Addicted by Elle Kennedy
It had come from the town square.
They charged forward with their weapons drawn, and Lennox clicked off the safety at the same time a gunshot cracked in the night air. For a second he thought he’d accidentally discharged his own pistol, or that maybe Jamie had fired hers, but then he saw the dark-clad figure up ahead. The raised arm. The gleaming barrel of a silver Glock.
It was Randy.
Lennox’s heartbeat was dangerously fast as he raced toward the teenager. He heard Jamie desperately calling out Sara’s name, but there was no answer. A moment later, they both skidded to a stop in front of the statue in the center of the town square.
Lennox’s heart lunged into his throat when he spotted Sara huddled at the base of the bronzed horse. She was hugging her knees, her face buried in her arms, and he registered the sounds of soft, barely audible sobs.
A dead Enforcer lay near her feet.
“Sara. Sweetie, get away from him.”
Jamie’s firm voice broke through the shocked silence. She reached for the teenage girl and yanked her to her feet. Lennox’s chest tightened when he realized that Sara’s dress was torn. Tears stained her cheeks, and when Jamie opened her arms, Sara threw herself into them, sobbing incoherently as Jamie led her away from the lifeless body on the pavement.
Randy flew up to Lennox, the gun in his hand shaking wildly. “He was hurting her!” the boy blurted out. “I saw them from my window and I grabbed my gun because I knew I had to stop him and I—I . . .” He trailed off. Stunned. Panting.
It was clear both Randy and Sara were in shock, and Lennox didn’t push for any more explanation than what Randy had provided. Lennox knew exactly what had happened: the girl had been attacked, and Randy had come to her rescue. There would be plenty of time to sort out the details—later. Right now they had a serious situation on their hands. A dead Enforcer, killed at the hands of an outlaw.
He met Jamie’s eyes over Sara’s head. The teenager was wrapped around her like a leech, refusing to let go. Goddamn it, where was Sara’s father? How had Gideon allowed her to sneak past him when there was an Enforcer unit in town? But that was something that would also need to be addressed later.
“We need to move the body,” he said flatly. “And clean up all this blood. And pray like hell that nobody heard the gunshot—”
He spoke too soon.
Footsteps were already thudding all around them. Reese appeared first, a rifle propped on her shoulder and Sloan and Arch on her tail. Kade stumbled into view from Lennox’s left, bare-chested and barefoot as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Rylan and Pike converged on the square from opposite sides of the street, the former holding a pistol, the latter an assault rifle.
Lennox’s gun snapped up when he registered more footsteps, these ones coming from the direction of the bell tower, where Reese had banished the Enforcers. Four of them were tearing toward the group, boots thumping and weapons drawn.
Reese cursed when she spotted the dead Enforcer, then spared a hasty look at Randy and Sara. “Get them out of here,” she ordered Jamie.
“Don’t move!”
Before Jamie could usher the kids away, Charlie had his gun pointed at her head.
Lennox resisted the frantic urge to throw himself in front of her. Maybe if Charlie didn’t look so calm, he would’ve done it. But the man’s expression, while holding a trace of fury, was utterly controlled. His hand was steady as he trained the weapon on Jamie.
The Enforcer beside him, however, wasn’t as skilled at keeping his composure. The man’s eyes went wild with outrage when he glimpsed his fallen comrade.
“You bitch! What the fuck did you do?” Charlie’s man spun toward Reese, gun hand whipping up.
In the same breath, the muzzle of Sloan’s pistol soared too. “Come near her and I blow your brains out,” Sloan hissed.
The other man was clearly drunk, slurring his speech. “Do it. I’ll still get a shot off. I’ll kill this little bitch before I even hit the ground.”
“Cruz,” Charlie said sharply.
He spun toward his commanding officer. “She killed Prescott!”
Reese spoke up in a weary voice. “I’m afraid this is just a little misunderstanding, Charlie.”
