Page 136 of Salvaged Hearts

If You Get Us Killed, I Will Beat You to Death

ALICE

“Baby, I need you to breathe, okay?”

Radiant pain tugged me into consciousness, my mind scrambling to make sense of what I was hearing.

Leighton. That was Leighton’s voice beyond the sobs. Beyond the steady trickle of water and radio. All of the stimulus was contained behind a sponge—some bizarre absorbent buffer between the world and the steadily throbbing pain in my head. My neck and chest.Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, it echoed with each rapid thump of my heart.

Fuck me,it was hard to breathe.

Searing agony crept from my spine to my skull, needling at the back of my eyes.

“I can’t!”A hysterical, childlike voice cried.What the hell was the water? Where was it coming from?

“Listen to me. I’m going to get us out of here. But you have to stop screaming and let me think. Can you do that for me?”

“Mm-hmm,” came a shaky reply.

The pieces started to filter back into my mind as Leighton’s forced calm permeated the fog filling it. Copper saturated my tastebuds and I winced, blinking my eyes open to find myselfsuspended crookedly in the SUV, the pain in my chest actually a thick belt across my sternum.

Seatbelt.

Oh, god.No!

Mattie.

Mattiewas going home with us.

Choking on some combination of blood, panic, and saliva, I startled upright, bringing a hand to my hammering head and finding my skin warm and sticky.Ouch.

We’d crashed off the bridge.

We’dcrashedoff the Emerald Bay bridge.

Blood splatters were everywhere as my eyes scanned ahead, where both Jax and Royce were unconscious or dead; I wasn’t sure which.

“Jax,” I croaked, throat aching.

“Thank fuck,” Leighton gasped, the first hint of panic slicing through her facade of calm. “Jesus Christ, can you move?”

Blinking away the spots in my vision, I shifted my hands…wiggled my toes. “Yeah.”

“Can you unbuckle? Mine is jammed.”

I pulled—tugging against that pressure on my chest, and found the belt tightly locked into place. When I pressed against the band of fabric, panic latched around my windpipe when it wouldn’t release. Again and again, I jammed against the red button, but it wouldn’t give.

“No,” I panted. Wincing, I shifted my weight, trying to keep the belt extended but ease the weight off the mechanism.

Breathe, Alice.

Think, dammit.

My vision was slightly blurred, making me blink as if that could clear the film.

Concussion? Probably.

There was light in the cab, but not what I expected.

---