Page 98 of To the Grave

Rafe

“Fucking Jace,” I muttered as I led our formation to the back of the house.

“Ever notice what these assholes have in common?” Jude was right behind me but his voice came from my earpiece, necessary because this fucking storm was noisy as fuck. He wasn’t out of breath, none of us were. Compared to some of the shit we’d done, this was nothing.

Other than Otis’ car and the Mustang I used to see Daisy tooling around in, there were only three other vehicles in front of the house, which meant fifteen guys max, and probably more like twelve.

Twelve against us and Otis, who Jace had said was at the house? I liked those odds.

“Which assholes?” I asked.

“The fucking Kings. The fucking Beasts.”

“I don’t think about these assholes enough to notice what they have in common,” Nolan said from our flank.

We flattened our backs against the house at the corner. The rain beat down on us, making it hard to see, and Nolan and Jude waited for me to step out and wave them forward.

We continued along the back of the house past a pool and a bunch of patio furniture stacked under an overhang created by the house’s upper stories. I was drenched, but the realization was registered from a distance, an objective observation. There was no discomfort behind it. No feeling about it. It just was, like the weapon in my hand, the building we were navigating around to get one of the fucking Blackwell Beasts and Daisy fucking Hammond out of trouble.

“Every time they get in trouble,” Jude said, “it’s because of a fucking girl.”

“Woman,” Nolan corrected him. “Because of a fucking woman.”

“Whatever,” Jude muttered.

He wasn’t wrong. Women were trouble, and no one knew that better than me.

Than us.

I was soaked to the skin by the time we reached the glass doors at the back of the house. They were open and a second later, a round of gunfire tore through the storm.

I raised my weapon and stepped into the kitchen, silently cursing myself for getting involved in this shit at all. Sometimes I thought everything I did — everythingwedid — was an attempt to make up for the one thing we shouldn’t have done.

The one person we shouldn’t have hurt.

Chapter 74

Daisy

They were in the room. Two men, I thought, judging from their footsteps. I’d listened to them work their way through the other rooms on the second floor, had prayed Otis was okay when I heard the latest round of gunfire from downstairs, wondering how Otis could be holding the men off when there seemed to be so many of them and they seemed to be everywhere all at once.

Ruth whimpered, then covered her mouth with her hand. I prayed I was the only one who’d heard it and raised the gun, pointing it at the door of the wardrobe as footsteps came closer.

My hand shook as I disengaged the safety like Otis had shown me. Could I really do this? Could I really shoot someone? Kill them?

I felt Ruth’s trembling leg next to my shoulder and knew the answer.

“I think we have us a couple of trapped rabbits,” a voice said from the other side of the armoire.

“Get them out.” And that voice I recognized.

Gray Cantwell.

The doors flew open all at once. I squeezed the trigger without thinking, my eyes clamping shut instinctively.

The sound of the shot tore through the room, ricocheting off the walls and furniture.

My ears rang, Gray cursing as he stumbled backward, muffled as hands reached into the cupboard, hauling me out and dumping me on the floor before doing the same to Ruth.

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