Page 165 of Hate Me

“I’m with you.”

I nodded and pulled out my phone to do just that, to warn him. For all we knew, Caspian already could have, but just to be extra sure.

Before I could dial, the car suddenly lurched.

Bastian cursed and tried to right it, but it wasn’t just us hitting a pothole on the backroad we were taking back to King Manor as a precaution in case Elijah was headed for us. It kept at that unstable angle, then rolled along unsteadily.

“It’s a fucking flat,” Bastian ground out.

I pointed up ahead, seeing a gas station just a few hundred feet away. “Pull in there and we’ll see to it. You’ve got a spare, right?”

“Yeah.”

He slowed his speed to be safe and we pulled into the small gas station with just two pumps and a small little store.

The lights were off with nobody inside, the place closed.

Only a single floodlight lit the space.

At least it would be enough for us to see in order to change the flat.

We both hopped out of the car and inspected the tire, determining it to be the front left at the driver’s side.

My breath caught in my throat when I took in the damage. “Somebody did this.”

“What?” Bastian asked, crouching down to see what I was.

“Looks like a nail, maybe,” I determined.

We both shot to our feet and scanned the immediate area.

A car zoomed on by, ripping around a corner, and jolting the crap out of us, only to pass on by—a Jaguar. Phew.

“Let’s hurry up and change this fucking thing,” Bastian said, jogging to the trunk.

He was throwing it open a moment later and rustling around for the jack and the tire itself.

I went to him as he was rolling the tire over and grabbed the jack from him, positioning it.

I didn’t get much further than that when the rolling thunder of more approaching vehicles had our paranoia resurfacing.

We took in three white vans hurtling down the road, coming around the same corner that the other vehicle had.

But these didn’t simply pass on by.

No. They came right for us.

In the next second, Bastian was ripping his spare knife from his ankle holster and tossing it to me.

As I caught it, he drew his main blade from his jacket.

“Take cover!” he called to me as the vans squealed into the gas station.

He grabbed my hand and we ran toward the closed store.

Heavy footsteps sounded and I shot a look over my shoulder to see eight guys in oversized sweats with hoodies hiding their features barreling toward us. Shit.

I smashed my boot into the door of the gas station. It didn’t give.

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