“A little misunderstanding?” Cruz roared. He pounced again, only to halt when Sloan cocked his gun. Swaying on his feet—damn it, he was definitely wasted—Cruz turned back to Charlie. “You’re going to stand here and do nothing? You’re going to let her get away with this? I told you she couldn’t be trusted!”
“Your man attacked one of our girls,” Lennox said coldly.
Charlie considered that. “That true?” he asked Reese.
She gave a brisk nod. “It was an act of self-defense.” Her tone sharpened. “I warned you what would happen if you messed with my girls again.”
Charlie sighed.
Which only enraged his man even further. “You fucking pieces of garbage killed a goddamn Enforcer! That’s punishable by death in the Colonies!” He jammed his gun in the air, nodding toward Reese. “We need to take her in, sir. Make her pay for this.”
The tension thickened, bringing a chill up Lennox’s spine. He didn’t like that Jamie was here. Sara. Randy. He wanted them gone, damn it. But nobody was moving a muscle. Nobody spoke for an interminably long time, until Arch finally broke the silence.
“Be smart about this, man,” he told Cruz.
The Enforcer’s wild gaze landed on his dead buddy. The gun wavered in his hand.
“Cruz,” Charlie said in a low voice. “Put your gun down.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re a fucking coward, sir! You’re playing nice with these scavengers? They’re dirt. They’re nothing. And they just killed my best friend!”
Lennox stifled a groan. Shit. So this was a personal beef? No way in hell was Cruz going to let this go.
“Listen to your commander, man,” Arch said gruffly. “You’re outnumbered. And nobody else needs to die tonight.”
Almost everyone who met Arch was intimidated by his size, but Cruz wasn’t fazed. He took a menacing step forward.
“No, someone does need to die,” he spat out. “That’s how you outlaws do it out here, no? There’re no trials. No justice. It’s an eye for an eye, right? This bitch took Prescott’s life? Well, I’m gonna fucking take hers!”
It all happened so fast Lennox didn’t have time to react. With a growl, Cruz swung his weapon toward Reese’s head and fired.
Sloan and Arch rushed forward to shield her.
And Cruz’s bullet hit Arch directly in the forehead.
22
Someone was screaming. Screaming so loudly it muffled the rapid burst of gunfire that exploded in the night. It was her, Jamie realized. She was screaming. And Arch . . . Arch’s body hadn’t even hit the ground before gunshots erupted all around her.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. She stared at the red-haired man sprawled at her feet. Her friend. Bethany’s lover. Blood oozed from his forehead, and she could swear his lifeless eyes were staring up at her in accusation.
“Jamie.”
He was going to be a father . . .
“Jamie!”
Someone yanked her to the side just as the ledge behind her shattered in a flying rush of cement chunks. Kade. He was dragging her out of the line of fire. Because everyone was shooting. Reese. Sloan. Charlie. Jamie’s frantic gaze registered a blur of motion, figures diving for cover, bodies hitting the ground.
Lennox. Where the hell was Lennox?
A shock wave of fear knocked her off her feet. No, it was Kade’s body. He’d thrown her to the ground behind that stupid horse statue, and his solid chest pressed down on her spine. She heard the sound of cartridges pinging on the pavement, her ears ringing as more shots were fired. She didn’t know where the Enforcers were. Didn’t know where Lennox was. Did
As panic skittered through her, she raised her head as high as she was comfortable risking. She couldn’t see past what was ahead of her, and Kade’s heavy weight made it impossible to crane her neck. She managed to wiggle out from under him and spoke in a panicked whisper. “Where’s Sara?”
“Jamie—”
She ignored his protest and crawled toward the side of the statue. Her heart was beating a million times a second, but her hand was steady, gun firmly in her grip. She took a breath, then peered out into the square.
Nobody shot at her. But the gunfire was still going strong. A shadowy figure popped up from behind one of the cisterns across the street. There was a burst of light from a gun muzzle, another deafening blast, and then a crash as chunks of brick dislodged from the building behind her and fell to the ground.
