Events had gotten out of my control. I needed to get back in the game, get some semblance of control back. But it seemed as though things had grown beyond me, had gotten bigger than just me and Emma. There was a whole war in this fucking city.
Louisa Barone and the Spiders against her fucking family.
And somehow I was in the middle of it all.
20
Emma
As I drove, I couldn’t get the memory of the gunshots and the screams of the girls who didn’t make it out of my head.
I had been terrified, absolutely terrified. Running into that burning forest felt like running into the mouth of hell. Bullets were flying through the air. Everything was chaos.
The only thing keeping me sane was Brooks. He seemed so calm as he shot his gun off at the other men, killing them when he could. And when the girls went down, he even went back to save one.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew Brooks didn’t hurt women, and I knew he was a good person underneath his shitty life, but I never imagined he was the type of man to go back for a total stranger in the middle of a hell storm.
But that was exactly who he was. He saved lives and fought for these girls when he really didn’t have to.
And beyond that, I didn’t know I had this kind of strength inside me. I’d wanted to stop, to curl down on the ground and cry, but I didn’t. I kept myself moving, pushed through the fear and the terror. I knew what needed to be done and I did it.
As I drove the bus along the empty road, not knowing where I was going, I felt terrible and elated. We had saved these girls. They had nobody else, and we had stepped up and gotten them out. A lot of people made a lot of sacrifices, and I couldn’t forget that, but I was proud of myself and of Brooks for doing the right thing.
As I drove alone, Brooks came up next to me. “Girls seem okay,” he said. “One needs a real doctor in the next hour or I think we’ll lose her.”
“What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “We need to figure out where we are. Then we’ll drop the girl at a hospital.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ll dump her outside the ER.”
“We can’t do that.”
“We can’t stay with her, Emma. The mafia will be looking for us, and the first place they’ll check is the local emergency room.”
I frowned and nodded. “Okay. I get it. But we have to get her there at least.”
“We will. Maybe one of the other girls will stay with her.”
“I don’t want to ask that of them.”
He grinned at me. “Look at you, so worried and nurturing.”
I laughed. “You’re the one playing nurse back there.”
He leaned forward. “I’d rather play nurse with you, strip you down, check your body over and over.”
I blushed but was distracted by the sound of a ringing phone.
Brooks’s head snapped toward the girls.
“Who has the phone?” he called out.
They stared back at him, wide-eyed and surprised. Slowly, one of the girls pulled the phone from her pocket and held it up.
Brooks quickly walked over and took it out of her hand. He silenced it and then sat back down behind me.
The phone started making that horrible noise from before, the same noise Brooks’s phone had made in his apartment. He frowned at it and then slowly held it up to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Brooks,” the same altered voice said as the phone came on speaker.
Brooks sighed. “Warn me next time.”
“Sorry about that. This line isn’t secure, so we must be brief.”
“What happened back there?”
“I’m sorry. Our shared enemy hit many of our safe houses tonight. It was a coincidence, I promise.”
“A coincidence,” Brooks said, his jaw clenched. “I don’t like that sort of excuse.”
“Many girls lost their lives tonight, Brooks. It’s only because of you that your little group made it out. Many other safe houses weren’t so lucky.”
“What do you want?”
“First, do you have injured?”
“One. She needs help soon.”
“I will send you directions to the hospital. After that, I will send another location. Please drop the rest of the girls there.”
“I’m not a fucking bus driver,” he grunted.
“Please. Do this, and then I will help you.”
“Fine. Send the locations.”
“Thank you, Brooks.”
The phone hung up. He shook his head and looked at me. “I trust them now, but I don’t like them.”
“I don’t blame you,” I admitted, “but we have to drop them off.”
“Yeah,” he said, “we do.” His phone buzzed and he passed it off to me. “Get us here while I help the girls.”