“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I growl.
“As long as we bring the girl, he’ll be happy,” says the leader. “Think of this one as… A bonus.”
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I warn as they step closer.
“Don’t you want to see your sister again?” taunts the bleeding guy.
“You know where she is?”
“Six years later, six feet under,” chants the redneck, prowling around me.
Now the leader hangs back a step, letting the others do the dirty work.
“Go on,” says the one with the gun, waving it toward the road, where a sleek, black van sits idling.
That’s when I see both the other men are strapped too, ready to shoot if I make a sudden move toward the first guy.
When I don’t go where he wants me, he curls his finger around the trigger. There’s no safety on the Glock, so I know I’m about to be wasted. After all, I’m nobody, just like E.
Except she wasn’t nothing. She was everything.
And if she’s gone, I’m not going to be her replacement.
Suddenly, the leader draws his gun, steps up, and pistol-whips me. I stumble back, falling to my knees, pain hammering into my temple like the blows are still coming.
“Look at you, on your knees like a bitch, just like that sister of yours,” says the young guy.
“You’re wasting our time,” says the leader. “You have two choices. Either walk to the van, or say goodbye.”
I don’t say anything, but I don’t stand, either. I won’t be her replacement, but I won’t let them take me out, either. I decided when I left juvie that no one was ever going to put me back there. No one would decide how I lived. And now I make a new choice. No one gets to decide how I die, either.
So when one of them presses the gun to the back of my head execution style, I hold out my arm, and I draw the blade up my forearm from wrist to elbow. Breathtaking pain blooms up my arm as blood gushes over my skin, dripping from my fingertips into the grass.
“What the fuck?” barks the redneck.
“Did you really think the knife was for you?” I ask, grinning as my head begins to swim. “I will never be imprisoned again. Not by them, and not by you.”
“Let’s roll,” says the leader. “We didn’t come for this asshole. We need to grab the girl and get out of here.”
I need to warn Mercy. To tell Saint not to leave his room. To tell Angel to be careful if he comes looking for me when I don’t show up with her.
Did I tell him I would?
I want to reach for my phone, but my fingers only twitch.
It’s too late.
The last thing I see is stars. I lay on my back in the cool, fresh spring grass. I’m not sure how I got here. Stars twinkle in the deep blue velvet of the sky. Cold is spreading up one side. Maybe I’ll see Eternity soon after all.
nineteen
The Merciful
I hurry along the path to the boys dorm. I have to find Saint. I don’t know what happened back there, and I probably should have just taken comfort from Angel. But I can’t stand to see my brother hurting. When we were kids, he couldn’t stand to see me hurting, either. The instinct to run to him when I’m hurting remains, even now, when he’s the one who hurt me.
I hear footsteps behind me, but I don’t look back. Instead, I run the last few steps to catch the door as another guy is leaving. I barely slip through the crack before it settles closed behind me. Unlike the girls dorm, there’s no Sister Agatha at the desk to scold the boys for coming and going. In fact, there’s no one at the desk at all. I run up the stairs, ignoring the rattling door behind me. I was taught to be nice, polite, and helpful, but they’ll just have to catch the next person leaving. Nothing can overrule my need to find my brother, to tell him I’m not mad and that he has no reason to be, either.
I climb the stairs to the top floor, where he has the penthouse suite in the old dorm. I’ve never been in his room, but the others have mentioned it, so I know where to go.
