Page 1 of The Final Cut

CHAPTER ONE

REVA

Cal’s blood is warm under my hands.

That’s the first thing my brain fixes on. It acknowledges and dismisses the gunshot, still echoing in the back of my skull. It moves past the screams coming from inside the house, the music cutting off somewhere beyond the terrace doors, one elegant string note plucking discordantly in the middle of it all.

The blood is warm.

Too warm.

And too much.

My palms press hard below his ribs, where dark red keeps pushing between my fingers no matter how much pressure I use. The green satin of my dress is bunched beneath my knees, soaked at the hem, stuck to the stone where blood and spilled champagne and spilled dirt from the planter have turned the terrace into something ugly.

“Cal.” My voice comes out small. Wrong. Nothing like the voice I use in the back of an ambulance when someone else’s father is bleeding out in front of me.

I clear my throat and try again. “Stay with me. You hear me? You stay with me.”

His eyes flutter.

I lean closer, one hand slipping before I shove it back into place and press harder. “No. No, don’t do that. Look at me.”

His mouth moves. Blood shines at the corner. My throat closes so hard I almost choke on it.

“You are not allowed to die,” I whisper. “Do you understand? I love you, and you are not allowed to do this to me.”

His lashes lift just enough for me to see him.

No. I can’t think like that. I can’t make him small and precious and half-gone already. I can’t let my mind turn him into memory while his blood is still pumping under my hands.

“You told me to run,” I say, because anger is easier than this terror spreading through me, and I need something with teeth. “That was stupid. I’m not running. You know I don’t run, Cal, not unless zombies are chasing me.”

Nash is beside me, one knee on the stone, his hand firm at Cal’s shoulder. He is talking, but I only catch pieces of it. Pressure. Ambulance. Southwest gate. Two shooters down. Secure the side drive. His voice is calm in a way that feels obscene, but his eyes are not calm. Nothing about his face is calm.

Deacon stands a few feet away, gun in hand, body angled toward the open terrace doors. He has blood on his sleeve. Some of it might be Cal’s. Some of it might belong to the man I shot. I don’t know. I don’t care.

“Where is Delia?” I demand.

My hands never leave Cal’s wound, but the question rips out of me sharp enough that Nash looks up.

Deacon’s jaw tightens. “Inside.”

“Where is she inside? Go get her⁠—”

“She was taken through the east corridor,” he says. “Two men took her, one wounded. I saw them pull her past the chapel arch before I got clear.”

For half a second, the world tilts. Delia’s face flashes behind my eyes. Her hand shoving me. Her voice, choked and furious. Stay down. The guard’s arm around her throat. Her feet dragging against the stone.

She tried to save me. Cal took the bullet. Both thoughts hit the same place, and something inside me nearly buckles.

“Go get her,” I say.

Nash’s hand tightens on Cal’s shoulder. “Reva.”

“Go get her.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek. “If I leave this terrace, police walk into a dead man, a shot security guard, your fingerprints on Cal’s weapon, and your dress covered in blood.”