Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,3

is he?” Russ asks when the two men that were chasing me finally make their way into the room.

“He came in through the kitchen window,” one of them says, and I notice Russ’ eyes immediately begin a scan of the room. It’s unlikely a man of my size would choose a place like this to hide, but they’ll check here. Not yet, maybe, but soon. “No fucking clue where he is now, but Kody is dead.”

“This the blond kid we’re talking about?”

That voice … One of our girls said that when she heard Maxwell’s second, Mason Miller, speak for the first time, that she felt like she’d already lost. She said that when she got home, she took a scalding shower and cried as if she’d been assaulted.

And Prescott girls … they don’t say that sort of shit lightly.

This just has to be Mason Miller.

I aim for his head. Even if I were to die here today—I won’t—then killing Mason might just make it all worth it. He’s one of Maxwell’s secret weapons. To remove the threat of the GMP from Springfield, we’ll need both Maxwell and Mason.

Just as my finger tenses on the trigger, Mason’s eyes flick to me. I can’t really see his face. Shit, it’s bathed in shadow and obscured by dust motes that dance through the early morning air the way I used to, effortless, weightless …

He drops down just before I pull the trigger, so I don’t bother taking the shot. I need this bullet. It’s my very last.

Mason rises to his feet in a movement so fluid that I wonder if he, too, was ever a dancer. He moves across the dirty ground, littered with used condoms and needles, and kicks the door in. Bits of wood splinter and dig into my skin, but I barely notice the pain, blue-painted fingers curling around the edges of the opening as I drag myself out and throw my body into Mason.

Maintaining close contact with any one of the men will help reduce my chances of being shot. But grappling with Mason is not the same as grappling with Russ. He manages to get a hand free, hitting up against the bottom of my chin and causing me to bite my tongue. Fresh, hot blood fills my mouth as he throws a punch that likely would’ve burst my eyeball if it’d made contact. Instead, I manage to avoid it and his fist flies into the wall.

Four against one. Odds that normally wouldn’t scare me. But Mason is different. Russ is dangerous. The other two men are just add-ons at this point, but even they’re a step-up from the Charter Crew’s best and brightest.

An elbow hits me in the chest before I register that Mason’s changed his tactics. He’s trying to drive me toward a broken window this time, likely in the direction of additional GMP members. I turn and grapple the edge of the staircase, hauling my body up through a break in the spindles and finding my feet even as Russ fires several times in my direction.

Drywall dust fills the air, clouding the few lit spots in the unending darkness of the building. There are so many like this in Prescott. Havoc knows them all. Even before I trip over the first body, I know we lost a few members of our crew in here today.

There’s nothing I can do to help the dead, so I don’t stop. Instead I continue up the stairs until I hit the metal door that leads to the roof, shoving through it with both palms and surveying the space around me.

About ten years ago, the city started changing its zoning laws to allow buildings to be built closer and closer together. The apartment next door is practically within touching distance. Neither of them is particularly tall—about five stories—but a fall from here would kill me.

I tilt my head to one side, trying to calculate the odds.

The sound of pursuit behind me makes the decision relatively easy. I’d rather risk falling to my death than end up in Mason’s grasp. I’d be lucky to simply die at his hands. Chances are, if he can, he’ll take me alive and try to torture Havoc’s secrets out of me.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I pull in a deep breath, remembering that day in the studio when I danced for Bernadette like a beast performing some sort of primal mating ritual. I open my eyes again, lips twisting up in a smile. That’s