Page 124 of Torn In Two

These men didn’t care. Their gazes were wild with the hunt, and a brand-new fear unlocked inside me, swirling up my throat until it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Willa flung her nurses’ pass at me. “Get back behind the security doors!”

I stumbled, another hand catching me, sharp fingernails cutting into my skin. A scream ripped from my throat as I dragged myself away.

“Kara!” Hawk and Hayden’s bellows of my name were simultaneous.

But I couldn’t get to them, and they couldn’t get to me. We were separated by an impenetrable wall of people.

Willa shoved me through the security doors, falling in after me, a doctor rushing in from behind to yank the doors closed.

Willa scrambled to her knees, groaning in pain but her gaze all for me. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. But—”

Pounding came from the other side of the door. The wood rattled, and Willa and I both got to our feet, preparing to run.

Through the tiny glass window, we watched in horror at the pandemonium on the other side. An all-out brawl had broken out, men running at the door and barging it with their shoulders, trying to break it down.

“Call a code nine,” Willa urged the doctor, staring through the windows, terror in her eyes at the patients and staff we’d left on the other side in order to save ourselves.

The doors weren’t going to hold.

We both screamed as something solid hit them. They were using a chair as a battering ram.

“Kara!” Willa shouted. “Run. They’re going to be in here any minute!” She grabbed at my arms, my hands, trying to pull me away.

But through the doors, Hayden’s gaze met mine.

I signed Hayley Jade’s name, my fingers moving fast.

Hawk appeared beside him, breathing hard, a cut on his face dripping blood, showing me he’d already been fighting. I signed it again, this time screaming her name along with the sign.

Because I wasn’t the only one Josiah had wanted.

This mob would be at her school too.

“Go!” I screamed at them through the door, tears streaming down my face, sure they couldn’t hear me but unable to keep the word from ripping straight from my soul. “Go to her!”

Hawk’s expression was pure anguish. His soul clearly torn between staying here and fighting for me.

Or leaving to save the little girl he’d so obviously fallen in love with.

“Hawk, please! Go!”

He let out a bellow of anguish that was torn from somewhere so deep inside him I was sure he might never recover. He spun on his heel, the crowd swallowing him up and jostling Hayden so roughly I lost sight of him for a second.

The crack of breaking glass splintered through the chaos.

“Kara! We have to go now!” Willa screamed. “If they get through those doors, there’s no telling what they’ll do to you!”

But I couldn’t leave until I told Hayden the one thing I should have already said.

When our gazes locked through the crowd, I made the same sign he’d shown me in the truck.

The one I knew in my gut meant I love you.

He silently mouthed the words back at me.

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