“So,” Merc says. “Let’s go get her now. It’s only been a couple days.”

Nick’s eyes burn but his words are eerily calm now. “It’s too late. He gave her away by now.”

“What?” James says, getting to his feet. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Last year, on our eighteenth birthday? That wasn’t the one.”

“The one what?” Merc says, throwing his hands up. “Will you stop talking in fucking code? Just spit it out.”

Nick looks at James for a long second. “He’s been using you, man. She’s been promised since she was six, all right. But it was never to you. And in a few days, when we turn nineteen, my father’s gonna make good on that promise.”

“Where?” James seethes.

“The Santa Barbara house. There’s gonna be a big party. Her promise, James. I gotta tell you—”

And for a second I really think he will. I really think that Nick is gonna tell James the one thing he needs to know that he has no idea he needs to know. James feels it too. A shift in what’s happening here. A shift from potential to realized consequences.

James takes a step forward but there’s a snapping sound and then he’s gone. Dropped down. Or hit. Bullets spray into the house. I scream and duck, but then someone has my hand and I’m dragged to the back of the house.

Chapter Nine

Sasha

“Sasha, run!” Nick is pulling me out the back door and we run so fast down the hill, I fall face first and roll. Nick scoops me up and carries me a few paces, then sets me down and runs again. No yelling this time, at least not for us. But behind us the gunfire is still rattling off. AK’s spitting out bullets.

After a few minutes the gunfire stops. Nick pulls me down a ridge dotted with pine trees and then we both slip because the incline is so severe and we are a human landslide. Rocks and clumps of dirt splatter out in front of our boots and then we plop to the ground and keep running. There’s no trees here and Nick runs faster. “Hurry, Sash. Hurry,” he prods me.

But my stitch in my side is so painful, my pathetic attempts to suck in air so painful… “I can’t, Nick. I can’t run anymore.”

He ignores that, just pulls me along until we get under the cover of the pines. “Just a little farther,” he huffs as he boosts me up the side of a small cliff by the butt. He climbs up after me and takes my hand again. “Hurry, hurry, hurry. We need to get out of here before they come looking.”

“Who?” Jesus. My heart is beating so fast I think I might die. My phone buzzes in my pocket.

“Answer it,” Nick barks at me. And then he stops, tugging me to stop with him when momentum takes me forward. “Give me your phone.”

I jerk my hand from his and shake my head. “No. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Who’s calling you?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Look,” he growls in my face. “Look who it is.”

I take my phone out and Nick snatches it away and presses the answer tab. “Merc. Yeah,” he barks into the phone. I can just barely make out words on the other end. Nick’s eyes shift around for a few seconds, then rest back on mine. “Got it.” And then he ends the call and hands it back. He starts walking over to a hill covered in dead pine needles.

“Well?” I ask.

“James is dead.”

My heart stops. “He is not.”

“He’s missing and they threw grenades inside the cabin. He’s dead.”

“No,” I say firmly. “No. He can’t die.”

Nick is looking for something on the little slope. He lets out a grunt and then pulls. The whole hill slides away and I think I’m hallucinating before I realize it’s a cover that has pine needles stuck to it to make it look like brush-covered ground. There’s a motorcycle underneath.

“You planned this?”

He shoots me a look. “I plan for everything. Except your boyfriend back here giving my sister away.”

“Boyfriend?”

“James is awfully attached to you, Sash. And as far as I can see”—Nick swings his leg over the bike and turns the ignition to start the engine—“there‘s only two possibilities for that. He likes you, which would be weird, because he says he loves Harper, yet he sold her out to my dad. Or he needs you for something.” Nick stares me in the eyes. “I’m pretty sure he’s using you. Grab the helmets and get on the bike. We’re leaving.”

I hand him a helmet from the ground and then plop the other one on my head. “Where are we going?” I ask, swinging my leg over.

“To set things right, Sash. Whatever it takes, I’m gonna set things right.”

“What about Merc?”

“He says he’s out.”

What?

Nick gives the throttle some gas and we spring forward. This bike is not off-road capable, but we’re only on the dirt for about a mile when a paved road appears. He doesn’t stop to tell me where we’re going, he just takes that road all the way to the interstate and before I know it, we’re heading west.

And all I do for the next four hours is think about how my life just changed again.

James is gone.

Chapter Ten

Sasha

“Sash,” Nick whispers in my ear.

I brush him away and roll over, still very sleepy after yesterday. We stopped in Rock Springs to grab dinner since towns are few and far between out here, and by the time we were done, Nick wanted to get a room for the night.