“Nic,” he murmured. His voice was hoarse and barely audible.
“I’m here,” I said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I took his face between my hands, scanning it for signs of abuse. He winced as my fingers found a softball-sized lump on the back of his head and again when I inspected the ugly bruises around his throat. They were similar to the ones on my own neck. It was clear that Wes had been through just as much hell as I had in the past several hours. The suffering had amounted to nothing though. Wes was safe, and we were together. That was all that mattered. I released a sigh of relief, tugged Wes toward me, and wrapped him up in a hug.
“Where’s your jacket?” I asked, sniffling as I pressed my face into the fabric of his police shirt. It was damp with sweat and smelled faintly of wood dust. “It’s freezing outside.”
“Lost it,” he mumbled, his chin resting heavily on the top of my head. He swayed in my grasp, but to my surprise, Orson Lockwood took Wes’s arm around one of his own shoulders. With Lockwood’s help, we maneuvered Wes into the passenger seat of Lauren’s sedan. As I leaned against the open door, Wes asked in a garbled voice, “Nic, what does he want?”
“Shh. Relax, Wes. He’s helping us.”
“He tried to kill me.”
“No, we made a deal.”
Wes’s watering, red-rimmed eyes met my own. The stress from the previous twenty-four hours was taking its toll. He looked positively feverish. “Don’t trust any of them, Nicole.”
I shook off my jacket and wrapped it around Wes. Then I leaned past him, turned the key in the ignition, and cranked the heater up to the highest setting. “Don’t worry. I’m taking care of it.”
Before I could stand up straight again, his hand closed around my wrist. “I’m serious, baby,” he muttered. “Don’t trust him.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping to reassure him. I brushed his damp hair away from his cold forehead. “I don’t trust him. Any of them. I promise.”
This satisfied him enough to release his grip on me. I straightened, firmly closing his door before I turned to face Lockwood again.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“Without a hitch,” reported Lockwood, watching Wes through the tinted window. “Catherine’s back on campus for now, and the Raptors loyal to her are currently engaged in a manhunt for you. Lauren, however, has managed to lead them astray.”
“She’s clever, that one.”
“No doubt,” he agreed. There was no hiding his pride at Lauren’s accomplishments. “In any case, you should have plenty of time to clear the area.”
I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest to make up for my lack of outerwear. “And the rest of the plan?”
“It will take some time and careful preparation to set the putsch in motion,” he said. He glanced across the parking garage to where the rest of the city lay waiting. Somewhere out there, the rest of the Raptors waited in the depths of the Waverly library for Lockwood to return from disposing of Wes’s body. “I’ll make contact with you when it’s safe to return to campus. If you need anything, if you find yourself in trouble, you have Lauren’s information. Do not hesitate to use it.”
Before I could respond, the sound of another car’s engine rumbled from the level below us, the peal of tires against polished concrete echoing through the garage. Lockwood’s eyes widened in alarm, and he shoved me toward the driver’s side of Lauren’s car.
“Go!” he hissed, his eyes trained on the ramp that led to the lower levels.
Heart racing, I dropped into the driver’s seat, threw the sedan in reverse, and backed out of the parking spot. Wes grasped both the middle console and the handle above his door, steadying himself, but before I could aim the car at the exit ramp, another black SUV thundered up to the fourth level, peeling around the corner and heading straight for us. The tinted windshield obscured the driver, but I wrenched the steering wheel to the right, careening out of the line of fire, but the SUV still clipped the back bumper on the left side. The sedan jolted, the wheel escaping from my grip. With a yell, I righted our course and hit the gas, determined to make it down the exit ramp this time. Beside me, Wes’s face had turned a pallid green color, and I hoped for the sake of Lauren’s leather interior that he could control his stomach long enough for us to make it out of the parking garage.
As I floored it toward the ramp, a loud, dull thunk reverberated through the garage. I glanced in my rearview mirror and immediately wished that I hadn’t. The SUV swerved into a dangerous U-turn, and as it swiveled in our direction once more, it revealed a terrible sight in front of it. Orson Lockwood had not made it back to his own vehicle in enough time to avoid the oncoming attack. He lay, bloodied and still, on the gray, unforgiving pavement.
24
“Is he dead?”
My knuckles were bone white on the steering wheel as I guided the car around the last level of the parking garage and bounced onto the open road. The SUV was still on the warpath, the screech of its tires casting a pall over the cabin of Lauren’s sedan.
“You saw?” I asked Wes as I let my right foot drape heavily over the gas pedal.
“I heard,” he replied shortly.
I looked into the rearview mirror. The SUV emerged from the garage and turned in our direction. At the next intersection, I made an abrupt right then an immediate left, hoping to lose whatever BRS member had been assigned to take out Lockwood and track us down.
“Is he dead?” asked Wes
