Hot Winter Nights (Heartbreaker Bay #6)(76)

He picked up on the third ring sounding breathless. “Who’s this?”

Normally, she’d bug him about his phone manners, but that could wait for later. All she could manage at the moment was his name. Her leg hurt and her hand hurt and her head hurt, and her stomach was thinking about throwing up. “I need you.”

His voice went from annoyed to very serious. “Molly? Where are you?”

“At the Christmas Village in Soma. I already called 9–1–1, but I need you.”

“Call Archer,” he said to someone with him, “tell him to get everyone to the Christmas Village in Soma ASAP.”

Molly knew he was probably talking to Kylie and that he’d already be on the move to get to her. That was Joe, that’s what he did, he moved heaven and earth to get to her whenever she needed him.

“Molly,” Joe said, an engine turning over in the background. “Talk to me.”

She opened her mouth, but suddenly she realized she could also hear voices from the main room rising, like the games really were over now and everyone was saying their goodbyes. She managed to roll herself up onto the table again, leaving a gory bloody handprint that made her swallow hard. She looked out the window. The distance to the ground was nothing compared to the three-story distance she’d faced last time she’d been in a similar situation, but the brain was a funny thing. The drop felt like a hundred miles.

It didn’t matter, it was hers and Lucas’s only exit.

“Molly,” Joe said again, tightly. “What’s going on?”

“Just hurry,” she whispered. “The bingo hall. South window.” Again, she jumped down from the table, gritted her teeth against the pain and went to Lucas. Stuffing the phone in her bra with the connection to Joe still open, she hooked her arms under his armpits and pulled. All lean muscle, he weighed a ton. She huffed and puffed, managing to drag him over to the table. “Lucas.” She shook him. “Dammit, you’ve got to wake up. You weigh a freaking ton and—”

He groaned and cracked open an eye. “Did you just call me fat?”

She choked out a laugh that might have been more like a sob of relief.

Lucas blinked and appeared to focus in on the blood all over her. Suddenly looking far more alert, he struggled against his restraints to sit up. “You’re hurt,” he said. “The blood—”

“Mostly yours,” she said, trying to hold him still. “Santa’s dead and Janet’s MIA with Tommy, but they’re going to come back. We need to go out the window. Now.”

“Talk to me, Molly,” Joe said from inside her bra. “I’m ten minutes out. What the fuck is happening?”

“Lucas has been shot,” she said. “He also took a pipe to the temple and has a head wound. Mrs. Claus lost her shit. Hurry.” Then she grabbed a chair—she had no idea why she hadn’t thought of it sooner, probably because her brains were scrambled—and shoved it near the table. She turned back to Lucas and pushed him toward the chair. “Get on the table. We’re going out the window.”

She kept her hands on him to keep him steadied and climbed up beside him. Then she bent for the chair. “Duck,” she said to Lucas. And when he did, she threw the chair against the window.

It broke straight through the glass and hit the ground. It didn’t sound like too far of a fall, she assured herself.

There were glass shards still in the window. Lucas was leaning heavily against the wall, looking more unconscious than conscious, but he straightened and pulled off his shirt, grimacing as it brushed his head wound. He tossed it to her. She wrapped her already bleeding hand in the material of the shirt and knocked out the rest of the glass, and then tugged Lucas to the window. “You first, big guy.”

He resisted, crouching and giving her a push with his shoulder, lifting her with some reserve of strength she hadn’t imagined possible.

“No,” she gasped. “You first—”

He never slowed, just shoved her through the window opening.

For a single heartbeat she clung to the window ledge, the remnants of glass biting into her hands. She didn’t feel it. Her eyes were locked on the ground, only ten feet down or so, her entire body frozen in terror. Well, not exactly frozen since she was shaking like a leaf.

“Molly.”

She lifted her head and locked eyes with Lucas’s.

“Listen to me,” he said, leaning as close as he could without the use of his hands. “You saved us. You did it. You’re amazing, but we’ve got to move. Right now they’re overconfident, unsuspecting that we’re on the move. They won’t stay that way. We have an edge and we need to keep it.”

“I can’t jump.”

“Yes, you can. Loosen your arms and lower yourself until your arms and legs are both fully extended. Then it’s only a few feet. I promise, you’ve got this.”

“But you’re shot and you don’t have use of your hands—”

“I’ll be right behind you, don’t doubt that for a second.”

She stared at him and in spite of the urgency, he nodded patiently, no frustration or irritation showing in his face or body.

“Keep your body loose, not tight,” he said. “Don’t lock your knees. You’ve got this,” he repeated, his gaze calm on hers. Calm and patient, even with one pupil clearly blown and blood dripping down his jaw and onto his bare chest.