“I’m fine. What happened to you?” He was bleeding from a four inch gash on the left side of his rib cage.
“Found another one of Malone’s men in the woods. Fucker had a knife. Now I have his knife.” He patted his right pocket, where the outline of the folded blade stood out against his hip. “Your turn.” He glanced pointedly at my cheek.
I avoided his gaze. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a stupid cut.”
“Faythe, it’s your fucking face. Did Alex do this? Pinche carbon! I’ll kill him.”
I grabbed his arm, and before he could shrug free, Dean began edging away from us on the floor, stupidly drawing Marc’s attention. “Is that…? Colin Dean?” He tugged loose from my grip and dropped into a squat beside Dean. “Did you do that? That why she stabbed you?” He thumped the handle of the blade, and Dean groaned miserably. “This was Faythe, right?”
Dean sucked air in through his nose so fast I thought he’d hyperventilate.
“You fucking cut her?” Marc demanded. “Why? Just to do it?”
“He marked her,” Jace said, and I glanced up to see him standing in the doorway, looking three different brands of miserable. “Left his fucking calling card on her face.”
Marc was fury given form. His fist flew before I could stop him. His first punch smashed Dean’s nose, and blood spurted everywhere. Dean sputtered and choked on it. “How the hell is he supposed to breathe now?” I demanded, trying to turn the gory Canadian on his side to keep him from choking on his own blood.
“He’s not.” The next blow broke at least two ribs.
“Marc!” I pulled him back. “You’re killing him.”
“Damn right.”
“No.” I shoved him back and flinched at the pain in my wrist. “He’s not worth it. Not for revenge.” Death, we avenged with death. But I’d already cut Dean worse than he’d cut me.
Jace knelt and picked up Lance, tossing the unconscious tom over one shoulder. “We need to go.” His voice was calm. Too calm.
Marc rounded on him, eyes flashing in fury, pupils too pointed to be fully human. “Where the hell were you while he was carving her up?” He stomped across the floor, but Jace held his ground. He looked guilty as hell, but the twitch in his right arm said he was ready to defend himself, even one-handed.
Marc pulled his fist back, and I raced across the room. “What good are you, if you can’t protect her?”
I threw myself between them and shoved Marc with my left hand. “Stop it! Jace is the only reason Dean didn’t carve his initials into my chest. And we do not have time for this shit!” Marc blinked and forced his eyes to focus on me. When he dropped his arm, I exhaled slowly and Jace headed out the door with Lance. “Help me lock up. Kaci’s waiting for us.”
Marc blinked again. His nostrils flared as he tried to rein in his temper. Then he spun around and stomped to the front of the trailer where he locked the front door, then started covering windows.I rolled Dean over again, giving him at least a fighting chance to breathe, but his nose was a lost cause. It was swollen and still pouring blood. He bubbled and gurgled with each breath.
“Don’t make me regret this,” I said, then pulled the tape from his mouth.
Dean sputtered, spitting out his own blood, and rolled his eyes up to glare at me in seething hatred. “Does Marc know?”
I froze, my heart thudding in my throat. Marc turned from the last window to raise one brow at me in question. I shook my head. I was a deer frozen in the headlights; I could see disaster coming, but couldn’t avert it. I couldn’t even get out of the way.
Jace clomped up the back steps but stopped in the kitchen, warned by the sudden, obvious tension. “What’s wrong?”
Dean laughed, then hacked up more blood. “He wouldn’t fight for you if he knew you were fucking Jace.…”
Marc went so still he could have been made of stone. His gaze burned into me, begging me silently to deny it. To explain it. To say something to ease the pain and betrayal suddenly swimming in his eyes.
But I couldn’t lie. I wouldn’t.
My heart splintered into a thousand pieces and my next breath caught in my throat, refusing to budge. My eyes watered, mercifully blurring his pain. Yet I couldn’t breathe.
Marc looked from me to Jace, then back to me. His hands curled into fists at his sides. Then he stomped past me. “Let’s go.”
“Marc…” I jogged after him, but he pushed me away before I could touch him, and my whole world crashed on top of me, crushing me.
