Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Even as Stone tries to shove me aside, I throw myself across his chest. Behind me, it only sounds as if someone coughs twice, but it feels like two bricks slam into my back and shoulder before tearing through my skin and exploding. Then Stone’s got his weapon in hand and my ears are ringing from the gunfire. His heavy weight smothers me into the bed and then another muffled shot reaches my ears. In the next second he’s off me, and in the distance I hear tires screeching and shouts coming from other guests. But I can’t get up and can’t stop hurting.
“Angel girl, no no.” Stone’s stricken face swims into view as he turns me over, and then pain nearly blinds me. Blood coats my tongue and I can barely breathe without choking. His hands are all over me, sitting me up and pressing into my back and everything goes distant as I’m carried away on a black wave of agony, except I hear him screaming “Help me!” and for someone to call a fucking ambulance and I would, I would call one, but I can’t.
But I need to know I did enough. I have to spit blood out of my throat. “Saved…you?”
“Yeah, girl. You saved me. And I’m sorry, this is going to hurt so fucking bad,” he says raggedly, and shoves something against my back and ties it with the sheet, his jaw locked and the muscles in his arms straining as he pulls the sheet tight tight tighter and it does hurt so fucking bad, agony shredding up and down my body, but I can only choke silently when I scream.
He gathers me up against his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but we’ve got to stop the bleeding. Ah fuck, angel. Why’d you do it? I can’t fucking…I can’t…” His voice breaks. “You didn’t owe me that. You hear? You don’t owe me anything. But especially not ever this.”
“Not…payback.” Everything’s going numb. It doesn’t hurt so much now to talk, but I can barely draw a breath and each one I manage is thick and wet. “Couldn’t lose…someone else…I love.”
“And I can’t bear losing you.” His forehead presses to mine, and he holds me so tight, his strong arms nearly crushing my back. “I love you, Maxine. So you can’t leave me. You can’t, because it’ll destroy me. So if you want to save me, you fucking fight to stay with me.”
Okay, I mean to say.
But I can’t when everything slips away.
IV
The Grave
38
Stone
The ragged hole in me now is the size of those two bullet wounds that Papa’s men put in Maxine’s back. So fucking small. But big enough to kill me.
“Stone!”
I look up as Anna flings herself against my chest, holding on hard before sliding into the seat beside mine. Tears drip down her cheeks, and she grips my hands tight. “We heard on the news coming to the hospital. They didn’t give her name but said that a woman who was shot at a motel succumbed to her injuries…and I’m so sorry. So sorry.”
Gunner’s behind her, echoing, “So fucking sorry, brother.”
Me, too. But not for that. And since it’s just the three of us in this waiting room, there’s no one to overhear when I tell them, “Maxine’s not dead. They’re just saying she is.”
Anna and Gunner exchange a worried look. “The doctors are saying she is?” she asks carefully.
“The feds. They’re going to write Christina Miller on the death certificate.” I swallow past the thick knot in my throat. “Maxine made it through surgery. They’re closing her up now.”
“Oh, thank god,” Anna says softly. “So this is to throw that Papa person off her trail?”
I nod, barely able to fucking breathe.
“And she’s all right?” Gunner asks.
“Not sure yet. Good chance.” But still a chance she won’t be. And until I know for sure, those two fucking holes are killing me.
“That’s good, then.” Anna’s fingers squeeze mine. “Have you been here since they brought her in?”
“Where the fuck else would I go?”
“To piss, to breathe some fresh air, and get something to eat,” Gunner tells me. “It’s been about fourteen hours, brother, and you’re no good to her if you collapse on your feet. Take ten minutes with me. Anna can stay here. If there’s any updates from surgery, they can tell her since she’s family, too. She’ll text us right away.”
No good to her. That’s fucking true enough. But I need to be.
I couldn’t choke down a bite right now, so I tell Gunner to fuck off when he suggests the cafeteria. Instead I head outside. The sun’s glaring up high and the snow’s melted—and I should have tried to get a flight out of here earlier. Should have done every goddamn thing different.
“How’d they get a trace on you?”
“They put a fucking tracker in her arm and told her it was birth control.” With a range that was weak as hell, so it wasn’t picked up while she was on the ranch, where we can’t even get a cell signal. “But it must have blipped in Vegas. Don’t know when. Maybe they picked it up right away and waited to see what we were doing. Or maybe it was recent, and they saw she’d been near Johnson’s house and business, so they tied off that loose end before coming after us.”