He had pale hair and wore a leather vest like brothers of any MC would. He was too far away for me to see clearly but through my haze of adrenaline, I felt sure I knew him. He stood by the trees we were running to, a gun in his hand leveled high and steady at Mute and me.
It felt as though I caught eyes with him in that second and saw a wealth of things in that corrupted gaze: anger and greed, vengeance and fury. He was a man on a mission and that mission was to end me.
I screamed before I even heard the pop.
Mute grunted a second later, faltering in his steps and almost falling to the ground. He collapsed to a knee briefly before pushing up with a hand and taking off again.
“You’re okay?” I screamed into his ear.
He grunted.
Harleigh Rose limped beside us, running fast even though I could see the blood at her calf where a bullet had gone clear through the muscle.
We made it to the edge of the trees three seconds later without any more gunfire but I could still hear the shouts back at the house and see the dark plumage of smoke wafting over the cabin through the forest. Harleigh Rose had darted ahead into the brush to get the car started.
“Keys in the ignition,” she shouted from somewhere in front of us.
“Thank God,” I said, about to ask Mute to put me down when my world tilted and we both went to the earthen floor hard.
“Mute,” I cried out before I’d even landed, then as soon as I regained my breath I was scrambling over the cold, wet soil to his side.
He lay on his back, blinking up at the sky like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with him.
What was wrong with him was that there was a bullet hole through his neck. A sob exploded in my throat and tore out my mouth as I fell on the wound with both hands, pressing hard into the blood spilling through his throat. My fingers slipped in the mess and I worried frantically that I was making it harder for him to breathe.
“Help!” I called out, not caring that there were more gunmen in the vicinity. “Harleigh Rose!”
“Fucking fuck,” she said, tumbling to a stop beside me in the mud. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod… fuck.”
“Mute, just wait a second, okay?” I told him, leaning down so I could look into his eyes.
They were wide and eerily knowing on mine as he blinked, gurgled through a deep breath, and blinked again.
“Loulou!” Bea’s voice came to me, pulling my gaze from Mute for a second to see her running toward me with Lysander just behind her.
“You have to help me get him in the car,” I told Lysander. “Quick, please, God, help me get him in the car. He needs an ambulance.”
Lysander crouched down without missing a beat and cursed as he smoothly hefted Mute’s dead weight into his arms. “Get in the fuckin’ car. Now.”
I pushed Bea toward the car with my bloody hands then sprinted forward so I could brace against the backseat and carefully accept Mute’s head on my lap. Bea crawled into the front seat and H.R. kneeled in the trunk.
Lysander jumped into the front seat and immediately peeled out of the muddy clearing just as there was a great bomb as the cabin imploded.
“Mute, Mute, I’m right here and we’re going to be in the hospital in just two seconds, I promise, it’s going to be alright… just hold on, okay?” I ranted as I pressed the bunched edge of his tee into the gushing wound and ran a hand over his head, too fast and hard to be truly comforting.
I could see the blood under his skin thinning, watched as his flesh turned bright red then paler and paler like spilled milk. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t move and couldn’t even really breathe.
“No, no, no,” I sobbed as one of his heavy hands tried to lift to comfort me and fell back weakly to the seat.
There was blood everywhere, pooling warm in my lap, the metallic scent of it stuffed up my nostrils.
He was dying.
God, I knew he was dying.
“Is he okay?” Bea whimpered from the front seat as we drove off the edge of a dirt hill and onto pavement with a rough crash that jerked me and made more of Mute’s blood spurt out over my hand.
“No,” I whispered as my tears rained down on Mute’s face.
There was so much in his eyes as they watched me; pain and stunning acceptance of his fate, pride that he’d saved me and love, so much love it overflowed from him and filled me up to the brim.
I couldn’t breathe, my weak lungs were filled with smoke and too damaged to deal with the added stress but I focused all my energy into staying clear headed so I could hold my silent hero in my arms and look into his eyes as he died for me.