Page 199 of After the Burn

My breath caught when I remembered who wasn’t. “I found Lila.”

Adrian glanced around. “Where is she?”

Wren walked up with Colson by her side. “We’ll have to show you.”

“Is she alive?” Beck asked, looking at me in concern.

I found myself distracted by Ben giving instructions to a few of his people. I still couldn’t look directly at him for long without my brain short-circuiting.

I’d deal with that later. For now, it had to be all about Lila.

“No.” I shook my head in response to Beck’s question.

Wren moved closer to Colson, and he wrapped her into his arms.

“She tried to escape, and Nash said she’d been bitten.” I choked back a sob as Adrian pulled me into his arms. “He put her in a pen with other women who’d already turned.”

“Why the fuck were they keeping them?” Lucas came to my side and laced his fingers with mine.

“To terrorize the women who were still alive,” I said into Adrian’s chest.

Silence.

“What do you want to do, baby?” he asked as he kissed the top of my head.

“Give my friend peace.” I felt a tear roll down my cheek, wetting his shirt.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Beck hugged me from behind, enclosing me in a circle of warmth and love.

Ben came with us when we explained where we were going, and I was glad. I didn’t want him out of my sight for the time being.

As we rounded the corner, Lucas stopped in his tracks. “Jesus.”

Several of the women enclosed in the pen were milling about, snapping at the air. Another was crouched near the back, chewing mindlessly on something I refused to identify.

Lila was nearest to us. Her once-beautiful hair now hung in filthy ropes around her shoulders, darkened with grease and dried blood. She wore an oversized gray sweatshirt, stained almost black across the front, and men’s jeans cinched awkwardly around her waist with a strip of cord.

Nothing about her looked like the girl who used to stand beside me at Ashford High under the Friday night lights.

Except her face.

Enough of it remained beneath the rot to see the shape of her nose, the small scar near her eyebrow from falling off a bike when she was twelve. And around one wrist, beneath layers of dirt, was the bracelet that matched the one hanging on my wrist.

My stomach twisted.

Lila.

My friend.

Beck’s hand settled against my back as Lila snapped her head toward us and charged.

Lila hit the fence hard enough to rattle the entire enclosure. She threw herself against the chain-link again, teeth snapping at empty air.

Lucas came to my other side, and I leaned into him.

“I remember watching you two walk down the hallway," he said with a sad sigh. "She always looked at you as if you knew all the world’s secrets.”

Ben stood a few feet behind us.