Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,111
Lagan. I’m plenty motivated. But there’s no one left to make a deal. There’s no club. Rabbit’s dead and three other guys are in jail. It’s me and a bunch of kids back in Jacksonville.”
“There’s you. And your access to other clubs.”
Well, shit. From his point of view, that was a good plan. From my point of view, it was a suicide mission.
“I’ll give you Zo’s cut if you find us other distribution channels.”
“That could work,” I said, pretending to consider it. “The Skulls chapter out of Alabama could do it. I can reach out. The president was a friend of my Pops.”
“Excellent. How soon can you make this happen?”
“Let’s get off this mountain and I’ll do it.”
“Do it now.”
“What the hell is with you, Lagan?”
“What the hell is with me? I have millions of dollars in product I need to move! That’s what’s with me. Now, make the call or I will kill one of these girls!”
“Fine!” I said and I pulled out my phone. “This is going to take some time. I’ll make the call, but they’re going to do some checking around on me. On you, too. They’re not stupid. It will be a few days before they meet with us.”
“Then stop wasting time.”
“I came here for the deal and I’m in. You don’t need Jennifer and Joan anymore.”
Lagan blinked his dead eyes at me and I stared right back, retreating hard into my lizard brain.
Show him nothing. Give him nothing.
“In that case,” Lagan said. He shoved Joan out in front of him and shot her.
Chapter 28
Max
Time stopped. Like hard. I swear birds froze in the sky. My heart cranked right off. My blood froze.
But Joan kept moving. Her death just kept happening while I was frozen. She flew backward at the force of the bullet tearing through her body and she spun sideways, and I watched it all, immobile, catching her wild gaze before she fell to the ground in a heap.
There was a scream, but from a distance, as if on the other side of the valley there was a drama like this being played out. Something horrible and bloody with grief and madness all around.
Jennifer fell to her knees beside Joan and Lagan, looking at me. Lagan lifted the gun as if to send a bullet right into her brain.
Time roared back and I was moving.
I exploded off my toes, feeling the burn in my calf, and I launched myself through the air into Lagan, knocking him off balance. There was another gunshot. Another scream. But I didn’t look. My eyes were glued to Lagan’s, where the surprise was swiftly replaced by a kind of understanding. A sense that he’d known this was coming all along.
He lifted the gun but I grabbed it, forcing his hand down on the ground, smashing it over and over again into the dirt until I felt one of his fingers break, and his grip loosened.
I put my hand around his throat and I held him there, picking up the gun with my other hand.
Jennifer was curled over Joan, her hands covered with blood. Joan’s blood.
“Is she dead?” I screamed.
“No,” Jennifer said. “But it’s really bad.”
I could kill Lagan and the world would be better. But I wasn’t that man anymore.
I flipped the gun in my hand and sent the butt crashing down on Lagan’s skull until it was lights out for him. I might have killed him. I didn’t know and couldn’t be bothered to care.
The bloody gun slipped from my hand and I crawled over to Joan and put my hands over Jennifer’s adding my weight to stop the warm blood seeping out of her side.
“Hey!” I said. “Hey! Olivia, open your eyes.”
I saw her eyelids twitching as she struggled up through consciousness toward the sound of my voice. I kept talking, giving her something to follow. A rope she could use to pull herself toward me.
“Hey, baby. Open those eyes. Let me see you.”
They fluttered open and I felt my heart explode.
“There you are,” I said. “There you are. Stay here. Stay with me. You’re going to be fine.”
“He shot me,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“He did.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I might have.”
She smiled, her eyelids closing again. “Hey!” I jostled her just a little and her eyes flew open again, filled with irritation.
“Stop,” she breathed. “Hurts.”
“I know. I know. But you’ve got to keep those eyes open. You have to stay here with me. You can’t go. Not now. We just found each other.”