Jamie shifted her head and that was when she saw her. Sara. Flat on her stomach next to the dead Enforcer who’d attacked her. Trying to crawl away while bullets whizzed over her head.
Oh God.
“Damn it, Jamie.” Kade locked both arms around her as she tried to lunge forward.
“I need to get Sara! She’s in shock. And one of those bullets could ricochet off something and hit her, Kade!” When his grip only tightened, she growled in frustration. “Let me go!”
“No.” He tugged her back into their safe nook behind the statue, then palmed his pistol at his side. “Stay here and cover me. I’ll get her.”
“You will?”
“Yes. But you need to cover me, okay?”
She swallowed hard. Her mouth tasted like fear. Adrenaline was racing in her blood. But she managed a nod.
They got into position, Kade crouching beside her. Just as he started to move, a bullet cracked into the bronze horse and the damn thing’s leg snapped off, nearly clipping off Jamie’s ear.
“You okay?” Kade said urgently.
She shoved her hair off her forehead. “I’m fine.”
“You ready?”
She gripped her gun in two hands. “Go,” she urged.
Kade darted out, running at a swift crouch, while Jamie rose from her concrete shield and unloaded her clip in the direction of the only threat she was certain of. When the gunfight started, she’d seen Charlie dive behind the stone wall to her right, and now she riddled it with bullets. Pieces of concrete shattered with each shot, showering the ground with white flakes and jagged shards.
From the corner of her eye, she saw that Kade had reached Sara. He scooped the girl into his arms and started heading back.
He was two feet from the statue when a bullet struck him in the side.
Horror flooded Jamie’s chest, but although Kade’s body jerked from the hit, he kept moving. Seconds later, he threw himself down and dropped Sara into Jamie’s arms.
The girl blinked up in confusion. “Jamie?”
“It’s okay, sweetie. You’re okay.” She touched the girl’s cheek in reassurance, but goddamn it, it wasn’t okay. Kade wasn’t okay. He’d been shot in the lower abdomen and Jamie felt nauseated when she saw the blood gushing out of the wound.
Kade groaned, collapsing in a sitting position against the back of the statue. “Fuck.” An agonized noise left his lips as he pressed his hands to his stomach.
“Stay down,” Jamie whispered to Sara, who was now curled up in a ball on the cold ground, oblivious to the gunshots still rocking the air.
Jamie wriggled over to Kade, then ripped off her shirt and balled it up between her shaky fingers. When she pressed the fabric to his side, he flinched in pain. “We need to keep pressure on it,” she said quietly.
He nodded. His face was beginning to turn an alarming shade of white.
“Reese! Goddamn it, stop this!”
Charlie’s voice thundered from behind the wall, and Jamie suddenly realized that the square had gone silent. The gunfire had stopped.
She didn’t dare peek out again, even though every nerve ending in her body was desperate to find out if Lennox was okay. If Rylan and Pike and Arch—oh God. No, not Arch. Arch was dead.
Nausea squeezed her throat again. She ordered herself not to throw up. To concentrate on pressing the already soaked shirt to Kade’s wound.
“I’m coming out, Reese!” Charlie again. He sounded eerily calm. “I’m putting my gun down and walking out right now. I want you to do the same.”
There was no answer from Reese, wherever she was. If she was even alive.
Kade gave a soft groan, and Jamie quickly covered his mouth with her palm. “Quiet,” she murmured. “I know it hurts, but you have to be quiet.” Jesus. He was bleeding profusely. Her hands were sticky with his blood.
Charlie was still talking. “I’m sorry about your man. I really am. Cruz shouldn’t have done that.” A soft curse. “But he paid for it. I’m looking at his brains right now. Cruz is dead. So are Zeke and Briggs and Prescott. Four of my men are dead, Reese. But I don’t want to die tonight.”
He waited for a response, but the silence stretched on.
Kade’s breathing grew shallower.
“I know you can see me, Reese.” Charlie swore in frustration. “I’m unarmed, damn it. I just want to talk, find a way out of this for both of us.”
