Page 21 of Wolf
Thorne: This is serious. Someone else followed you and your boss from outside the club. In black sedans. It’s not me. I’m on my bike. Don’t gohome.
Me: Awww, how touching. The guy tailing me wants to save me from another tail. BTW too late. I’m home. And I can take care of my damnself.
Thorne: Get the hell out of the house. They’re coming foryou.
Just as I read his last message, I see three more pairs of headlights turn onto the driveway and park. All the vehicles turn off their lights at almost the same time. Shit. I’m nowhere near prepared to take on that manyattackers.
Reaching into a large box near the front door, I take out my GO-bag. It’s all I can take with me when I make my run for it through the woods out back. I curse under my breath. Everything else has to stay behind. I stay low to the ground and hurry toward the back door. On my way there, I notice a curtain move, then hear a wooden floorboard creak under the weight of something.Someone.
I freeze in my spot. I’m not alone inhere.
“Rose, why didn’t you leave when I toldyou?”
Shit.Thorne.
“What are you doing here?” I demand in an angrywhisper.
He points at the window he used to break in. “Time togo.”
Looking back at the place I called home for years, I say a silent goodbye. Grams and I made some happy memories here, but our time is up. We’ll never be able to comeback.
I crouch down lower and head to the kitchen. There’s a door to Grams garden shed that leads out the side of the house. It’s our best way out if this place issurrounded.
“For fuck’s sake, Rose. Where are yougoing?”
“Dude, this is my home. Think I haven’t thought of the best way out? Follow me if you want to survive this… if you’re not actually with those people outthere.”
“Why would I bother to warn you if they were on myteam?”
Bang!
A deafening sound and an explosion of thick smoke rip through the house. I’m guessing it’s a highly coordinated, quasi-military attack of four or five flash bangs being thrown into the house simultaneously. It’s crazy, to think they’d do all of this for me. I press my palms to the floor, finding my balance, and shake the disorienting sensation, and keep movingforward.
“Thorne!” I shout. “Thisway.”
I have no reason to help him. Since he’s shown up, he’s been nothing buttrouble.
One. Big.Ache.
I pull the neck of the t-shirt I’m wearing over my nose and mouth to reduce the level of smoke I inhale. I’m already choking. All I can do now is stay low and get the hell out. Glass breaks and doors get shoved from their hinges as men in all black enter from everywhere. The adrenaline is pumping like crazy, but again, this is my turf. I’m not going to let anyone kill me in my ownhome.
A hand grips my ankle and my first instinct is to respond by kicking itaway.
“It’s me,” Thorne says calmly. “I’ll hold them back. You lead theway.”
I hear the clicking release of his safety, then shots from his gun pointedbackward.
I should be scared as fuck right now. Any one of those bullets leaving his gun can be for me. Maybe I am a little scared as we reach the kitchen. Two guys storm in from the main kitchen door, pointing automatic rifles with laser sights, looking for something to shoot. Looking for me. That harsh reality stops me in my tracks, but not for long. Thorne aims and shoots the two men in the kitchen, and they drop to the floor like sacks of potatoes. Headshots. They’re insanely accurate shots that get my feet moving again, although I won’t ever admit it’s because of that night he had his laser sights at the center of my chest, and I just stood there, letting him takeaim.
He could’ve killed me right there and then. Ended my life with noproblem.
But hedidn’t.
And tonight, he tried to warnme.
We make it through the door to the garden, and when we have an opening, we use the cover of darkness to run full tilt through the woods. Thorne and I don’t look back, not until we reach a desolate strip ofroadway.
“Stay here,” Thorne orders me. “I’ll double back for myride.”
