The Drift - Jenika Snow Page 0,3

SUV, I opened the back door and ushered her inside. She stumbled forward then again as she climbed inside. She moved as far back from me as she could, her terror clear on her face. I maneuvered Wilder onto the back seat and laid him down, his head resting in her lap. She gasped at that as she stared down at my brother, her hands raised in surrender.

I grabbed her wrist, and she jerked in response. I placed her palm over the gunshot wound and pressed it down hard, leveling a look at her. “Keep pressure on this.” My voice was low, deceptively calm. I let go of her wrist, and she left her hand over his bullet wound.

I slammed the back door shut and ran around to the driver side, climbed in, cranked the engine, and then peeled out of the parking lot. I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. For the shit I’d thrown at her in a short amount of time, I was surprised she wasn’t breaking down.

She’s just as deceptively calm as I am.

I couldn’t see Wilder from this angle, but the look of his unconscious, ashen face would forever be branded in my head.

“He better not fucking die.” I wasn’t speaking to her but in general, yet my dark words had her snapping her head up and staring at me with wide eyes.

I had no idea why I said it out loud, but it was already out, hanging between us like the damn Grim Reaper. This wasn’t her fault. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I couldn’t leave her, let her go to the cops. I couldn’t have her identifying us.

Here we were, her in the back of my SUV, Wilder bleeding out on her lap, my frantic, quick actions making a fucked-up situation even worse.

But there wasn’t any other way to do it. I wasn’t a good guy, and the threat of my twin dying made me nothing more than a heartless bastard.

For her sake, I hoped he survived, because if not, she’d be the first to feel my wrath, even if she was the last person to deserve it.

Chapter Four

Zoey

My heart was racing as I stared down with what I knew was an expression akin to full-on fear, but the man was clearly out cold. Or hell, was he dead, lying on my lap?

The smell of blood was so thick in the air that I actually gagged. It filled the interior of the SUV, and I tried to take short, shallow breaths out of my mouth so I didn’t have to smell it. But all that accomplished was it coating the inside of my mouth in a tangy, coppery flavor that reminded me of when I’d bitten my tongue.

I lifted my focus to the driver. Intermittently, he looked at me through the rearview mirror, the shadows of darkness and flashes of light from the streetlamps as we raced passed them making him seem even more ominous and sinister.

“This is wrong,” I whispered, and there was a huge hitch in my voice, as if I were trying too hard to convince my kidnapper of that fact.

He didn’t say anything for long moments, so long that I didn’t think he actually would respond.

“I know.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror again. His voice was so hard and cold, so apathetic. “But I don’t care.”

I looked back down at the man who had his head resting on my lap. It was as if the initial shock started to wear off, because I realized he was an exact replica of the man driving.

Twins.

He had short dark hair, a face that was brutally handsome, severe in his attractiveness. His head was turned toward the front of the car, and I could make up the sharp lines of his jaw, the masculine cut of his chin. I moved my gaze up to his full lips, along his strong, straight nose, and stopped at his closed eyes. His eyelashes were dark, crescents that fanned out along his far-too-pale skin. Even I could see how pasty his complexion was, no doubt from all the blood loss.

“Keep pressure on the wound,” the driver said harshly, and I could hear the note of worry in his voice no matter how much he tried to hide it.

I found myself pressing my hand down harder on the wound.

I was surprised I wasn’t a sobbing mess. It was a survival instinct, the need to stay sane and alive in