Give Me War - Kate McCarthy Page 0,29

flat. “He was a cop.”

Christ. I thought she had a heart. I guess I was wrong. “Bitch,” I mumble under my breath. “You are so going down. Along with everyone else here.”

Angel doesn’t hear the empty threat. Instead she looks behind me just as a heavy hand clamps down on my shoulder. I flinch and turn my head, taking in the profile of the man who has a hold of me. Atomic. The vice president. “You’re coming with me, pretty Valentine,” he says in a voice that attempts to sound soothing and fails. There’s too much wicked anticipation curling around the words. “It’s time to get you kitted out.”

He pulls me back inside the house and shuts the door, closing me off from Angel and the giants. I get one last look at her face before the outside world disappears, and I catch the slightest glimmer of fear.

Then the door slams closed.

Atomic drags me back down toward the front of the house, and I can’t miss the trail of blood. Red streaks mar the floor along the hallway. We reach where Grudge and his brethren stand talking as if it’s just another day, as if my whole world isn’t imploding right this very second. I want to scream at them. I want to find a gun and shoot every last sonofabitch dead. But then I realise that Renny is gone.

The streaks. The blood. They must have dragged his body away.

I try not to think about it but I can’t close off my mind. I see his dark eyes fading. Blood everywhere. The way he told me to run, that single word the last he might ever speak. And then I remember the grin he used to give me as we climbed off the back of his bike after a wild ride. It was bright and happy, and deep down, just a little bit broken, as if the boy inside him had found something, just something, worth living for.

He might have broke my young, naïve heart, but he grew up to be a cop, tried to be better, tried to make a difference, tried to save my life, and then got killed for it.

A lone tear trickles down my cheek as Atomic lets me go. I wipe it away as he steps off to the side, fiddling with something on an old, worn table. “Kitted out?”

He turns around with a vest in hand.

The bikers, and Grudge, go silent, watching their VP.

My brows draw together.

A bullet proof vest? They’re trying to protect me? It doesn’t make sense.

Then I see there’s more to it than just a vest.

There’s thick padding and coloured wires, and electronic components that even my untrained eye can figure out at a glance.

My blood runs cold. “No,” I whisper, and stumble backwards. “N—no.”

Atomic’s lips curl at the corners in a wicked slash.

It suddenly doesn’t take a genius to figure out how the biker earned his name.

He comes at me, and I stumble back another step, slamming into someone behind me. Another biker. I don’t even know who.

I lash out then. Terror making me wild. I hit whatever I can. Bite. Scratch. Kick. Scream until my voice cracks and gives out. An elbow catches me in the eye, or it could’ve been a fist. Something slams into my ribs and a scream rips from me.

I falter, pain making me dizzy, and they get me on the ground, held down, my right arm pinned out straight as Atomic slides the vest carefully over the seized limb.

I close my eyes close. I can’t watch anymore.

I’m pulled upright, lurching as my left arm is shoved through the lethal contraption.

I feel tugs at the front. Atomic closing it off. Strapping me in. Connecting wires.

I still can’t open my eyes.

More tugs around the back and front, and it’s secured. I know it is, because I feel every last one of them step away from me.

Claustrophobia takes over. The vest isn’t covering any part of my face but I feel confined and suffocated. Every inhale brings with it the heavy weight of death. Every exhale, the fragility of my own mortality, and that of the new life growing inside me.

Grudge’s gravelly voice barely penetrates the thick barrier of fear. “Open your eyes, Genevieve.”

But I can’t.

“Open them,” he orders.

My body begins to tremble. I can’t control it.

A hard slap lands across my cheek, hitting across my nose and snapping my head sideways. My eyes fly open at the new flare of pain, giving him what he wants.

Grudge