Brutally Beautiful(74)

The gunman was talking again and my gag reflex started playing with me…2 exits. 5 windows. 4 customers. 1 waitress. 1 brother. 1 Lainey. 1 shooter. How many guns…Deputies at tables…The walls were closing in around me. I have to get Lainey and Dylan out of here alive.

Two more gunshots rang out, slicing through the coiled fear of the room, and then my brother fell. Dylan just dropped to the ground, collapsing as if he’d fainted.

What the…?

Confusion muddled my brain. Did he faint? He fainted, right? Please, God, just let him have fainted, let him just be a * and have fainted. I crawled on my hands and knees for my brother. I tried to drag Lainey with me, yanked on her pant leg hard, but she f*cking stood up. I felt the sob in my throat before it escaped my lips. I did not want to watch her die. I needed to get that gun away from her and kill whoever it was on the other side of the bar, before they shot Lainey, but she moved so quickly, she was out of my reach in a second.

With a noticed familiarity, Lainey clicked the magazine holding all the bullets into the gun, securing the fact it was fully loaded. How the hell did she know how to do THAT? Calmly, taking off the safety as she stood, she aimed it at the shooter. “Put. The. Gun. Down,” the calmness in her voice had a razor-sharp edge. Oh, God no. Don’t shoot Lainey.

One gunshot rang out in front of her and she didn’t even flinch. Shoving the gun in the back of her pants, I could hear Bobby and George’s voices calling out for backup and securing the building. Backing away, I crawled over to my brother, but I couldn’t see him. All I saw was blood.

People ran around us, yelling and screaming, yet all I saw was the dark red blood that spread and seeped across the thin material of his shirt. Dylan was shot, and he was dying.

With a calmness that stopped my jittering heart, Lainey kneeled down and talked to Dylan. Her voice was steady and authoritative, yet I barely heard the words. I had no understanding of anything but my little brother had been shot, bleeding and in pain. She was suddenly wrapping him in some sort of bandage that suctioned down over the bullet holes while she spoke to him in even, gentle whispers.

“Kade,” she said to me in that same methodic voice, laying her hand on my face. “Go get one of those men and have them help me put Dylan in my car.”

I stood and stumbled. “But the ambulance…”

She grabbed my face in both her hands, the rusty smell of blood choked my airways. “Do it now. He doesn’t have twenty extra minutes to wait.” She spoke the words with a quiet calm brutality.

I grabbed George, the biggest and youngest one, and dragged him over as Lainey had Bobby calling the hospital straight and telling them that we’d be there in less than twenty minutes and then had a brief conversation that included a bunch of medical terms that no f*cking waitress should know.

Carefully, George and I carried Dylan out and stopped in front of a freaking Porsche; engine running. Lainey was in front of us opening doors and jumped right into the driver’s seat, banging the hood of the car for me to get Dylan in.

We gently laid him in the backseat. Bree climbed in after him, and I was shoved in by George and yanked by Lainey at the same time. I wasn’t even right side up in the front passenger seat and she was already shifting the car into drive and slamming on the gas pedal.

She pulled out of the lot as if she knew what the f*ck she was doing. She didn’t stop accelerating as her eyes glanced over to mine. “Kade, seatbelt. And keep your eyes to the right for traffic. I’m not stopping unless I have to and I need directions once we hit town.”

Her eyes snapped to the rearview mirror and with a soft voice continued to speak with Dylan, “I’m going to get you to the hospital fast. How are you feeling, buddy?”