With his eyes focused on the door, I thought he’d stomp right through the kitchen. But at the last second, he whirled around and buried his fist in Jace’s stomach. Air rushed from Jace’s lungs. He flew backward three feet and crashed into the cabinets left of the sink. His elbow went through one faux wooden door and he hit the floor hard enough to echo throughout the trailer.
The look Marc tossed my way was so cold, my hands started to shake. “Kaci’s waiting.” Then he stomped out the door.
Jace hauled himself to his feet, scowling. “I deserved that. But I won’t take another one from him.”
And with that, I lost the battle against tears.
“It’ll be okay.” Jace tried to fold me into his arms, but I stepped out of reach.
“No. It won’t.”
He held my gaze; he wouldn’t let me wallow. “It won’t be the same, but it will be okay.”
I could only nod and head for the car.
“I’m gonna lock up. I’ll be right there,” he called after me.
“Marc already…” I stopped on the top step when I heard a familiar metallic click.
No…
As Marc closed the back hatch, blocking Lance from sight, I ran back through the kitchen. Jace knelt beside Dean, who still wheezed through bubbles of his own blood. “You ever touch her again, and neither she nor Marc will have a chance to kill you.”
I sucked in a breath to say his name, to stop whatever was about to happen, but I was too slow. Jace shoved the blade of the folding knife through Dean’s exposed left cheek and pulled it forward, slicing all the way through to the corner of his mouth.
Dean screamed and gurgled violently, and this time the sound carried. Everyone could hear him.
Jace flinched when he saw me watching him in shock. Then he jogged across the room and grabbed my arm. “Let’s go.”
Marc was walking back from the woods with the backpack he’d retrieved, but when he saw us coming—and heard Dean screaming—he raced back to the car and opened the front door for me. But instead of rounding toward the driver’s seat, he climbed into the back without a word. He wouldn’t sit with me.
Jace slid into the front seat and started the engine, then slammed the gearshift into Drive. “Where’d you park?” He stomped on the gas and took the turn around the building too quickly.
“The road we were on yesterday.” Marc slammed the buckle on his seat belt home, then grabbed the door grip as I struggled to untangle my own belt.
The car skidded onto gravel, then spun out as the back door of the middle building flew open. Another of Malone’s enforcers jogged down the steps and stared at us for a moment. But that was all it took for him to recognize me and Marc. He shouted something I couldn’t hear over the engine, then raced toward the row of cars I’d disabled.
Our tires caught purchase on the gravel and the rental shot forward. More enforcers poured from the middle building, and I didn’t recognize most of them. How many had Malone hired?
We shot past the middle building, then past the main house and onto the concrete driveway. With my belt now buckled, I twisted to stare out the rear windshield as we raced toward the road. The front door of the main house flew open and Malone appeared on the quaint porch, followed by an openly sobbing Patricia Malone.
Jace never looked back.
“I disabled the cars by the back building but couldn’t get to any of those,” I said, waving toward the three additional vehicles parked in front of the main house.
Jace shrugged. “They won’t catch us.” He turned onto the road too fast and we fishtailed, but then the car straightened and shot away from the house. I glanced back to see that—so far, at least—we were not being followed. Malone would send his enforcers after us, but with any luck, theirs were the tires I’d slashed, and it would take a few minutes for them to regroup.
I stared out the window at the trees as they raced past, afternoon sunlight blinding me in the gaps. Thoughts tumbled over themselves in my mind, but because I couldn’t focus on them, they were more like background static than true cacophony. I was beyond the capacity for rational thought. Too stunned to focus.
In a matter of minutes, everything had changed for the worse. My days of blending into crowds were over, and I’d be lucky if Marc ever spoke to me again. And it would take a miracle to keep him from trying to kill Jace the moment he had time to indulge his rage.
Two long, tense minutes later, we turned from Malone’s street onto the narrow, badly maintained road that cut through the woods and up the side of the nearest hill. “About a mile and a quarter,” Marc said. “On an overgrown trail on your right.”
Jace nodded acknowledgement.
“What did you do to Dean?” Marc asked, and I twisted in my seat to face them both, horrified all over again by the purple swelling taking over the right side of Jace’s head.He hesitated, as if he were considering his answer. Finally, he exhaled heavily. “Let’s just say Colin Dean and the Joker now bear more than a passing resemblance.”