Page 83 of Uncontrolled

Our fingers lace together, the grip we have on each other unbreakable. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I say, and his grin blows wide before he catches himself and it fades.

“I killed Nico,” he says. “It happened so fast and—”

She must be the source of the blood on his hands. The rush of adrenaline from our confessions dims with the knowledge of what it’s going to take for both of us to escape alive. “Four left then,” I say.

Something I don’t want to believe is regret passes through his expression before he nods. “East will be the worst of them. Keeley’s the least threatening,” he says. “Quinn and Zen… I’m not sure what weapons they have, how well they can fight.”

“You’re wrong about Keeley,” I tell him. “That kid’s dangerous.”

“Plan?” he asks.

“Nico?” a sudden voice calls from what sounds like downstairs, muffled by the door.

We’re out of time.

We could break for those narrow stairs and hope we make it, but if East has a gun, we’ll be sitting ducks in the stairwell. I’m who they want, and it doesn’t matter if I’m taken alive. Whether or not they find Nico’s body, it’ll be obvious Christopher isn’t on their team anymore.

Christopher opens the door a fraction of a crack and eases closer to the thin strip of light. The stairs creak in succession.

“Nico?” East calls again.

My fist tightens around the hair pick in my hand. Christopher draws his knife and if he had an extra weapon to offer he would have, so I don’t ask.

“She up there?” another voice calls. Christopher leans from the crack to mouth Quinn’s name before he goes back to watching.

Two of them, I think. Or one if we move now.

I tap Christopher and mimic him opening the door before I hold up a finger so he knows to wait for my sign. I tuck the hair pick into my loosening bun and scoot backward until I’m standing in the center of the room. With a quick nod to Christopher, I bend my knees as if I’m readying for attack. He swings the door open, hiding himself between it and the wall. At the noise, the footsteps hurry.

“Nico?” East calls a second before his frame fills the threshold. He spots me, registers that I’m free. “How’d you get loose?”

I wince from him like a scared rabbit, smothering the urge to beg him not to come any closer. The longer it takes anyone else to realize there’s a problem, the better chance Christopher and I have.

East surveys the room, leery of a trick. “Where’s my sister?” he demands.

I blink, doe-eyed, not having to fake the tremble running through me. East takes another step forward, then another, and the door behind him swings shut as Christopher abandons his hiding spot.

Even as Christopher’s knife arcs toward the side of East’s neck, he’s fighting. The skin splits, the blood instant, but the cut is too shallow. He whirls on Christopher, grabs the blade, and blocks the blow as Christopher slashes again. His elbow rocks backward hard, catching Christopher in the stomach. He curls, losing his grip on East. The knife tumbles to the floor.

I leap to snag it. My spin ends with the blade buried to the hilt in East’s throat below his Adam’s apple. His fingers fly to the wound. I jerk left and a red river spills from him. This time, he goes down hard. Christopher tries to soften the landing, but it’s obvious from the thumping on the stairs, Quinn heard.

“East? Nico?”

Christopher’s half squatting, one arm trapped under the dead weight of East’s body as Quinn rounds the corner.

Barreling over the both of them, I use East’s chest as a springboard, praying he doesn’t have enough life left in him to catch my foot as I launch myself toward Quinn. We tumble together into the hallway. If Zen and Keeley didn’t know something was amiss upstairs, they do now.

I’m on top of Quinn with the advantage, but it only lasts a split second before he shoves me in the chest. One of my elbows slams hard enough against the floor to send a pang of agony through my arm. My entire hand goes instantly numb. The knife bounces once and then skids to a stop at Christopher’s feet. Before I can recover, he’s standing between Quinn and me.

Quinn’s voice thins with horror as he crab walks backward. “Don’t!” he begs. “Please!”

Christopher’s hesitating. I can see it in his movements, in the way Quinn is gaining ground between the two of them. If one of the girls comes now, it won’t be one against two. If both of the girls show, we’ll be outnumbered.

Do something, I think.

And then he does. I watch as Christopher falls to his knees. I hear his apology as he raises the knife. I keep expecting Quinn’s expression to change from horror to acceptance, but it never does. Turning away feels somehow treasonous. I do it anyway. It makes the choked gurgle Quinn releases worse.

A brush of wind stirs the hairs at the nape of my neck.

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