“At least let me in so I can call a cab,” she asked prettily, crocodile tears in her eyes.
Renner calling.
I swiped open my phone and lifted it to my ear, tucking the device between that and my shoulder so I could tug her into the room as I answered the call.
“Hey.”
“Ms. Garro, I need to inform you that Reaper Holt was not picked up by the separate RCMP team that swept the Berserker compound tonight. There was no sign of him there or at any of the usual club haunts. We have reason to believe he has a mole in the department. I’m sending a squad car to you now. An officer will come to your door and the other will stay outside for your protection while we get this sorted.”
I listened mutely, careful to keep my face blank because my mother was pretending not to watch me as she fixed her makeup in the front entrance mirror even as she was.
Casually, I reached for my purse on the table beside the door, my other hand going to the lock to flip it.
A second later a gunshot fired and a bullet tore through the doorknob.
I leapt back, my hand blazing with pain, bleeding all over the ground from the bullet graze in the flesh of my thumb, as the door pushed open and Reaper appeared.
“Hey baby,” Farrah called out as if he’d knocked on the door and was visiting for tea. “The door was open. I think you caught Harleigh with that shot.”
Hero growled long and fierce from behind me.
Reaper lunged toward me, the butt of his gun to my temple. “Come the fuck on ’fore the pigs get here.”
Farrah checked her hair in the mirror quickly then slipped by us out the door. “Careful with Harleigh, baby.”
He grunted, but I knew he had no intention of being careful with me.
There was only murder in his eyes.
He knew.
He knew I was the rat. He probably even doubted that Wrath or Lion had been snitches now that he knew it was me.
And he was going to kill me for it.
My dumb, pathetic mother thought we were going to be a family again.
Maybe we would be, if he killed her too.
“Yeah, bitch,” he sneered against my ear, feeling the fear turn my body rigid as a corpse. “You’re gonna die tonight.”
There was another growl from the couch and then a smear of gold flying through the air as Hero leapt into action.
He lunged at Reaper’s groin, sharp teeth digging into his thigh in a way that had him bellowing and trying to shake him off.
I wrenched out of his hold and went for his eyes with my thumbs.
He swiped the gun madly in front of his face, trying to dislodge Hero and evade my sharp fingers. One of my nails connected with his tear duct and I pushed, feeling the wet squish as I cut through the corner of his eye.
“Fuck!” he screamed, lashing out so wildly that the back of his hand caught me in the side of the face and sent me flying.
I fell back to the ground with a sharp yell, cracking my head against the wood.
When I looked back up, Hero was wrenching his head away from Reaper’s blood-soaked thigh with a rough growl and a sharp jerk.
Reaper howled in pain and madly, sightlessly fired his gun.
I closed my eyes as the pain burned through me, bright as if I’d been run through with a broadsword.
There was a short whine then a dull thud as a body hit the ground.
“No,” I sobbed, crawling backward with my eyes shut, refusing to open them to acknowledge what had happened. “No, no, no.”
A hand tagged my ankle and roughly pulled me towards the door. My fingers raked so hard against the wooden floor, splinters erupted under my nails.
“No,” I screamed loudly. “No.”
I felt the blood as he pulled me past the door onto the carpet of the hallway.
“What’s going—” one of my unfortunate neighbors asked.
Reaper shot him.
Another thud.
But I was too preoccupied with the first.
I’d opened my eyes when Reaper dropped me in the door.
I was laying a foot away from him, his sweet brown eyes empty, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, but not in his usual happy way.
Reaper had shot him in the back of his neck.
But facing me like he was, if his eyes hadn’t been open, he almost looked asleep.
“Hero,” I groaned through the sobs spilling endlessly through my mouth. “Hero, no.”
I clutched at his fur, rubbing my fingers through the still warm, utterly familiar strands and tried to memorize everything about him.
“No!” I screamed at the top of my aching lungs when Reaper pushed the neighbor and then leaned over to yank me up, gun at the center of my spine just under the base of my neck.