Page 83 of Cream and Punishment
I sucked in air, shoulders heaving. “What are the odds that this is a trap?”
Lex stared ahead, scanning the clearing. “I’d say about a thousand percent.”
“And is that going to change things in any way?”
Please say yes. Please tell us to retreat back to the relative safety of our own flag where I’d have Rambo-Kris to protect me.
“Nope.”
Awesome. Just super-duper awesome.
Lex straightened her shoulders, bending in preparation for a fight. “Let’s get us a flag, ladies.”
In all my years, I have experienced many situations where the termchaoticwould accurately describe them. The first test in culinary school. My brain, twenty-four-seven. My great-aunt’s funeral when my cousin had a tantrum and threw a toy into the casket during the viewing. But none of them could so wholly encapsulate the essence of chaos as what happened next.
We charged toward the flag, Lex and Rowan determined and focused, Hattie cackling like a witch, and me howling like a monkey on shrooms. As soon as we broke into the clearing, paint bullets whizzed past us. One of them clipped Rowan on the shoulder, while even more buzzed past my ears as I galloped like a spazzy bronco in my wedding dress.
“Cover me!” Lex shouted.
Oh, right. A plan. We had a plan. What was the plan, again? Right now, the only plan my panicking monkey brain could come up with was “survive.”
I shot blindly at the source of the shots, apparently some trees on either side behind their flag. I must’ve hitsomething, since one of the shooters paused. Lex made good progress toward the flag until shots fired from behind us.
Well,sugar plums.
As the shots rained down on us like violent blue hail, all seemed lost. I fired into the trees at the remaining shooter behind the flag in a last-ditch attempt to clear a path to escape. The shooting from in front of us stopped, allowing my teammates to focus on the threat behind us.
At least, until the shouting from behind the flag started.
I saw Annie first, tearing through the trees like a Victorian bat out of Hell. She snatched the flag out of the ground but didn’t run towards the sides or back the way she came, where the shots were no longer coming. Oh no. She ran straight towards us.
“Run!” she shouted, gun pumping in her flagless hand. She cursed, which almost stopped me short. Annie never cursed. “I saidrun!”
When the two shooters dropped out of the trees where Annie had just run, she didn’t need to tell me again. They’d left their hiding spots and were out for vengeance.
Except, instead of shooting, they ran straight towards us, too.
It wasn’t until I heard the faint buzzing amidst the scuffling that I realized that they weren’t running after us. They were runningfromsomething.
Sure enough, a shout from one of them confirmed the sinking horror in my gut.
Wasps.
twenty-eight
“Ifanyoneasks,”Lexpanted, “this was all part of the plan.”
“Itdidsmoke them out of their trees,” Rowan added helpfully, joining the stampede out of the clearing.
Isaiah caught up to us in no time, sprinting alongside us. The two shooters who’d pinned us in dropped out of their trees, exposing the pink-splattered bodies and dresses belonging to Colt and Booker. Like Isaiah, they didn’t bother trying to get the flag back anymore. They ran with us, Colt checking up on Lex and Booker falling back to run alongside me and Rowan.
Annie craned her head around, not slowing or tripping on any roots like I would if I tried to do the same. “Where’s Hattie?”
Sweet and sour bacon, we lost Hattie?
“There, behind us!” Lex cried, using her gun hand that wasn’t swatting at wasps to gesture.
I risked a peek, swatting at my own pests as I nearly tripped on a rock. Back in the clearing, Hattie walked calmly and smoothly away from the damaged wasp nest as if she hadn’t a care in the world. McBride walked beside her, his agitation belied in the tightness of his movements as he angled his head towards her.
