“So why did you end up working for Borden?”

“Because everything I believed in was a lie. My wife had laughed behind my back and jumped into bed with my best friend. My world fell apart after that. I think what hurt the most was nobody cared. Not my friends, not my family, not the people I worked with at the station. And with Borden…well, it was an opportunity to tell everyone to go to hell and do something for myself. He pays remarkably well and he has always looked after his employees. It wasn’t a hard choice to make.”

I nodded in understanding. Borden went on that his men were just paid employees, but like Graeme, their loyalty was obvious. Borden was harsh, but he was fair too, and I suddenly missed him. I pulled out my phone again and made another attempt to call him.

“Nothing?” Graeme asked.

“No,” I answered, tucking the phone back into my pocket. “He must be really busy tonight –”

“What the hell?” Graeme suddenly punched on the brakes, and we jerked forward. The car came to an abrupt stop, and I followed his gaze to the car in front of us. It was stopped too, and both men were climbing out.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“I don’t know.” Graeme looked in the rear view mirror. The men behind us had stopped too, raising their hands in the air questionably. “Stay here,” he told me. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

He stepped out of the vehicle and I watched him stride to the men. One met with him and gestured to the back of the car, talking fast. Graeme went to the rear of the car and kneeled down on the ground, inspecting the road and tires. I sat up straight in my seat, trying to get a better look at what was going on. The second Graeme’s hand touched the back of the wheel, his face went tight and he immediately stood up, talking loud enough for me to hear through the closed window.

“We’re turning back. This is a trap! Turn back! AMBUSH!”

Just as he shouted the last word, loud bangs erupted. My heart jumped at the sound of gunshots. Graeme took off back to the car, pulling out his gun from his waistband, screaming at the men to take cover. The other two men followed, producing guns as well, taking cover behind the first car. They scanned around us, looking toward the forest, before one shouted, “Over there!”

I screamed as bullets shot into the front of the car I was in. I ducked down, covering my head with my arms. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“They’re shooting the engines!” one of the men screamed.

I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to get out, too scared to sit up, too scared to look at the men. Their screams suddenly erupted.

“Emma!” I heard Graeme.

My passenger side door opened and arms grabbed at me. I looked up into Graeme’s startled eyes.

“Get out, Emma! The car is useless now! You need to run!”

“Run where?”

“Emma, just run!”

He physically removed my coiled body from the car just as bullets ripped around us. He dropped me down to the ground beside the wheel of the car, shielding me. The bullets rained over us, some of them so close, it felt like a bomb had exploded in my ears. I cried out, terrified of them hitting us.

“Run,” he told me once the bullets moved to a different direction.

I heard the other men yell. Graeme’s hands grabbed at my shoulders and he shook me. “Emma,” he growled out. Scared, I looked at him. “Run into the forest. I need to fight these men off as long as possible before they try and get to you.”

Get to me? Why would they want to get to me?

“This is my fault?”

“Run,” he roared again, angered by my stillness.

Pushing my body up on wobbly legs, I ran straight into the forest. I looked over my shoulder and at Graeme, and everything inside of me halted. He was kneeled down, grabbing at his chest. I saw the blood and cried out.

He’d been shot.

Fifteen

Emma

I ran into the forest as the gunshots continued behind me. I heard Graeme shouting, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I turned around and dropped to the ground, staring at him as he fired his gun over the top of the car before ducking back down. He was still clutching his chest with one hand, and even in the dark, I could see the blood pouring out of him, pooling his shirt.

“Keep running, Emma!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice desperate and pained. “RUN!”

I didn’t run, though. I couldn’t leave him behind. I wanted to help him. He was bleeding and they were still shooting, whoever they were. I couldn’t see any of them, or where they were coming from. The other men lay dead in a pool of their own blood, their guns feet away from their bodies. If I could just get to a gun…

A bullet whipped past my head, and I dived flat to the ground, my chest pressed against the earth. My heart thundered like never before, and I sucked in breaths, trying to get myself to calm down. I felt paralysed, completely stricken with fear. More gunshots whizzed by, and then I heard Graeme cry out. It took everything in me to lift my head up to get a look at him, and when I still couldn’t see him, I forced myself up even higher, until I was on my knees.

My hand shot to my mouth as I saw him drop to the ground, another bullet burned through his chest. He barely looked like he was breathing, but his mouth still moved, over and over again repeating the word “run”. I sobbed against my hand, my body breaking out in tremors as I realized he was dying – as I realized, when he stopped moving moments later, he was dead. I felt something deep within me break, and I clutched my chest with my other hand, feeling the tears burn my face at the loss I felt. Graeme. Graeme. It couldn’t be real. He was pretending. He had to be.

The guns stopped firing immediately after that. Nothing but silence followed. I didn’t know what to do. My body begged to be still while my brain shrieked to keep moving and to get as far away from them as possible. I looked around, trying to find a hiding spot, but the sound of voices broke through my thoughts. I watched a couple men emerge from the forest on the other side of the road and I dropped back to the ground, staring through the opening between the trees at them. They stopped by Graeme’s body, and one kicked at his lifeless form, chuckling.

“Find the bitch,” he said, bending down to pick up Graeme’s gun. Pocketing it, he looked up in my direction. My heart lurched for a moment before I realized he couldn’t see me in the dark. “She’ll be around here. She won’t have gone far.”