The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,127
my chest. “Move.”
Jake looks at the other two girls. Funny how he doesn’t seem so untouchable now. “She’s right, Jake. It’s been quiet for too long. Something must have happened. We should go and look.” Sophia’s the last person I expect to say this, but she seems a lot calmer now. She comes and stands beside me. Alicia swears unhappily, but she joins her friend. Then it’s us three girls against Jake.
“You’re all fucking insane,” he spits, moving out of the way. “Be my guest. Go out there and get yourselves killed. See what difference it makes.”
He doesn’t follow us out. The door slams closed behind us, and the king of Raleigh High locks himself back in the booth without another word.
We tiptoe through the music room and down the stairs, and that's where we see the first cop. Relief surges through me, making my legs turn to Jell-O; I've never been so happy to see a badge and a gun in all my life. “Any of you hurt?” the guy calls, hurrying toward us.
“No. No. But there are others,” Alicia says. “The library. Have you checked the library? We heard most of the shots in there.”
“The EMTs are in there now, dealing with the casualties. Head outside, girls. There are blankets and more ambulances. You’re probably in shock. Your parents are on—hey! Hey, where the hell are you going?”
I’m not heading outside. No fucking way. If most of the shooting took place in the library, then that’s where Alex would have gone. I’m running at top speed before I even make the decision to bolt. Alicia and Sophie both shout after me, but I don’t hear a word they say.
I have to find Alex.
If he’s hurt, I need to be with him.
I crash into a firefighter on the stairs up to the library. He tries to grab hold of me, to stop me, but I duck around him, pressing forward…
..and then I stop.
The library’s a blood bath. Everywhere I look, bodies lie in strange, unnatural poses. Some of them are covered with grey sheets, body bags laid out on the floor beside them.
Fuck.
Where is Alex?
WHERE IS ALEX?
I see Sheriff Hainsworth, standing grimly by one of the stacks, his head bowed, hands on his hips, and I make a beeline for him. “Sheriff Hainsworth? Sheriff Hainsworth, have you seen Ale—”
The question freezes on my lips. At the sheriff’s feet, three EMTs are working frantically over a body. The floor is slick with blood. So much blood. It’s everywhere.
Then I see the hand thrown out lifelessly to one side. A glimpse of the fierce wolf tattoo on the back of it. The sharp, thorny vines that are wrapped around the wrist.
“Oh, God. God, no, that’s not…that’s not him?”
“Silver, get outside with the others. There’s nothing you can do here,” Sheriff Hainsworth commands, trying to push me back. I rip myself free of him, struggling forward, determined to prove to myself that I was seeing things just now. That the body on the floor does not belong to Alex.
“He’s coding,” one of the EMTs grinds out, scrambling around in the small red bag beside her. “There’s too much blood. Airway’s collapsed. We need to intubate. Damn it, where the fuck is the epi!”
She shifts out of the way, and my heart stops dead in my chest.
Alex.
It is him.
“No! No, no, no, no, no!”
His t-shirt’s been cut away, exposing his chest. And there, just below his left pec, a tiny, perfectly round hole is leaking blood all over his tattooed skin. His face is so pale, his dark eyelashes resting against his cheekbones. He doesn’t cry out in pain as one of the other EMTs sticks him with a needle. He doesn’t respond at all.
“Still in v-fib. Prep the paddles. Forget the trach kit. If we can’t get a rhythm, it won’t matter if he can’t breathe anyway.”
The dull roaring in my ears mutes the words they’re firing back and forth to one another. The world is crashing down around me. “Save him! Oh my god, you have to save him. Please!”
“For Christ sake, someone get her out of here,” someone snaps.
Hands close around the tops of my arms. I yank myself free again, spinning on the police officer I saw back in the hall. “Don’t fucking touch me! I’m staying!”
The EMT who stuck Alex moves quickly, placing two gel pads on his chest. “Charging to two hundred. Clear.” She discharges the defibrillator next to her, and Alex’s back arches off the ground.