Page 87 of The Order of Disorder
Suddenly a flash of light pierces through my eyes, pulling my thoughts together into one single focal point. Damian is there in front of me, prying my eyelids open.
“Shit,” he mutters, his hand pressing my chin upward roughly. “Pupils pinned.”
Jake’s voice behind him. “We have to go.”
“We need naloxone.” Damian looks at me without looking at me, his eyes scanning mine for information. “There’s gotta be some in a med kit somewhere. These assholes get high enough they’d keep that shit close.”
“He’s pulling the van up,” Jake says.
I look up to see Jake stepping out of the shadows with someone on his arm. Half-carried, half-dragged. Bloody. Barely upright.
Wyatt.
His face is bruised, his clothes bloody, one eye closed and swollen. His gaze locks onto mine with something fierce and painful in it. He tries to step forward, to reach me, but his knees buckle, and Jake grips him tighter.
A burst of static crackles from the ground.
A radio on Rocket’s belt.
“Rocket, come in.” It’s Silas’s oily voice, distorted and fractured through the transmission. “Do you have eyes on Max?”
Rocket doesn’t move—but Damian does. He pulls the gun from my hand and pockets it, and then he leans forward, hands under my armpits to pull me up.
“Rocket, respond,” comes Silas’s voice. “Where the fuck is she?”
“Let’s move,” says Jake, breathless. He jerks his head toward the front of the trailer, hauling Wyatt forward a step.
Damian hauls me onto my feet and my knees buckle instantly. His arm locks around my waist, but my limbs aren’t limbs—they’re water. The lights smear and bloom and then my head drops forward.
I want to move, to help, to do something. But my body doesn’t respond. Everything’s syrup. My tongue is thick. My fingers won’t close.
“Shit,” Damian hisses. Desperation leaks through his voice.
He ducks, sliding one arm under my legs, the other around my back, and lifts me. It’s a relief to be carried. To feel his solid strength as the world tilts.
He breaks into an urgent stride. We catch up to Jake and Wyatt a few yards ahead—Wyatt slung over Jake’s shoulder, dead weight too, every step a visible effort.
Our broken procession moves through the cavernous space as fast as we can. The front doors feel miles away, beyond the yawning stretch of the hangar—vast and shadowed, the ceiling lost in dark steel. Pools of light bleed from the hanging fixtures, flickering over battered couches and cluttered workstations.
We pass the long bar—race day is the only time it’s ever empty—then the stripper pole, polished chrome catching a pulse of light. The pool tables blur past. The hangar is a ghost town, stripped of bodies but not of memory. The emptiness is eerie.
We reach the wooden stairs leading to the second-floor bedrooms and no treads creak, no heads peer down from the mezzanine.
We’re nearly to Billy’s office, its corrugated tin walls a flimsy shell for the biometric lock welded into the frame, when the low rumble of engines rolls in.
Jake glances back, tightening his grip on Wyatt, and frowns.
The roar gets louder. Headlights flash off the walls in front of us, moving erratically. Damian stops and turns.
Three motorcycles tear inside with Silas in the lead.
They veer around the couches and tables easily, then stop inches from us.
Silas kills the engine and swings a leg down. Dutch and Ray are behind him. Big, dumb, brutal.
Silas’s face is twisted with rage.
“You fucking thieves,” he snarls.
