“Mute, let’s do it,” H.R. whispered.
“Agreed,” I seconded then louder I said, “My sister is on the roof. You need to get her down.”
Something flared behind his eyes as he thought about my little sister on the roof of a flaming building and I immediately warmed to him for it.
“Let’s go, Mute,” I urged him.
He didn’t move.
The smoke was thick now and the snap, crackle and pop of wood tearing, burning and crumbling to ash was loud all around us.
I could barely breathe from the smoke in my already weak lungs when I begged. “Promised to stay alive for you, Mute. Need you to get me there and that way is through this guy.”
I don’t know if it was the hoarseness of my voice and my resulting body jerking coughing fit or if it was my words, but Mute jolted forward as if he’d been jump-started.
“You get her hurt, I kill you,” he threatened even as he started running to the door and out it.
Harleigh Rose followed us but Mute put her in front, as we followed Lysander around the side of the house and stopped just out of sight of the front driveway.
“Thirty meters through the trees straight ahead,” Lysander said when we came to a stop. “I’ll get Bea and you worry about gettin’ out of here alive.”
I whimpered at the thought of leaving my sister but the shouts from the front of the house alerted us that our time had run out.
There was about ten meters between the forest and us, with twenty meters still more after that.
“Doable,” H.R. said, her soot-streaked face set with determination. She still held a knife in one hand and her gun in the other, both held up to her face as if being able to see them made her more confident.
“Got this,” Mute agreed.
“Good, now go,” Lysander ordered.
Mute took off like a shot, Harleigh Rose on the other side of us, farther away from the driveway. I clung tight to him as he thundered across the grass, his breath and pulse thumping away in my ear as I pressed my face into his neck.
Pop.
The familiar sound of gunshots followed close behind us.
Pop. Pop.
“Let me down, I can run and you’ll be faster without me,” I shouted in Mute’s ear but he only hefted me higher on his back and ran harder.
Pop.
Harleigh Rose screamed.
And in that second that Mute stopped slightly to turn his head and check on her, I saw a fourth man, one we hadn’t known was there, one that looked so familiar, at first, I thought he was there to help us.
He had pale hair and wore a leather vest like brothers of any MC would. He was too far away for me to see clearly but through my haze of adrenaline, I felt sure I knew him. He stood by the trees we were running to, a gun in his hand leveled high and steady at Mute and me.
It felt as though I caught eyes with him in that second and saw a wealth of things in that corrupted gaze: anger and greed, vengeance and fury. He was a man on a mission and that mission was to end me.
I screamed before I even heard the pop.
Mute grunted a second later, faltering in his steps and almost falling to the ground. He collapsed to a knee briefly before pushing up with a hand and taking off again.
“You’re okay?” I screamed into his ear.
He grunted.
Harleigh Rose limped beside us, running fast even though I could see the blood at her calf where a bullet had gone clear through the muscle.
We made it to the edge of the trees three seconds later without any more gunfire but I could still hear the shouts back at the house and see the dark plumage of smoke wafting over the cabin through the forest. Harleigh Rose had darted ahead into the brush to get the car started.
“Keys in the ignition,” she shouted from somewhere in front of us.
“Thank God,” I said, about to ask Mute to put me down when my world tilted and we both went to the earthen floor hard.
“Mute,” I cried out before I’d even landed, then as soon as I regained my breath I was scrambling over the cold, wet soil to his side.
He lay on his back, blinking up at the sky like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with him.
What was wrong with him was that there was a bullet hole through his neck. A sob exploded in my throat and tore out my mouth as I fell on the wound with both hands, pressing hard into the blood spilling through his throat. My fingers slipped in the mess and I worried frantically that I was making it harder for him to breathe.
“Help!” I called out, not caring that there were more gunmen in the vicinity. “Harleigh Rose!”
“Fucking fuck,” she said, tumbling to a stop beside me in the mud. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod… fuck.”
“Mute, just wait a second, okay?” I told him, leaning down so I could look into his eyes.
They were wide and eerily knowing on mine as he blinked, gurgled through a deep breath, and blinked again.
“Loulou!” Bea’s voice came to me, pulling my gaze from Mute for a second to see her running toward me with Lysander just behind her.
“You have to help me get him in the car,” I told Lysander. “Quick, please, God, help me get him in the car. He needs an ambulance.”
Lysander crouched down without missing a beat and cursed as he smoothly hefted Mute’s dead weight into his arms. “Get in the fuckin’ car. Now.”
I pushed Bea toward the car with my bloody hands then sprinted forward so I could brace against the backseat and carefully accept Mute’s head on my lap. Bea crawled into the front seat and H.R. kneeled in the trunk.
Lysander jumped into the front seat and immediately peeled out of the muddy clearing just as there was a great bomb as the cabin imploded.
“Mute, Mute, I’m right here and we’re going to be in the hospital in just two seconds, I promise, it’s going to be alright… just hold on, okay?” I ranted as I pressed the bunched edge of his tee into the gushing wound and ran a hand over his head, too fast and hard to be truly comforting.
I could see the blood under his skin thinning, watched as his flesh turned bright red then paler and paler like spilled milk. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t move and couldn’t even really breathe.
“No, no, no,” I sobbed as one of his heavy hands tried to lift to comfort me and fell back weakly to the seat.
There was blood everywhere, pooling warm in my lap, the metallic scent of it stuffed up my nostrils.
He was dying.
God, I knew he was dying.
“Is he okay?” Bea whimpered from the front seat as we drove off the edge of a dirt hill and onto pavement with a rough crash that jerked me and made more of Mute’s blood spurt out over my hand.
“No,” I whispered as my tears rained down on Mute’s face.
There was so much in his eyes as they watched me; pain and stunning acceptance of his fate, pride that he’d saved me and love, so much love it overflowed from him and filled me up to the brim.
I couldn’t breathe, my weak lungs were filled with smoke and too damaged to deal with the added stress but I focused all my energy into staying clear headed so I could hold my silent hero in my arms and look into his eyes as he died for me.
“Love you, love you, love you,” I croaked through my tears, through my lack of breath.
He blinked slowly and opened his mouth, maybe to say something, but instead a thick trickle of blood spilled out.