There was a soft rustling. Jamie thought she heard a low male warning, and then Reese’s voice rang clearly in the night. “I’m coming out.”
Jesus. The woman had balls of steel.
“What’s your solution here, Charlie?” Reese’s footsteps echoed in the square, her voice getting louder as she neared the statue. “You really want to tell me you’re just going to walk away? Pretend like four of your men aren’t dead? That you won’t come back here and set this whole town on fire?”
Charlie was quick to counter. “And if you kill me, you really think Ferris won’t send more men to locate his missing unit? That he won’t track us here and then execute you and every single one of your people for killing a troop of Enforcers? At least if you let me go, I can spin the story in a way that benefits us both.”
Reese laughed harshly. “You mean a way that benefits you.”
“Us,” he insisted.
Reese paused again. Jamie wanted to scream at the woman to make a decision. To do something. Anything. Kade needed help, damn it. The bleeding had slowed, but his face was dangerously pale, and his breathing didn’t sound so good.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Reese finally said. “I can’t take the risk of you reporting us.” Another pause, and then Jamie heard one faint syllable. “Sloan.”
A moment later, a deafening shot was fired, followed by a loud thump, as if a body had hit the ground.
Within seconds, the entire area was bustling again. Footsteps, several sets of them, slapped the pavement. Reese was issuing sharp commands at her people. “Sloan, the bell tower. The last Enforcer is still there. He was out cold before, but he might have heard the shots. Beck, get Randy to the infirmary.”
Randy? Had he been hurt?
And where the hell was Lennox?
A gust of relief slammed into Jamie’s chest when Lennox appeared in front of her. Both his hands clamped around her shoulders, shaking her urgently. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she assured him.
“So am I,” Kade said weakly. “Thanks for asking.”
When Lennox’s gaze dropped to the other man’s gut, he released a loud curse. “Rylan!” he shouted. “Get over here!”
The blond man rushed over to them, and Jamie hurriedly gave them a report. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I felt for an exit wound and didn’t find one. The bullet is still inside him.”
Rylan and Lennox exchanged a grim look. She knew what they were thinking, but she couldn’t bear to hear them say it out loud. Her hands were suddenly moved off Kade’s abdomen as Rylan took her place at the man’s side. Pike joined th
“We need to get him out of here,” Pike said tersely.
“We shouldn’t move him.” But even as Jamie voiced the protest, she knew they had no other choice. What else were they supposed to do? Let Kade bleed to death on the cold pavement?
She rose unsteadily to her feet, her gaze falling on Sara. “We need to find Gideon,” she told Lennox. “Sara needs her father. And—” Jamie’s breath caught in her throat as she remembered the unthinkable. “Bethany. Oh my God. Someone needs to tell Bethany about Arch.”
“I’ll do it,” Lennox said gruffly.
Pain squeezed her chest, so tight she could barely speak. She thought about the couple, the adoration in their eyes whenever they had looked at each other. “No. I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?”
She gulped through the agony in her throat. “Yes.”
He swept his hand over her cheek and she sagged into his touch, momentarily blocking out the chaos around them. The shouts. The footsteps. The sharp voices of Rylan and Pike as they enlisted Beckett and Travis to help them lift Kade.
She focused instead on Lennox’s familiar face. His strong grip on her waist as he pulled her close. His comforting lips on the side of her neck.
She allowed herself this moment. She drew strength from him. Then she stepped out of the embrace and whispered, “Go help Rylan take care of Kade. I’ll find you after I talk to Bethany.”
Nodding, he kissed her temple, then went to join the others.
Jamie took a breath and walked in the opposite direction. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t. But she had no choice.
Somebody needed to tell Bethany that the man she loved was dead.
* * *
The town infirmary was located in the basement of the building next to the restaurant. It had fluorescent lighting that made Lennox’s eyes hurt, and the ever-present smell of mold and antiseptic that burned his nostrils each time he inhaled. More important, it had cabinets full of medical supplies that had been amassed on raids, and two fairly competent medics who’d once fought in the People’s Army.