Page 80 of The Ashes of Summer

Carter notices. "What's the story with Kurt?" His voice is quiet, level—like he's asking about a suspect and not the brother of the man I'm going up there to butcher.

"He's Jackson's brother."

Carter turns his head slowly. "You're kidding."

"No."

Hayes leans forward between the seats. "And you brought him with us?"

"He knows the Ridge."

"And?"

"And Jackson might care whether he breathes."

Carter says nothing for a beat. Then: "Collateral."

He exhales through his nose and looks out at the road. "You think he'll hesitate?"

"I think if there's anything human left in Jackson Moore, it's sitting in that truck behind us."

"And if there isn't?"

"Then Kurt dies with the rest of them."

Nobody talks after that.

The road bends hard left and climbs, trees pressing close on both sides, branches black against the windshield. Behind us the second truck holds its distance, headlights low.

Carter looks over at me. I don't look back. If I do, I might pull over and put my fist through a tree just to feel something break.

Instead I press down harder, and the engine growls under us.

Ninety minutes is too fucking long.

But I'll get there. And when I do, Jackson Moore is going to learn exactly what happens when a man mistakes my girl for a ghost.

Chapter 27

Let Him Come

Summer

The chair beside the bed scrapes softly against the floor.

Jackson sits.

I can still feel sweat drying on my skin. I can feel the bruises coming up along my thighs, blooming slow beneath the surface where their hands were. Off to the side Donnie is still breathing hard, readjusting his belt like a man who's finished a job of work and is thinking about his dinner.

My throat feels like razor blades. I screamed so much, so loud, for so long that I don't think I could make a sound now if I tried. I try to swallow and can't. There's salt on my tongue, and the taste of it makes me heave—dry, useless, nothing left in me to bring up.

I wait for it to come. The fear. The devastation. The grief that should be tearing through me.

It doesn't come.

There's just nothing. A wide flat nothing where all of it should be, and I lie in the middle of it like a body in an empty field. My hands are shaking. I can see them shaking, rope biting into wrists, and I watch them the way you'd watch something on a screen, thinking distantly, that poor girl. As if she isn't me. As if I'm not the one still lying in what they left behind.

Maybe this is mercy. Maybe some part of me knows exactly how much weight I can hold and has decided to keep the rest back until I'm somewhere safe enough to set it down.