Page 142 of Lone Star

“Yes,” Jenny said, just as Jesse said it, too.

His brows shot up, startled, and then he scowled, an overdone, ridiculous expression; a child trying to look tough, to convince them that he was angry instead of petrified.

“They won’t keep you alive,” Eden warned. “You’re disposable.”

“Don’t care.”

A shot rang out.

All of Jenny’s muscles tensed at once, and Jesse’s eyes bugged. It had come from the common room. Followed by shouts, and a stampede of feet.

“Shit,” he said, and ducked out the door, and out of sight.

Eden was on her feet in an instant, hand going inside her jacket. She drew a gun and rushed for the door. Jenny leaped up to follow, empty-handed, but thrumming with energy.

They’d just reached the door when they heard the crash. Heard andfelt; it traveled up through the soles of her boots, and rattled around in her back teeth.

“What the hell?” Eden snarled, and grasped at the doorframe to steady herself before dashing out.

Jenny felt sweat bloom at her temples and under her arms; her lungs squeezed tight, and her next breath was hard. Adrenaline urged her on. Jesse wasn’t in sight, but she and Eden pelted down the hallway as more gunshots erupted in the common room, one after the next, from multiple guns, an uneven volley of cracks; she heard glass shattering, heard shouts and cries. It sounded like the world was ending.

They reached the end of the hall, barreled around the corner…

And skidded to a halt.

The room was chaos. The room wasdestroyed. Boards, and cinderblocks, and hunks of sheetrock littered the floor and the tabletops; foam and pink fiberglass insulation was strewn across the boards like cotton candy. It looked like a tornado had hit the side of the clubhouse and punched a massive hole in the wall, scattering furniture and Lean Dogs alike.

Not a tornado, she saw, but a truck, one that went screeching backward in reverse, sheetrock and plywood sliding off its hood and landing on top of a crumpled human form.

The gunshots came from Albie, and Jackal, on their feet, though Albie’s face was bloodied, aimed at the windshield of the truck – but glancing off, not penetrating the glass. Talis was down, his eyes shut. Catcher knelt on the floor, face slicked with fresh blood, holding an equally-bloody Cletus in his arms, staring at him with blank shock.

“No!” Albie shouted, running, scrambling and slipping on debris. “No!”

But the truck was well away. She heard gears grind, and tires squeal, and the engine roar, and knew it was gone, rocketing off down the road.

Albie stumbled through the hole it had left in the wall, a jagged, gaping thing already trying to collapse in on itself, studs clattering to the floor in the truck’s absence, more insulation sifting slowly down like snow.

Jenny closed her eyes a moment – one long blink – and hoped the scene would be different when she opened them. That this was all a hallucination. But it was still there, in all its horror, and no matter how awful, she was going to have do something about it.

“Oh – oh my–” She heard Darla say frantically, as she came running from the kitchen, and then the words choked off into a low scream.

Jenny turned, and caught her by the shoulders. “Darla.” Voice sharp and commanding enough to catch and hold her gaze, despite the ugliness all around them. Darla’s eyes already brimmed with tears, an instant reaction. “Darla, listen. I don’t know who’s hurt, and who’s dead” – she had to swallow after the last word, gorge rising at the idea – “but we have to take charge. We have to be the tough ones here.”

Behind her, someone groaned – that was at least one alive.

“Darla.”

Darla sucked in a deep, unsteady breath, her lips quivering, but she put her head back and nodded. “Okay. Yeah, okay, you’re right.” Sniffed hard, once, and then waved Jenny away so she could get to work. “One of you boys on your feet, call an ambulance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” someone said – a Russian accent, that was Victor, then.

Jenny turned just as Albie came back in through the opening in the wall, supporting a limping Pup, who had an arm flung over Albie’s shoulders.

“I was on duty outside,” Pup said. “I shot right at ‘em, but they didn’t slow down. I had to dive outta the way.” He looked freshly bruised, and dazed.

But beside him, Albie looked unhinged. His gaze sparked, white-rimmed and panicked, furious in a visible way that none of the Green stock ever were. His gaze came to Jenny, and he gestured over his shoulder with his gun. All the rest of it – Eden kneeling to check Cletus’s pulse, Jackal and Victor talking into phones, Talis easing upright with Darla’s hand at the back of his head – faded into a blur of colors and background noises.

“They took them,” he said.

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