Page 23 of Guarded By Them

The crack of a gunshot sounded, and the windshield shattered. Ryan slumped back against the seat. A second later, there was another gunshot, and a bullet hit Kodee as well.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

A man appeared beside the passenger door. Dillon was still sitting there, not even reacting to the shooting or what was happening.

He turned to me. “What’s wrong, Rue?”

I shook my head, my mouth open, staring at the man right behind Dillon, who was now lifting the barrel of his gun and pointing it at the back of Dillon’s head. How could Dillon not be reacting to what was happening around us? I didn’t understand. Nothing made sense. I reached back for the car door handle again, unsure where I was even going to go if I made it out, but though I pulled on it as hard as I could, the door refused to open.

The gunshot cracked, and the window behind Dillon shattered into a million pieces, spraying me with a confetti of glass. And not only glass. Warm, wet droplets hit my skin.

Blood. It was blood. The bullet had gone straight through the back of Dillon’s head, shattering the front of his skull.

And now the men in the SUV were coming for me.

The scream lodged in my throat like a dried piece of bread, refusing to budge. I opened my mouth wider, feeling the force of the sound vibrating inside me. But the harder I tried to scream, the tighter my throat got, until I was sure that not only could I not scream, but I was also unable to breathe—

***

I BURST UPRIGHT, THE scream still lodged in my throat. But at least I was breathing— gasping, in fact.

“Hey, are you all right?” Ryan asked from beside me.

I put my hands to my throat, suddenly plunged back into the moment where I’d woken with Ryan’s hands around my neck. But only the faint bruises from that moment remained. Dillon was behind the wheel, and Kodee was in the passenger seat, and we were still driving. There was no sign of any car, and no one had been shot.

I let out a shaky breath and covered my eyes with my hand. “Yes, just a bad dream, that’s all.”

“I could tell. You were making some strange noises and jerking around. I tried to wake you...”

“Yes, thank you. That was horrible.”

He raised an eyebrow expectantly. “Want to talk about it?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “No, I’d rather just forget about it, if that’s all right.”

Yes, I wanted to forget about it, and prayed I hadn’t dreamed something that might happen in the near future. I wasn’t a suspicious person by nature. I didn’t toss salt over my left shoulder or worry about black cats crossing my path. And I definitely didn’t believe that people’s dreams could predict the future.

I put my hand to the point where my throat hit my collarbone and touched the necklace they’d given me for my birthday. The silver of the quaternary knot felt cool and smooth beneath my fingers. The shape of the pendent meant that we were all joined now—one part always leading into the other. But what would happen if one of those parts was removed? If one part ceased to exist, none of the other parts would work either.

That was the trouble with being completely joined to other people. When they were gone, you no longer functioned as a whole.

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