“And I told you to stop calling me that.” Jada was off the ground, hand around the wrist with the gun, and fighting him with more strength than I’d ever expected Jada to have.
Fear filled me as she struggled. I had to force my mind back to the room. I searched the stocked shelves. Food. Water. Candles. A lighter. Swirls of formulas filled my eyes. No flour. I could have made a flour explosion.
My hand landed on the bottle of bleach at the same time as the gun went off.
I turned and saw Jada stumble back, hand to her stomach, blood instantly spreading across the blue silk under the black lace. Anguish tore through me, but I didn’t let myself stop to think. I unscrewed the cap and flung the liquid into Ken’Ichi’s face. He screamed as the alkaline hit his eyes, and I brought the bleach bottle down on his wrist with every muscle I had in my body. The gun flew out of his hand and skittered away under the shelves.
I turned to my friend. “Jada!” I called. She was stumbling toward the door, but she didn’t quite make it. She fell to the ground, and I landed on my knees at her side. Tears hit my eyes as the blood continued to pool on her dress.
Ken’Ichi was growling, but I didn’t have time for him. I just prayed he wouldn’t be able to see well enough to search for the gun in the dark.
“Jada, stay with me. Don’t you dare shut those eyes,” I cried out, putting my hands on the wound to staunch the blood flow. It coated my hands with its warmth, the metallic scent filling the air. My heart thudded, dread filling me. My heart was squeezing tightly, making it difficult to breathe as her eyes fluttered closed and opened.
“The release but-ton. The b-blue one,” Jada gasped out.
I looked up and saw the huge blue button by the door. I got up and hit it before rushing back to her side and returning my hands to the wound. By the time the door opened fully, I was covered in her blood, and Jada’s eyes were shutting again.
Dawson was the first to enter with his gun directed at the darkness above me. My tightly wound heart constricted further. Seeing him was a relief, but sorrow was welling up inside my chest. Jada…
Once his eyes fell on us, he dropped to my side and shouted into his earpiece for an ambulance. He took in the blood covering me and her, and his face filled with a host of emotions.
“Vi. Are you hurt?” His voice wavered.
I shook my head. “It’s all Jada’s blood. He shot her.”
He frowned. “Ken’Ichi? He was here?”
I nodded. Jada moaned, and a sob burst out of me. I needed her to live. I needed her to be okay. To be strong and vivacious and pushing me out of my protective bubble.
“Where is he?” he asked me.
I turned, expecting to see Ken’Ichi with his hands hovering over his eyes.
“I don’t—” We saw it at the same time, behind the shelving, a small doorway that was now letting in the mist and the dark. Outside, the rain that had stayed at bay all day was falling in a steady sheen, hiding the stars and the moon.
Dawson spoke into his earpiece again. “Number two on the move. Repeat, number two on the move.”
The men with Dawson headed out the door Ken’Ichi had escaped through, and I turned my attention back to Jada.
“You better not die on me, Jada,” Dawson said, brushing at her hair. “I will kick your ass to France and back. Dax will never let me live it down.”
Jada’s eyes struggled open, and she tried to talk, but all that emerged was a strangled cry.
I had blood trailing down my hands like a river. Atoms and molecules and DNA she’d never get back. Pieces of her disappearing. I forced my brain away from the science I used as an escape, back to what I knew about the human body.
“We need towels,” I said.
Dawson left the room and came back with kitchen towels. I shoved them at the wound and Jada groaned, eyes rolling back.
“Jada. Do not go to sleep,” I demanded again through a throat closing with emotions. When she didn’t respond, I tapped her face with my hand, leaving a bloody mark that made me go cold.
More sirens filled the air, and then there were EMTs in the room, pushing me away from Jada, cutting at the dress littered with diamonds and lace, opening to see the wound caused by the bullet. Their voices were a rush of statuses. Heart rate and blood loss.
The sounds were going dimmer around me, and suddenly, Dawson’s arms were surrounding me, holding me up. The tears that had started came faster as they put my friend on a stretcher and wheeled her out.
Dawson and I trailed after them.
The rain hit me as we exited the house, the thin fabric of my costume soaking through in the two steps it took to go from the door to the back of the ambulance.
