“What the fuck are we going to do, E?”
“The police will be hunting him.”
“So fucking what? If Julian doesn’t want to be found, he won’t. That man is fucking crafty and if he has Russo on his side… we’re fucking doomed.”
“Hey, none of that. We are not giving up, you hear me?” My hold on him tightened. “We are not going to let this defeat us. We’ve got through worse, Xavi. We can get through this. Together. Just like we always do.”
I wanted to be optimistic but even I knew we were skating on thin ice. One more wrong move and we’d all be done for. I couldn’t let Xav down though. He needed me to be the strong one here.
“We need to tell Quinn.”
He sounded so defeated and it cut me. Quinn was already in a foul mood. This would likely make him hit the fucking roof.
“Tell me what?” came Quinn’s voice from behind us.
I let go of Xav and turned, finding Quinn with his hair half sticking up like he’d ran his hand through it multiple times and his eyes wild.
“Julian has escaped and the police have launched a manhunt.”
Quinn stared at me for a long moment.
“We don’t have time to deal with that.” That’s when I noticed his voice was all high-pitched and panicked.
“Why not?”
He walked further into the room as Xav turned and took him in. Quinn was as white as a fucking sheet.
“Ash just called me… Her cousin, Carlo, tracked them down and ran them off the road.”
“What the fuck?” Xav exclaimed.
“The car is a wreck and Rory is unconscious.”
“Tell her to call a fucking ambulance then.”
Quinn shook his head.
“She can’t… you should know that. How is she going to explain what happened? We need to go to them. We have to go now.”
Quinn was right. She couldn’t explain that shit away, although we were going to have to at some point. Surely someone would find the car and the police would track us down. Right now, we needed to make sure Ash and Rory were okay.
“Is she okay? Fuck.”
“No, she isn’t, but I’m more fucking worried about Rory right now.”
“We’ll talk about it in the car, come on,” I said.
Quinn walked out with Xav and me on his tail. We got coats and shoes on in record time and were out in the car the next minute. I made sure to grab a first aid kit on the way. Rory had taken the Audi so we took the Range Rover. Probably good to have more room if we were going to transport both Ash and Rory back here, especially with them both being injured.
“What the fuck happened?” Xav asked from the back as I drove and Quinn sat next to me.
Quinn stared out the front window with his fists clenched in his lap. His face was still white like this whole thing had shaken him to the core. I reached over and squeezed his shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay.”
His shoulders slumped forward and he looked down at his hands.
“Is it? It’s my responsibility to look out for him. He has to be okay. He just has to be.”
Quinn and Rory had always been close. Probably closer than me and Xav in some respects. Rory was pretty much a little brother to Quinn. He was super protective over our quiet friend and we couldn’t blame him for it after we’d all seen what Rory had gone through. That’s why Quinn had done everything in his power to make sure Rory had comfortable surroundings at home. Given him whatever he asked for.
“Will you tell me and Xav what happened?” My voice was soft. If I lost my shit like Xav had, it wouldn’t help anyone. One of us had to stay calm, which is why I was driving. “Also, do you know where they are?”
His fists unclenched and he fiddled with his phone before he leant over to the console and input the address into the SatNav. It’d take us at least an hour and I wasn’t sure how bad Rory was. This was fucking shit. What if he didn’t regain consciousness? What if we couldn’t help him? Maybe Ash did need to call an ambulance even if it would cause us a headache.
“I made sure to track her phone,” he told me by way of explanation, which I was hardly surprised about considering this was Quinn.
“And you didn’t check up on them before?”
“I was trying to be respectful of Rory even if I was angry at him.”
Who’d have thought after the hissy fit Quinn threw last night, he’d actually let Rory off the hook and respect his choices.
He rubbed his face and set his phone down.
“She said they were on the back roads when a Jeep came out of nowhere and rammed into the side of the car twice before smashing into the back and causing them to spin out of control and then they drove into a tree. She has no idea how long she was unconscious for.”
My blood ran cold. How someone could just fucking crash into them astounded me.
“Rory wasn’t awake, but she had no choice but to confront the person who did it. Seems Rory told her about the gun in the glove compartment and she used that to threaten her cousin into leaving. Then she realised she couldn’t call 999 as she has the gun and that’s when she called me. As far as I know, Rory is still out cold and Ash is too scared to move him.”
I glanced at
