Page 6 of The Reaper

It took everything in me to stay perfectly still and not react. I’d been speaking loud enough that Fallon would’ve been able to hear the entire conversation. All she had to do was hide somewhere until Will was gone, but my heart stuttered to a stop when I heard the creak on the stairs behind us.

Will glanced up at the open door. With his gun raised, he moved into the kitchen and down the short hall to the base of the stairs. The bottom tread creaked again when he stepped on it, and I braced for Fallon’s scream …

But it never came.

Instead, it was a gunshot—so loud in this quiet house, on this quiet street that I knew someone would be calling the cops soon.

“Will, is she dead?” Brian called. When there was no answer, he tried again.

The pressure of the muzzle on the back of my skull was suddenly gone as Brian stepped from the living room and followed in the direction his brother had gone. I was on my feet a moment later, a clawing sense of urgency rushing over me.

Rounding the corner, time seemed to slow down to a crawl.

I took in the scene.

Will’s forehead had a neat hole dead in the center.

The wall was painted with gray matter and fragments of bone.

The force of the shot had knocked him backward, so he was draped over the railing behind him, blood leaking from the massive wound to the back of his skull.

Brian had crouched down at his brother’s side, talking to him in a low voice that would never be able to rouse the dead. Movement from my peripheral vision caught my attention.

It was Fallon, peering out a broom closet opposite the stairs. Her ocean-blue eyes were wide with a fear I felt trickling down my own skin. She had killed a rival clan member, and I knew what that meant.

Holding out my hand to her, I expected her to take it, but she shook her head and pointed behind her. That was when I realized it wasn’t a broom closet but an attached garage. Fuck, it was our way out. We had to move quickly—before Brian pulled himself out of his grief. I moved toward the door quietly, sliding inside the darkened garage.

“Tell me you have the keys,” I asked in a low voice.

She nodded and pointed at the car. I moved over to it. It was a Ford Mustang Mach 1—something fast enough to put enough miles between us and this clusterfuck of a situation. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I waited for Fallon to get in too.

“The garage door control is on the visor,” she said so softly I could barely hear her. She pointed at the visor with a shaking hand. Shock. She was going into shock, and I couldn’t blame her. She had shot a man in the head.

I hit the button to open the door, then waited until it was just high enough for the Mustang to slide out. Gunning the engine and throwing it into reverse, I got us the fuck out of there. The tires squealed as they dropped off the driveway and over the gutter. But it was the sound of gunfire that made my head jerk around.

Brian stood spotlit in the house’s doorway with his gun raised. The slash of blood arcing across his forehead looked black in the fading light. He took aim again, and I shifted the car into gear. I hit the accelerator, the force of the V8 engine catapulting us forward. Brian continued to shoot at us, but the bullets glanced off the car’s body.

Fuck, did Kent get fucking body armor on this thing?

I got a look at Fallon’s face which had drained of color. She also had a hand wrapped around the door handle, her knuckles turning white from her grip. Driving as fast as I could without drawing attention to what was going on, I got us onto the freeway and started heading south. There was no way I was going to drive us straight to the safe house—not with Brian Farrell on our asses.

Movement in the rearview mirror caught my attention.

Farrell was in his car and catching up fast.

“Hang on,” I told Fallon, then put my foot down.

THREE

FALLON

I was shaking. Cold. Breathing so quickly that I was getting light-headed, and my stomach was beginning to cramp. I knew the signs of shock when I saw them. Glancing down, I found the gun still clutched tightly in my hand—my fingertips starting to get a bluish tinge to them.

Orin was driving too fast down the freeway, blowing past cars and lorries that happened to get in our way. Ducking down, I peered through the side mirror and saw a black Rover a couple of hundred yards away. Were we being followed?

“Farrell isn’t going to let us go without a fight,” Orin said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “I’ll lose him though.”

“Who’s F-F-Farrell? Someone from another c-c-clan?” My teeth were chattering so badly I barely got the words out.

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