Page 271 of Cross the Line
The thick stick rolls from his bloodied hands before he pushes onto them, clambering onto his knees in an attempt to get up. The distinct, sulfury smell from the gunshot cloys in my lungs when his stare lifts to Fin and me.
A fragment of hope, too quickly snatched, when he collapses face-first to the dirt.
“Eli!” Finley’s piercing shriek slices through me.
Her trembling body throws itself from my arms to the ground, where Presley is dashing for the gun. He snatches it up faster than Fin can getto it, and against every instinct in my body, I stick to the promise I made Eli.
I protect our girl.
Not before I warn him, though. “Eli!”
With one heaving lurch, Eli throws himself back into Presley. His hand grasping Presley’s wrist with a hard wrench to disarm him. A slicing wisp sears my shoulder at the same time as a thunderous blast cracks through the grunts and cries.
My eyes flash to Eli, where he’s coiled around Presley on the ground. His hand still clutching Presley’s limp wrist to the top of his chest, where the gun is still smoking. Eli’s face is unrecognizable with all the blood. All the bits. Bits of skin and flesh and hair and… so much blood. Everywhere.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
“Eli…” Fin’s gurgling sob murmurs through the sudden stillness, cutting through the hammering of my heart in my ears.
When she collapses into my chest, fitting so perfectly, my arms close around her on instinct. Squeezing her to me, I spin her away from the stomach curdling sight, ignoring the erratic pulse throbbing in my shoulder.
“JJ,” Finley hisses into my chest. Her heaving cough sputtering blood over my jaw. “I… J… J…”
“Fin?Fin?Finley!”Fuck.My hand grips her face, fingers tapping her cheek with the inward roll of her eyes. “No, Baby… No.No, Baby…”
Sirens blare around us. Dirt crunching. Dust kicking up in the air.
And it’s all too late.
Too little, too fucking late.
CHAPTER 81
ELI
“Can you take me through what happened again?” The detective holds out a steaming cup of coffee.
When I shake my head, he hands it to his deputy and sits in the chair across from mine in the waiting room.
The walls are apple green, mismatched to the blue and black speckled vinyl floor. Everything is at odds in here. Like someone tried to make it as jumbled as possible to make it easier to focus on something other than the tumult of emotions coursing through me.
So many that the constant slur has given way to numbness. For all the emotions, I can’t feel anything anymore. Everything is falling apart, and I can’t control any of it.
“Where’s Jayden?” I ask again when my eyes center on the clock on the wall behind him.
“He’s getting stitched up,” the detective replies, voice too steady. “We’ll take his statement once the nurse is done. In the meantime, if you could?—”
“Take you through what happened.Again.”
“Yes. I know this is difficult, but I want to make sure the story is straight so I can leave you to—to…” A tanned hand gesture around the room when my blurred stare hitches to his.
“It’s not a story,” I mutter, scraping a thumbnail around my bloodstained cuticles. My face drops to my hands as my head hangs between my shoulders. “They’re facts.”
“And we need to get them straight,” he retorts with a sigh, pad in one hand, pen in the other, skimming through the notes he’s already taken asI recount what happened for the umpteenth time. “From when you arrived at the scene. Please.”
There’s a frog in my throat that refuses to clear as I start, “There was blood in the truck. Ryker’s truck. The driver’s seat was stained with it, and…”
