Page 178 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
There are only three men left now. With Cal and Oscar together, that’s basically nothing. They could take down a dozen men. Two dozen, maybe.
Maxwell veers off from the group, and I take off after him, chasing him into the trees in the same direction as Ophelia and Heather. I don’t see them—Vic either—but I’m focused on one thing and one only: Maxwell Barrasso.
This is our chance.
If Vic can take Ophelia down—he will—and I can deal with Maxwell, then that’s it. Game over. Obviously, explaining what happened to the VGTF will be interesting but really, how can we be charged for any of this? Attacked on schoolgrounds by a notorious gang yet again and all with the plausible idea that it’s only about Victor’s inheritance and nothing else.
Adrenaline surges through me as I catch up with Maxwell and grab onto the back of his jacket, knocking him to his knees in the leaves. He’s good though, much better than that man I killed on the hill after I escaped the cabin. A man that, I know now, was probably a member of the GMP.
Maxwell spins so quickly that he’s able to kick the gun from my hand before I can stop him. His own weapon is long gone, and I wonder if he wasn’t running out of ammo back there in the first place.
Without a gun, this is going to be more difficult, but not impossible.
I throw my body onto Maxwell’s, utilizing both gravity and weight as I wrestle him into the leaves. He throws a punch that manages to connect with my face, and stars flicker in my vision. Doesn’t matter though. The well-dressed asshole beneath me hasn’t been in the trenches recently. I’m not afraid of him.
Only, Maxwell is good.
Much better than I expected.
Like, he’s Mason Miller good.
Fuck.
I know as soon as he manages to roll us over, somehow taking the advantage of gravity away from me. My fist manages to break between his arms as he struggles to hold me down, and my knuckles connect with his face. In retaliation, Maxwell backhands me so hard that blood fills my mouth.
“You took my son from me,” he says, in such a smooth and even tone that I really start to worry here. “Do you really think I’m going to let a high school student wrestle me in the woods?”
His hands grip my wrists and shove them into the ground as he uses his knee to hit me in the groin so hard that the breath is knocked out of me. Blackness sweeps at the edges of my vision, but I take advantage of that single second when he’s balancing on one knee atop me, and I roll.
Maxwell is knocked off as I scrabble for the gun. My fingers wrap around the grip, but my opponent is right there, putting a knee on my back and hitting my wrist so hard that the weapon drops back to the ground. He reaches for it, and that simple movement puts him off-balance yet again.
I shove up to my feet, throwing Maxwell aside. It doesn’t last; he’s up on his own feet and lunging for the gun in less time than it takes me to steady myself.
We’re standing on the edge of a sharp incline, where the woods sweep down toward the perimeter wall that surrounds the grounds of Oak Valley Prep. I just let myself fall backwards, even though it’s a risky move.
With a grunt, I hit the ground and then I just start rolling. But my movements are quick enough and erratic enough that even when Maxwell takes a few shots at me, he doesn’t find his target. Once I stop rolling, I’m so dizzy and breathless that I lose several precious seconds trying to suck in air. My entire body hurts now, throbbing and screaming as I shove back up to a standing position.
Maxwell is already sliding down the incline toward me, the gun still in his hands. He aims for me and pulls the trigger; if the gun were still loaded, he might’ve actually hit me. Unfortunately for him, he’s run out of ammo, so he simply chucks the weapon aside and comes at me anyway.
This time, as he’s moving through the trees and I’m stumbling back looking for a branch or rock or anything that I can use as a weapon, Maxwell pulls a knife from an ankle sheath hidden beneath the finely pressed lines of his slacks.
Licking my lips, I think about Bernadette, about how beautiful her mouth is when she smiles at me, how kind her eyes are even when she tries to be a hard-ass. I think about how good it felt to take her at the same time as Victor, how tight and warm and perfect everything was. And I imagine living in that house with her, with them, with the girls. We could have it all. If only one of us doesn’t die here today.
