Chapter Twenty

Nightmare

VINCENT JUMPED OUT of bed. His left leg gave out, and he toppled to the ground. The pain stripped away the grogginess, and as much as it hurt, he had to move. Sam was screaming. They needed to get to her. James pulled him to his feet and tried to help him from the room, but Vincent waved him off. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”

By the time he reached the hall, knife still clenched in his fist, James had headed out their front door and down the steps. Vincent used the wall for support and limped down the dark hallway. He stopped for a moment at the door to catch his breath. Sam’s cries floated up the steps. Now wasn’t the time to rest. He pushed through the pain and kept going. James stood in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs leading out to the front porch. She was outside. The porch light was on, but he couldn’t see past James.

Vincent grabbed the railing and stumbled down the steps. His thoughts raced. James was just standing there in the doorway. Sam sounded like she was hurt. Why wasn’t he helping her? Did Tyler do something to her? No, he couldn’t. But he was so angry when they’d crossed paths with him earlier that night. And drunk. Vincent couldn’t imagine how much worse he’d be at this hour. He didn’t know the exact time, but the sun was still down. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few hours at most. And Sam was hurt.

“What’s—going—on?” he said between breaths when he reached James.

James looked at him, but his eyes were unfocused. A lost child.

Vincent stepped around him. The sight was so awful it took a moment to accept this wasn’t just another nightmare. This was real life.

Sam sat on the top step of the porch with Tyler cradled in her lap. She was covered in blood, rocking back and forth. Tyler was pale; white compared to the dark blood that poured from his stomach. Sam’s hand was pressed into the wound, but it didn’t seem to be working. Blood ran down the steps. His eyes were wide. Lifeless.

Dead.

Vincent wanted to rush to Sam’s side, but he couldn’t move. “What—what happened?”

“I don’t know. I heard a gunshot, and he was on the sidewalk, and he was alone. He was alone and cold, and someone shot him. Someone fucking shot him! But the ambulance is on its way, and he’s going to be fine, aren’t you?” She brushed his hair out of his face, smearing blood across his forehead.

Someone shot him.

Sirens blared in the distance. Vincent looked around them. The street looked empty, but it was hard to know for sure. The light from the porch only extended so far into the night. Anyone could be lurking in the shadows.

James grabbed his arm. “We need to go.”

Vincent shook him off. He wasn’t leaving her here alone. “Sam, we need to go inside.”

Sam pulled Tyler closer. “No! The ambulance is on its way.”

James grabbed him again. “It’s not safe.”

Vincent whipped his head around. What was wrong with him? “We need to get her inside.”

“We are in danger,” James said, motioning between them.

His words sank in through the panic. We. He and James. All the pieces of the shooting fell into place so suddenly Vincent didn’t know how he hadn’t made the connection before now. Tyler had been shot outside their apartment building. The place they’d fled to straight from the stocky man’s house. They thought they’d lost that truck, but maybe they hadn’t. Maybe the stocky man or one of his friends had staked out their building and mistook Tyler for one of them and shot him. Maybe the assailants were still out there, waiting for him and James to show their faces so that they could riddle the porch with bullets. He and James were in danger; Sam was only at risk by association.

Fear wrapped its hands around his throat and choked him.

He struggled for air.

The sirens were getting so loud it was making it hard to think. First responders would be there any minute to help Sam. James couldn’t be there when they arrived. As terrible as it was to leave her here alone, Vincent couldn’t think of any other way to ensure both Sam and James’s safety.

“I’m so sorry,” he said to her, backing up toward the door. “We have to go.”

If Sam heard him, she didn’t respond. Vincent turned around. James gave him his shoulder and helped him climb the steps. Vincent didn’t look back at them over his shoulder. He didn’t need to. The sight of Sam, holding Tyler’s lifeless body in her arms, was burned into his memory.

As soon as they were through the door of their apartment, James locked it behind them. Their attackers had found them. The police would be there any minute. They couldn’t just wait until the scene outside dispersed. They had to leave, possibly for good, and from the ever-growing sound of the sirens, they didn’t have very long to pack.

James was faster. Vincent turned to him. “Grab my backpack by the dresser. Dump out whatever’s in it. Get my wallet, my phone and charger, and my car keys—I think they are still in one of my pants pockets from last night. And a change of clothes for both of us. And anything else you can think of. I’ll get the envelope.” He’d put Sam and Tyler’s envelope of money in a kitchen drawer so that he didn’t have to look at it every time he walked past the table where it’d sat for some time. He meant to put it somewhere safe, but he’d never gotten around to it.

