Page 112 of Pretty Savage: Defy

I recognize the brown hair first. The slender hand that once held a flute.

Juliette.

Stretson lies across her, his fist tangled in the fabric of her dress.

A few hours ago, she was walking her fingers up the buttons of his shirt and promising the club might give her new ideas. He’d pulled her against him and laughed.

Now his eyes are open, fixed on nothing.

For a heartbeat, the gunfire deeper in the house sounds far away.

I know these people.

I know Stretson’s laugh and the way Juliette closes her eyes when she plays. I have stood beside them at ceremonies, parties, and funerals, never considering that one day I might find them like this.

They left in the first limo while I went back inside to help Wesleyson drag Tipson out of the bathroom. By the time we got him into the second car, Stretson and Juliette had already been on the road for fifteen minutes.

I sent them here ahead of me.

If I had kept everyone together, I might have noticed the missing guards before they crossed the threshold. Heard the shots. Stopped them at the doors.

Instead, Stretson died with his body over Juliette’s.

The others who rode in the first limo with them are nowhere in sight. I don’t know whether they made it farther into the house, were taken, or are lying somewhere I can’t see.

“Stretson! Juliette!”

Laurel slips around me before I can catch her. She crouches beside them and presses two fingers to Juliette’s neck, then Stretson’s.

I already know what she’ll find. There’s too much blood. Neither of them is breathing.

“They’re dead.” Laurel looks up at me, tears gathering in her eyes. “Carrson, they’re dead.”

I haul her upright by the elbow and pull her behind me. Anger flashes through me because she crossed an open doorway without checking for a shooter, but it disappears when I see her face.

I forget death shocks her.

She’s volunteered in hospitals since she was sixteen, but the only corpse she’d seen before The Order was Trent Riveria, the drug dealer I killed the night we met. When she told me that, I couldn’t comprehend a life where death was an exception instead of a possibility.

Behind her, Stretson’s hand remains knotted in Juliette’s dress.

I want to kneel beside them. Close his eyes. Move him so Juliette isn’t trapped under the weight of the man who died trying to protect her.

There isn’t time.

Gunfire cracks from deeper in the house. Whoever killed them may still be close enough to kill Laurel too.

I know the attackers are responsible. I know sending one limo ahead didn’t put bullets in their bodies.

That offers no relief from the guilt I feel. It doesn’t ease the burning in my lungs or the vice tightening around my chest.

Laurel lets out a soft sob, and I consider sending her back outside, somewhere she won’t have to see what waits deeper in the house, but I don’t know where the attackers came from or if more of them are prowling the grounds.

For now, the safest place for her is with me.

There’s a staccato burst of gunfire from the back of the house. I follow it, moving through the hallway with Laurel on my heels, checking each doorway and corner before I expose myself.

A man in a server’s uniform barrels out of the dining room.