Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,107

one side. Lots of fancy weddings up here, probably.

But there was no one inside the church now. It was dark. Deserted.

“Jennifer!” I screamed and turned around, thinking maybe she was hiding in the woods.

She was standing behind me, in muddy and torn jeans and a sweatshirt splattered with blood. It had been the better part of a year since I’d seen her and she looked at once younger and older than I remembered. Her freckled face was pale. Her green eyes were narrowed. She was thin like a wire, too. So much thinner than she’d been.

“Hey,” she said, with that half-grin of hers and a wave. The same grin and wave she had given me every day I dropped her off at school. The same grin and wave she had given me from the top bunk in our room in the trailer.

“Oh thank God!” I sighed, weaving for a moment on suddenly unsteady feet. But I got it together and hurtled toward her, my arms aching to hug her.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, dropping the grin and shaking her head at me like I had disappointed her. I stopped in my tracks.

“What?” Shit. Oh. Shit.

“You know you shouldn’t have come.”

“You called.” Please. Please don’t be true. Let me have the hope and faith and wishes.

“I didn’t call. He did!” She jabbed her finger behind me, and I knew. I didn’t have to turn to know Lagan was there, but I did it anyway.

“Hello, Olivia,” he said. I stared down the dark barrel of the gun he held on me. His white linen suit was a mess. Wrinkled and bloody. His hair, usually slicked back, flopped down over his eyes in a greasy curtain he kept smoothing back up over his forehead like it helped.

“What…are you doing?” I asked, scrambling for Plan B. God, that was my whole life wasn’t it? Scrambling for Plan B.

“Recovering my assets,” he said, and stepped out of the shadows until the three of us were standing on the sunlit green lawn beside the church. The wind blew and I could smell Lagan—sour and foul. If deranged had a scent, this was it.

“You can let Jennifer go,” I said. “You wanted me. I’m here.”

Lagan’s eyes filled with pity but he was silent. Shit. Things were bad when Lagan was silent.

“Let her go!” I screamed. “I’m here. You can shoot me. You can rape me. Take me to your new compound. I don’t care. Let Jennifer—”

“Olivia.” Jennifer came to stand beside me, her arm around my waist, and I immediately clung to the sudden familiar comfort of my sister against me. I couldn’t believe how much I’d missed it. I put my arm around her and we stood there, a solid front against Lagan’s gun and insanity. “Just stop talking,” she whispered in my hair. “Don’t egg him on.”

“Excellent advice,” Lagan nodded.

“What are we waiting for?”

“My real asset.”

Real asset. Real asset.

“Max,” I breathed, and I felt my knees buckle. Jennifer held me up. Kept me standing. This was about Max. About the drugs.

“He won’t come for me,” I said. Lagan’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m lying but I’m not. He doesn’t know where I am.”

“He will when I tell him.”

I forced myself to give him nothing. Not one thing. “He still won’t come for me. He’s left the MC behind. He’s gone straight.”

He gave me a brief pitying look and I felt that raft of hope and faith and wishes splinter apart.

“He’s on his way. He’s been texting me all morning.”

“Fuck you!” I roared and shook off Jennifer’s arms, charging Lagan. I could take his gun. Put a bullet in his head. End this forever.

But I didn’t get close.

Casually, as if I were a door that needed to be shut, Lagan reached forward and smacked me across the face with the hand that held his gun. I staggered to the side and would have fallen on the ground if Jennifer hadn’t grabbed me.

“Shut. Up.” Jennifer breathed in my hair. “Please. He’s totally unhinged.”

Blood pooled in my mouth and I spat it on the ground. My heart sank into my feet and then lower. Right out of my body.

Max would come. Of course he would come. Because I meant more than his own freedom. His own life.

And that would be the end of him.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just ask him to meet?”

“Because I have learned in the last few hours that no one can be trusted. That kindness and freedom are