“I don’t know,” I said. The image of Lockwood’s prostrate body flickered in my mind. Wes leaned his forehead against the window, and his eyes fluttered shut. “How are you feeling?” I asked. “What did they do to you?”
“I can’t think.”
“You have to, Wes. Stay awake.” I reached over to take his hand. “Can you tell me what happened? Anything? Where were you?”
“In a warehouse,” he mumbled. Though his speech was not as coherent as I would’ve hoped, the squeeze of my fingers in his own reassured me. “I don’t know where. Nothing around it but farmland.”
“When did you get that giant lump on the back of your head?”
“Yesterday morning. They attacked me at the apartment.”
My stomach lunged at the thought. If Wes’s head injury was severe enough, the hours without treatment could lead to worse complications. He needed to be seen by a doctor. He needed to have scans taken of his head just in case. But with the Raptors so close on our tail, I didn’t have the option to drive Wes to the nearest hospital.
“I hope they didn’t hurt Franklin,” Wes mused. “Oh, my God. Where’s Franklin?”
“He’s fine,” I said, making a mental note to ask Lauren how Franklin was actually doing. “Right now, I need to figure out how to get you to a doctor. Did Donovan do this to you?”
“Yeah, that prick.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead.”
The car lurched as I momentarily lost my grip on the wheel at this newfound piece of information. “What?”
“He’s dead,” repeated Wes in a flat tone. Shock seemed to have robbed him of any emotion. “Brooks killed him. They tried to make me do it—”
“What?”
He dropped his head into his hands. “I couldn’t do it, Nic. I know he’s trash, but I couldn’t do it. After all he’s put us through—”
“Hey,” I said, trying to regain Wes’s attention. “You should be proud. You are not a murderer. I’m so glad you didn’t stoop down to their level.”
He wiped his eyes but made no other indication that he had heard me. “Where are we going?”
“Good fucking question,” I mumbled, taking another random right turn. I looked behind us again. The streets were dark and deserted. There were no signs of the Raptors’ revengeful SUV.
“What happened?” asked Wes. “Why did Lockwood try to help us?”
“We cut a deal,” I explained. “If he got you back safe, I promised to help him take down the Raptors.”
“But why would he—?”
“It’s a long story, babe. Honestly, I’m more concerned about the fact that the Raptors knew we had planned to rendezvous at that parking garage.”
“Would Lockwood have told them?”
“If he was going to double-cross us, then why would the Raptors try to kill him?” I glanced at each street sign that we sped past, as if the glowing, neon letters would point me in the direction of a safe destination. “It doesn’t make any sense. Flynn had to have been behind it. She must’ve figured out that I made a deal with him, but the only people who knew about it were Lauren and me. And if Lauren—”
“Nic, you’re making my head spin.”
“Sorry, I just—I have no idea what I’m doing.”
We raced along in silence for several minutes. The city thinned out as we approached its outskirts. The space between the streetlights grew, and the dark road vanished into the thickening trees ahead. As we passed the last streetlight, zooming into the shadows of the woods, I realized where we were. The road here forked. If we turned left, it would lead us back toward Waverly University and its surrounding area, but if I made a right, we would be home free on the interstate with a plethora of escape routes at our service.
I guided the car to the right. I would get Wes as far away from Waverly as possible and take him straight to a hospital. When Wes had recovered, we could figure out what to do about the Black Raptor Society.
Then Wes twitched in his seat.
“Wes?” I glanced over at his unmoving form. “Wes!”
He bucked forward and threw up then remained doubled over in the passenger seat.
“Oh, God. Wes!”
At the last second, I jerked the car to the left. At this rate, Wes wouldn’t make it to a hospital, but there was one place in the Waverly area that he might be safe.
Ten minutes later, I pulled Lauren’s sedan into the driveway of O’Connor’s house and left Wes in the car to rush up to the front door. The orange tabby cat fled from its seat on the window as I pounded heavily on the knocker.
“Eileen!” I bellowed, abandoning the knocker in favor of slamming my fists against the faded red paint of the door. “It’s Nicole Costello! Please, I need your help!”
The curtain swept back from the window, revealing Eileen’s alarmed expression. As she opened the door, the breeze tugged at her long nightgown. That and the pale reflection of the overhead porch light on Eileen’s tired face made it look like a benevolent ghost had answered the door.
“Nicole!” she said. “What on earth—?”
“Eileen, please.” I stepped off the porch, gesturing wildly toward the car. “My boyfriend is hurt. We’re in trouble. We can’t go to a hospital. O’Connor—I mean, George—the same people that were after him are after us.”
For a moment, she only regarded me from the doorframe, and the terrible thought occurred to me that she would refuse to help us. Then she took a coat from the hook by the door, slipped into a pair of boots, and joined me outside.
“Let’s see what we can do for him.”
“Thank you so much.”
I opened the passenger-side door to find Wes still slumped over in his seat. The acrid scent of stomach bile floated out into the open air, and beside me, Eileen wrinkled her nose.
“All right, let’s get him inside,” she said.
Together, the pair of us managed to pry Wes from the car. Out in the chilly air, I was relieved to see that he wasn’t entirely unconscious. Suspended between Eileen
