I turn around to look up at Oscar, finding the white parts of his suit speckled with blood. Doesn’t show as much on the black. Isn’t that nice? That there’s a color you can wear that helps hide the bloodstains.
“Roger that, O.”
Oscar pauses and turns his head sharply, gritting his teeth in response to something. And then he’s gone, and the sound of bootsteps behind me is drawing my attention around. Three men come around the corner, pausing when they see me standing there, dressed in a hoodie and shorts and bleeding from the throat.
I can’t beat them all, not like this. My head is whirling and swimming, but I keep my mind focused through sheer force of will. Turning on my heel, I take off after Russ. I’m faster than the men chasing me, and that’s my only advantage right now.
Cupping one hand against my mouth, I let out a howl. A lone wolf in need of a pack.
As I round the corner behind the school, another gunshot drops one of the men pursuing me.
Oscar, again.
I keep after Russ. He’s the type of person that, once he gets your scent, never stops coming. If he’s here now, it’s because the GMP has decided that even a taste of Victor’s inheritance isn’t enough to put up with the risk that is inherently Havoc.
The enforcer pounds the pavement hard, leaving a trail of blood behind him, and then disappears into an abandoned apartment building three blocks down. Not surprising. We are deep in the heart of south Prescott here. I can practically hear its heartbeat, one-part dereliction and one-part unshakeable courage.
I wet my lips and slip around the back of the brick building, weaving my way through a sheet of ivy to climb into a first story window. Two of the men are still behind me, cursing as they struggle with the foliage.
While I wait for them to catch up, I creep through the shadows the way I taught Bernadette. Move with purpose, but don’t rush it. Be unpredictable. Never assume you’re safe, not even buried in the dark.
“Those little punks killed Will,” a voice is saying, the words echoing from upstairs. The speaker pauses briefly and curses. “He’s in the building with us.”
“Is he?” another voice replies, one that makes my jaw clench and my skin prickle. There are different sorts of monsters. I’ve always found the ones who use sexuality as a weapon to be the worst. Perversion is a terrible, terrible sin.
Who could that be, Callum? I wonder, making my body as small as possible so that I can crawl into the open door of an old sideboard. Carefully, I pull the door closed and then aim my weapon through the crack, waiting. I’m good at that, the waiting part.
It’s what makes me so fucking dangerous.
Rabid dogs that bite too quick are put down.
Two men come down the stairs, the weak light from inside the building doing little to illuminate their features. One of them is clearly Russ. I can tell by the metallic stink of him. The other … I’m hoping that the wild guess forming in my mind is wrong.
Maxwell Barrasso wouldn’t send his second-in-command to a high school, right?
I mean, if we weren’t so purely and honestly Havoc, then the forces the GMP marched through the doors of Prescott High would’ve been mad overkill. I wet my lips again, squinting to see if I can’t line up a shot.
“Well, where the fuck is he?” Russ asks when the two men that were chasing me finally make their way into the room.
“He came in through the kitchen window,” one of them says, and I notice Russ’ eyes immediately begin a scan of the room. It’s unlikely a man of my size would choose a place like this to hide, but they’ll check here. Not yet, maybe, but soon. “No fucking clue where he is now, but Kody is dead.”
“This the blond kid we’re talking about?”
That voice … One of our girls said that when she heard Maxwell’s second, Mason Miller, speak for the first time, that she felt like she’d already lost. She said that when she got home, she took a scalding shower and cried as if she’d been assaulted.
And Prescott girls … they don’t say that sort of shit lightly.
This just has to be Mason Miller.
I aim for his head. Even if I were to die here today—I won’t—then killing Mason might just make it all worth it. He’s one of Maxwell’s secret weapons. To remove the threat of the GMP from Springfield, we’ll need both Maxwell and Mason.
Just as my finger tenses on the trigger, Mason’s eyes flick to me. I can’t really see his face. Shit, it’s bathed in shadow and obscured by dust motes that dance through the early morning air the way I used to, effortless, weightless …
