Already tired from all the other shit I’ve gone through, without air, my body gives up. My kicks growing weaker and weaker.
Darkness begins to creep into my vision, bleeding into everything around me.
And it’s cold…
Death is so cold it burns like fire.
“Tell your father when you see him,” Jacob sobs above the buzzing in my ears. “I’m sorry, but I have to protect Trent. He’ll understand.”
Then the darkness swallows me whole.
21
James
Uriel slams his car to a stop right in front of what’s left of my house. His brakes squealing and tires screeching.
A lot of shit has been running through my head while I’ve sat here on the front step. I’ve been trying to figure out how the fuck the cops figured out where I live.
I checked out the SWAT truck a little bit ago. There was nothing of importance in the truck. No blueprints and no search warrants. All the communication gear was shut off. But my address was in the GPS.
My fucking home address.
It wasn’t Amanda. She could have tipped the cops off, but I doubt she knew my address. All she knows is an approximate location, and this doesn’t feel like something she would have done.
The fact that there could be a mole in my family worries the hell out of me. Especially after Bart and Cherry…
But my gut is telling me this wasn’t a mole either.
Intuition is pushing me toward someone being followed. Someone being either John or Simon.
Standing up, I groan. My fucking calf burns like hell. A large chunk of flesh is missing thanks to the graze of a fucking bullet.
“Shit, brother,” Uriel says as he opens his door and starts to get out. “You okay?”
Rolling my head in a circle to work out some of the kinks, I walk over to the passenger side of the car and yank the door open. “Let’s go.”
Sitting down inside the car, I pull the door shut and get situated with my new bulletproof vest. I had to go back down to the safe room after killing that last guy. New clothes and a fresh M4A1 were in order. I also had to calm Fluffers and Mitzy down. Neither one of them was happy to be left again, but there’s not much I can do.
Nothing can be done until I get Sophia back.
Uriel thankfully doesn’t waste time looking at the devastation that visited my house. Nothing’s on fire at least… but that’s not much of a comfort. We’ll have to go to a safe house until we can find or rebuild a new one here.
“You leave anything alive back there?” Uriel asks once we’re on the road.
“Just my dog and a very fucking lucky cat,” I say. “Where do we stand with Sophia?”
“Simon got ahold of Oscar in just enough time. He was able to follow them at a safe distance,” he says.
Then he puts his finger up in a sign for me to hold.
Pushing the phone button on the console between us, he autodials Simon.
“Do you have James?” Simon asks, his voice coming through the speakers.
“Right here,” I say. “Where’s Sophia?”
“Are you injured?” Lucifer asks before Simon can answer my question. “And did you tell me to eat your asshole?”
“Yes,” I growl. “Where’s Sophia?”
Uriel chuckles and shakes his head. “We’re on the way to the motel out on highway 82.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
And for the life of me I can’t figure out if I have a concussion or if I’m just really fucking confused right now.
Why the fuck would those assholes be holing up in one of our hidey-holes?
“We herded them there after we caught up to them,” Andrew explains.
Simon must have patched us all into the same comms channel.
My head is fucking spinning with this new information, and I have questions.
“I’m taking it that you have the place surrounded? I don’t hear gunfire or racing engines,” I say.
“Yes,” Simon says before he sighs. “Though I don’t think we can wait much longer before they start to get desperate.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“They haven’t called in any reinforcements or backup,” Lucifer says.
“You think they will?” I ask.
“We don’t know,” Simon says, “and I don’t have a cellphone jammer or a way to keep them from making contact with the Russians.”
“Is that why they hit my house and came after…” I trail off as a thought comes to me.
I don’t like the implications one fucking bit.
“Sophia,” Lucifer finishes for me.
“They either want to silence her or spin what went down as a rescue,” Simon says.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“So how much time do we have before we’re the ones surrounded?” I ask.
“Twenty minutes,” Simon says.
“Fuck. Who’s sniping?” I ask.
“No one. Not enough time for you or Uriel to get into position,” Andrew says. “Although we do have John up on the roof of one of the outbuildings, keeping watch.”
“How many people do they have there?” I ask.
“Four,” Simon says. “Both Morrisons, TO Dickers, and an unidentified patrolman.”
Holy fuck. We have the serpent’s head and his fucking body in front of us.
We need to capitalize on this… but how do we do that?
“What’s the game plan?” I ask.
“We’re working on it,” Lucifer says.
“How far out are you?” Simon asks.
“Fifteen minutes,” Uriel says, and the car starts move faster.
Glancing over at the speedometer, I see that we’re hovering around ninety.
“Who do we have at the motel?” I ask.
Lucifer’s crisp voice comes back over the line and a dark chill travels down my spine. “All of us in Garden City. Jude is still in the Ukraine. Thaddeus is now in Boston. And Simon’s man, Eric, hasn’t shaken his tail as easily as we hoped. We’ve lost too much blood.”
That means he’s there too. Great. If he gets a single fucking scratch on him, Lily will devour every single one of our souls.
There won’t be a single person who could stop her, either.
Silence falls over the line, thick and heavy.
We’re dying out, and we don’t have enough fresh blood filling our coffers. At this rate, if the Russians did seriously attack us, we could very well end up being the ones running off with our tails between our legs.
Or worse.
We could all wind up dead.
That’s a terrifying thought.
But equally fucking terrifying is that I don’t know what’s happening to Sophia.
She’s that ever-present thought in the back of my head.
Always there.
Always weighing on my very soul.
I don’t know what’s happening to her, and I can’t fix any of it.
“John or Simon, one or both of you caused this shit. You got made and exposed my house. Figure out who the fuck had a tail or a tracker on them. I’m not calling anyone a rat, but they shouldn’t have been able to find me,” I say quietly.
“Fucking hell,” Lucifer snarls.