The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(42)

I'm glad it's this dark, I thought desperately. Seeing that would have been worse.

Lydia took a breath, and then she screamed again. The sound was chilling, grating, scraping my nerves and my heart and my insides raw.

Still screaming, Lydia pulled her bag out of the water and rummaged in it. I wanted to tell her, You can't save him, this isn't something you bandage up and come back from, but Elodie was grabbing us all, and only then did I realize that Lydia had a gun in her hand. We were on the steps-we had nowhere to go.

Stellan recovered first and took a shot in Lydia's direction. Her screams stopped and I thought he'd hit her, but I saw a shape swimming away under the water.

We'd splashed in, too. "We have to take her with us. We have to get her," I yelled, but I cut off when a gunshot reverberated in the cavern, whizzing so close to my face that I gasped.

"Where is she? Where'd she go?" Stellan and Jack both took shots back the way we'd come, but the shooting didn't stop. We were as likely to get hit as we were to hit her.

"We have to go!" Elodie urged again over the screams. "We'll catch her somewhere else!" We swam around the edge of the pyramid as fast as we could. Lydia was still screaming, and still firing, but without light, the shots were all over the place. We ran up the narrow stairs, and were almost to the top.

I barely heard the shot before I felt it.

I couldn't think. I couldn't see. The only thing was the pain, the searing, like my arm was being prodded with a hot poker, and the realization in the same second-she shot me. I'd been shot.

I felt arms around me, pulling me. I realized I was screaming, and then I was splayed out on the ground, Elodie leaning over me with a light, her face terrified, then relaxing.

"It's her shoulder. It'll be okay," she said, from far away. "Avery." She shook me. "I know it hurts like hell, but you're going to be okay. We have to go."



       
         
       
        

Hands came around my face. Stellan. "Breathe," he said, and placed one of the hands on my stomach. "Breathe into my hand."

I did. I sat up. Another bullet ricocheted into the clearing from below, and we all ducked. "Go," I said through clenched teeth, and dragged myself into the low tunnel.

Each time I jostled my arm, it was like the bullet was hitting me again. Stellan scooped me into his arms the second the tunnel was tall enough to stand in. Elodie tied her soaking wet jacket tight around my shoulder, and then we were all running, down tunnels, out through the pile of broken bricks, stopping at the bottom, where the last rays of the late-afternoon light poured in.

"Let me go first," Jack said. "We'll leave through the museum-avoid those guards out back in case they're Lydia's."

I made Stellan set me down and tried to concentrate on the plan.

"Shoot through the lock . . . " I heard, and then Jack was going up the stairs, yelling something, and then we were all running, Elodie mumbling into her phone to Mariam, me trying not to trip over my own feet, dizzy. I knew vaguely I hadn't lost that much blood. I was going into shock. I forced my focus ahead.

Jack shot through the lock on the back door of the museum and kicked it open, and then we were running straight through the same exhibits we'd seen earlier. There was still a metal gate pulled down over the front door, and Jack shot out the padlock on that one, too. Elodie hauled it up, and we all ran to the open door of Mariam's cab. Jack pushed us all inside, and through my haze, I saw armed guards rounding the corner.

"Jack," I called. Stellan turned just in time to grab his arm and haul him into the van. They both flopped across me, just ahead of a gunshot that pinged the car where Jack had been.

"Go!" Elodie screamed. It wouldn't be that easy. Mariam wouldn't know how to drive like this was a getaway car. She'd probably be too shocked to do anything. I was about to yell at Elodie to get in the driver's seat herself when the cab took off. Elodie heaved the sliding door to the van closed, and yelled, "Lose them. Hide us."

We screeched around a corner, and then another. I caught glimpses of Mariam's furrowed brows as she watched for pursuers in the rearview mirror, but she wove quickly and expertly through the tiny streets until we were on a freeway, wedged between a bus and a truck piled high with scraps of wood, with at least six other vans that looked just like ours.

Elodie, crouched by the door, put her head in her hands and then looked up at us. I was draped across Stellan's lap, blood soaking through Elodie's jacket on my shoulder. Jack had pulled himself partly off of us, but he and Stellan were holding on to each other. Elodie threw herself at us, landing on top of the pile in a four-person embrace, her face buried in my neck while mine was smushed into Stellan's, and I didn't even know whose hands I was clinging to, but I was clinging hard.