Page 29 of Fire
“I need to make sure you’re not hurt,” I tell him and remember I said those same words to him the night of my nightmare. I gently run my hands over his bruised body, checking for serious injuries. He winces when I touch his ribsand again when I touch his clavicle, but I don’t think anything is broken.
I find the true source of his pain when he turns to me and finally speaks. “Cyrus and Barry…” he gasps. “I think they’re both dead.” Tears stream down his face. “They died because of me.”
“Shhh.” I catch his tears with my thumbs and gently wipe them away. “None of this is your fault. It’s the Reivers and the Patriots Now who are responsible for all this ugly shit.”
Sirens blare in the distance, reminding me that we are about two minutes out from a lot of company we don’t want to visit with.
“We gotta get out of here.” I can’t help dropping a whisper light kiss on his forehead before I release him and stand up. “Can you walk, or do I need to carry you?” I’m willing and able to carry him out of here, but we’ll attract way less notice if I can walk him out of the festival instead.
“I can walk,” he says. I hold out my hand and pull him up. He’s wobbly, but he’ll be fine as long as he leans on me.
Picking up the sniper rifle and the gun Evan was made to hold, I empty them of bullets, wipe them off of any fingerprints, and then throw them down next to the unconscious men.
I help him down the stairs and past the sniper, who lay groaning on the ground. “Come on.” I push him toward the freaked-out crowd who are rushing for the exits. They’ll provide the perfect cover for getting us out of here.
Once we’re out of the festival grounds, Evan starts stumbling from exhaustion. There’s no way he’ll reach my truck, which I’d parked over a mile away. I break into an old but remodeled Chrysler that looks like it still has some horsepower, hotwire it, and take off. A look in the back seat shows a jackpot of a case of water and a bunch of blankets. I hand him a bottle of water and cover him in the blanket.
Knowing my com is too far out to work, I take out my burner phone, hit speaker so Evan can hear, and call Eli, who answers on the first ring. “Shooter is down, and Evan is secured,” I report.
I hear a clear sigh of relief. “Thank fuck. Everything else is going to hell.”
“Did the sniper hit anyone?”
“Cash was shot,” Eli replies.
Fuck. I look over at Evan, who looks wrecked by the news. I reach out to hold his hand. He grips it tight, and as much as I’m offering Evan comfort, right now, I’m amazed at how much relief his touch provides me.
“He and Johnny are headed in an ambulance to the hospital—ETA seven minutes out. I’ll report back to you as soon as I’m informed of his condition.”
“Do that,” I say, hoping like hell that Cash makes it through this. “You should know that Evan told me he thinks Cyrus and Barry might have been killed when the Patriots Now shitheads took him.”
There’s a long silence on the other end, and then I swear I hear Eli say in a small, desperate voice, “I keep failing them.”
“Eli, are you okay?” I ask, used to hearing the young tech whiz always cool and in charge.
“I’m fine,” he says stiffly. “I’ll investigate and inform you of their status. For now, get to safe ground.”
Before I can respond, he ends the call.
“We need to get out of Lexington,” I tell Evan. “Things are blowing up here. I need to get you somewhere safe.”
“Back to my apartment?”
“No. We can’t be sure it’s safe anymore.”
The answer is easy—my cabin. It’s in Wisconsin, about a two-hour drive from Chicago. Built on the edge of a bluff withone forest road in and out that I control access to, it’s the perfect place to hide Evan.
“I have a cabin in the woods that I stay at when I need a break from everything.. Do you trust me to keep you safe there?”
His eyes flick over to me and then to where our hands are still joined. “Yes,” he says simply.
My heart feels impossibly big in my chest right now at the gift he just gave me. I squeeze his hand.
The moment breaks when he pulls his hand from mine and sits up in a panic. “Delilah.” He looks at me like I should know what the emergency is. “She’s still in my hotel room. We have to go get her.”
“Your hotel room could still be watched. It’s too dangerous to go back there.” I want Evan out of this Reivers-infested city now, and I really don’t want him near the hotel room where Patriots Now was tracking his movements. “Can you call a friend to come get her tomorrow?”
“You, of all people, should know I don’t have any of those. Delilah has been my only friend since I was seventeen.”
