurries, but Silence holds my hand and doesn’t complain once. Even when she stumbles and I catch her, she whispers a thank you, clings tighter to me, and keeps going.
When we finally come across a vehicle parked at the end of a long, dirt driveway, we hotwire it and use it for the rest of our journey. I crank the heat up, and Silence cradles my free hand between hers, rubbing it to warm me, kissing my knuckles.
All the while, I think about my brothers. Yale got out, but there’s no telling what happened to him along the way. He could have been caught, or killed, and Zayden could have faced the same fate. It might just be us now.
I bite the inside of my lip, fighting the lump in my throat. I can’t afford to break. I have to look after Silence, and if she thinks I’m doubting Yale and Zayden’s safety, she’ll crumble, too.
We swap cars twice more, and by the time we reach our first destination, it’s almost morning. We park outside the railway station, and I search through the glove compartment, finding a cloth and a half-empty bottle of water. Dampening the cloth, I wipe my face of as much blood and dirt as I can.
“What are we doing?” Silence asks quietly. I wet the cloth with the last of the water and clean her face, too, taking care around the cut on her eye.
“We need to go into the station.”
“We’re leaving?”
“No, there are storage lockers here.”
Silence stares at me with an almost lifeless expression. Her eyes are red rimmed, dark circles more prominent in the daylight. The cut looks painful, and maybe it’s pointless to try and clean ourselves up when it looks like we’ve been through a war.
“Ready?” I ask, and when she nods, we get out of the car.
The morning commuters are too busy to notice anyone other than themselves and the announcements board, so, apart from a few concerned looks, we pass through relatively unnoticed. The storage lockers are side by side, and when I open mine and Yale’s, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Yale was here,” I say. “His bag is gone and so is Bullet’s.”
Silence smiles. “So he’s okay?”
“Yeah.” I take mine out, slam the locker, then open hers and Zayden’s. My shoulders dip, but I try to mask my disappointment.
“Is Zayden’s gone, too?”
I fight the tightness in my chest. “No.”
A few seconds pass, ones I should fill with reassurance but can’t. “Maybe he’s on his way.”
Grabbing her bag and closing the locker, I nod. “He will be.”
An hour later, we’re two towns over. After leaving the car under a bridge and a twenty-minute walk, we finally reach an apartment block. We own the building under a shell corporation and have one floor kitted out for emergencies, and the rest of the properties are empty.
Hand in hand, we take the elevator to the top floor.
I’m the one who found and bought this place, and I made the purchase based on how secure it is—it’s remote, it’s quiet, but it’s also kitted out with heavy security.
It’s safe. I know it is. But even after I take the key out of the lockbox, I pause.
Because what if it isn’t? What if Ryker knows exactly where we are?
What if Yale got here and Ryker took him?
What if Yale didn’t even get this far?
“Are you okay?” Silence whispers, squeezing my hand gently.
No, I’m not. I need Z. I need his confidence, because I’m clearly fucking useless at taking charge.
“I’m fine.” I unlock the door.
Bullet barks.
Silence rushes forward just as Yale appears from the kitchen. She lets out a sob and runs to him, throwing herself into his arms.
“Fuck, you’re both okay,” he whispers, cradling the back of her head.
“Zayden?” I ask, but Yale shakes his head slowly. “He’s not here?”
“Not yet,” Silence reminds me.
Yeah. Not yet.