Page 116 of Darkness of Mine
Twenty-five yards.
River’s seen me now. His shouts cover the crunch of my footsteps.
Twenty.
The side of my face throbs, the vision in my left eye blurry from my swollen cheek.
I take another agonizing step.
A branch cracks under my foot.
Zach’s head whips around, a knife in his hand in seconds. I freeze as the blade leaves his fingers.
And then a body collides into my side and I’m flying.
We crash against the snow. I gasp as the air leaves my lungs, heavy limbs pinning me down. I struggle, rolling the person on top of me onto their back. The guys are still across the clearing.
Long ginger hair tangles in my fingers and my stomach bottoms out.No.
Allie stares up at me, eyes wide as her hands clutch the knife buried in her abdomen. The knife Zach threw atme.
“Why would you do that?” I scream at her, my hands joining hers on her stomach as I press around the hilt of the knife.
Allie gasps. “Not gonna… let you die.”
Tears burn my eyes. This is the same girl who took the fall when we were kids. Allie may not be normal but her base line is and always has been protecting me, even when I promised it would be the other way around.
“You’re going to be okay,” I swear, even as blood pools over my fingers.
“Freya…” Allie coughs. “The knife. Harley.” She tries to pull out the knife but I bat her hands away.
“You pull that out and you’ll die,” I yell.
She grabs my wrist. “Help. Harley,” she says again and with a flooding dread I realize what she means.
“No. No!”
Her eyes crease as she fights the pain. “It’s the… only.” Gasp. “Way.” She tries to smile up at me, the way she used to when we were teenagers, and she was teasing me over a crush I had on my teacher. “You know I’m right.”
“No,” I say again, pushing harder on her stomach.
Jude shouts my name across the clearing and all the sounds I’d been blocking out rush back in.
“Let her go, Zach,” River orders. “You can’t win this one.”
Jude moves like he’s going to cross the clearing to get to me, but Zach tears the gun away from Harley and fires. The bullet hits the frost crusted ground in front of Jude. He stops.
Harley whimpers. Zach hooks his arm around her waist, holding her back. He jabs the gun into her side, hidden behind the trunk so River can’t get a clear shot.
Allie tugs weakly on my wrist. “Let me help.”
My eyes drop to the wooden hilt of the hunting knife, just like the one our father used. “I can’t,” I say, the words splitting me in two.
“Freya,” Eli calls across the woods and then he shouts just two words. “Tom Richter!”
My brain clamps down on the name. On the story Eli told me. Tom Richter is the first man he killed.Suicide by cop.Tom killed his hostage and came out guns blazing. Eli’s telling me Zach’s going to do the same.
He’s going to kill Harley.