James hurried down the hall to their bedroom. Vincent limped to the kitchen. The light over the stove made it easy to see. He yanked open the drawer and pulled out the envelope. There was no other envelope that would be stuffed like this one, but he made sure it was full of money before he made his way to their bedroom. They wouldn’t have a chance to return anytime soon.

The light from the bedroom leaked into the living room. Vincent hobbled down the hall toward it. Something was off. The whole place was freezing, and there were far too many dark corners where a gunman could easily hide. They needed to get the hell out of there.

Someone rushed out of the bedroom and ran right into him. Vincent screamed. James grabbed him before he fell over. “Sorry.”

Vincent got his footing. “We gotta go.”

James looked past him into the living room. “The police are here.”

Outside, red and blue lights colored the brick wall of the adjacent apartment building. The front door was no longer an option. They could, however, use the fire escape. They just had to hurry if they were going to reach his car down the street before the police started searching for the gunman. And if the sirens hadn’t scared them off, whoever shot Tyler was still out there.

Not just shot—killed, his mind corrected. But he couldn’t go there now. They needed to move.

James helped him over to the living room window and pulled it open. He guided him onto the fire escape. Outside was chaos. Flashing lights and blaring sirens. On the metal stairs, they were out in the open. Anyone who looked around the corner of the house could easily find them. Vincent struggled to keep up with James’s pace down the steps. His heart pounded, body ached, and he could hardly think straight, but the possibility of running into anyone else tonight kept him moving.

Right before they reached the bottom of the steps, his foot connected with something solid. He only realized it was Sam’s ashtray when it shattered on the pavement below. The sharp sound echoed off the sides of the buildings, loud enough to hear over the sirens.

James pulled him down the last few steps and ducked behind their garbage cans. A flashlight shone down the space between the two houses, spotlighting a wide-eyed raccoon that dashed around the back of the building. The light disappeared. James peered around the garbage cans. The coast must’ve been clear. He pulled Vincent to his feet and led him toward the backyard.

They crossed through the next two yards. Thankfully, there were no fences. Vincent hardly noticed anything else around them. He was focused on the car. Only after he started the engine did he look back at the mess they’d narrowly escaped. An ambulance and several cop cars blocked the road in front of their apartment building. He pulled out and drove slowly down the street. His body was so tense that if James touched him, he might shatter. Any minute now, someone would scream or shoot. Or a police car would whip around and pull them over. But when he turned at the end of the street, no one followed. Vincent sat back in his seat. Thanks to James, they’d evaded death for a second time that night.

 

“WE’RE FUCKED.” VINCENT sat on the edge of the bed. The relief of escaping immediate danger only lasted until they found a Motel 6 that was still open and booked a room. All that remained was the undiluted panic at the reality of their situation.

James paced in front of the large window beside the door looking out to the parking lot. They’d parked around back, but he kept peeking through the drawn lavender curtains to make sure no one had tracked them down. While they’d paid for the room in cash, they had to give the woman at the front desk a card to put on file in case of damages to the room. Vincent wasn’t nearly as concerned about that detail as James. They had bigger problems.

“They found us. They killed Tyler. And Ralbovsky and Tillman are going to want to talk to me.” Tears ran down his face. They were facing opposition on all fronts. “And we just left Sam there. Abandoned her.”

James pulled himself away from the curtains and sat down beside him. “We didn’t have a choice.”

That didn’t make him feel any better.

“They’ll keep coming after us until they kill us.” The weight of that knowledge made it hard for Vincent to breathe.

James rubbed his back. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Vincent knew James meant it, but he couldn’t promise such a thing. Vincent wanted to get back in their car. Keep driving until they ran out of money to refill the tank. Start a new life wherever they ended up. But he knew that wouldn’t be living. That’d be surviving. Ever since the attack, all they’d been doing was surviving. They were no different from that raccoon who picked through trash in the hope of finding something to get it through the night.

And it wasn’t just about them. Those fuckers had already killed Damien, and Vincent was pretty sure that Todd’s body would be discovered any day now. They’d killed Tyler, too, and why? Because he had the misfortune of living in the same building as Vincent and James. Not injured. Not terribly maimed. Dead. Dreamless sleep forever.

Tyler’s lifeless eyes appeared in his mind.

He looked up at James. “They’ll never stop.”

James pulled him close. “They won’t.”

They’d never stop, and the police wouldn’t do anything about it. Vincent couldn’t imagine killing someone—causing another person’s eyes to glaze over with death—but they didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t let those fuckers hurt anyone else. “I don’t know how the hell we are going to do it without getting ourselves killed, but we have to try to stop them. We have to end this.”

James sat back, and Vincent could see the determined look in his eyes. “We will.”