Page 1 of Split You Open

One

Wesley

It takes me three passes before spotting Santi.

He waves his hands in the air, and the light from his cell phone catches my attention. I pull over. Rather than wait for him to climb into the truck, I jump out and hurry over to him.

“Santi! Are you okay?”

Before he can answer, I throw my arms around him and hug him to me. He grunts in surprise, then lets out a weak chuckle.

“I’m good, Wes. Just a few scratches.”

“Thank goodness,” I breathe out in relief.

I drop my arms and step back to get a good look at him. He’s got a cut by his right brow and a split lip but otherwise appears to be unharmed, just like he said.

“We need to go after them, Wes,” Santi says as he takes me by the arm and drags me back to the truck. “We can probably catch up with them if we hurry!”

We climb into the truck but rather than barrel out of here and give chase like he wants, I sit in the driver’s seat and stare straight ahead. My heart is racing. Even with Santiago here with me, it won’t settle. There’s too much going on. Too much out of my control. There’s got to be a way to fix all of this. But right now, I don’t know what the fuck to do.

“Wesley!” Santi shakes my arm as he stares at me from the passenger seat. “Did you hear me? We have to go. Rhett and Blair need us!”

Yes. They do.

Unfortunately, we’ve run into a problem.

“We have no way to track them, Santi.” I reach up and pinch the bridge of my nose. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to push away the fear, panic, and anger warring in my chest. It’s making it hard to think. “They didn’t take one of our trucks and Rhett tossed his phone in the woods somewhere near here—trust me, I’ve tried tracking it.”

Santi groans. “Wes, we have to do something.”

I swallow hard. What the hell are we supposed to do?

“Right now, we have to clean up any evidence of our presence here,” I tell him, trying to think fast. “We need to tow your truck out of the woods.”

Santiago growls with frustration. “We can just set it on fire and be done with it.”

“And draw attention to it? So close to the more than a dozen bodies a quarter of a mile away?” I shake my head. “No.”

“Yeah… I saw that. It’s bad over there, isn’t it?” Santi confirms in a low, pained voice. “Rhett didn’t have a gun on him, Wes. That was all Blair. Do you think she’s okay? Rhett would’ve said if she wasn’t, right?”

I shrug. I don’t have an answer to that.

“Come on, help me get the chains on your truck and get it to the cabin. We’ll come up with a plan once we’re⁠—”

“Go back to the cabin?” Santi whips his head back and forth fiercely. “No. I’m not going back there. I can’t pretend that I don’t know what Ledger’s done. He’ll see right through⁠—”

“He’s not there.”

“What? Where…” He must see something on my face because his question trails off as he stares at me. “No. Please tell me he doesn’t know that I know.”

I wince, wishing more than anything that I could give him better news. “You were on speaker phone. He heard everything.”

“What?!? Why didn’t you⁠—"

“Ledger held me at fucking gunpoint while you were talking! I couldn’t warn you to stop.”

Santi’s fist hits the dashboard. “FUCK!”