Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(121)

Dom pops out of the trees like a phantom, and I only barely strangle my scream.

“Lucky and Jasper are pinned behind Jayk’s truck. The barn’s an inferno at this point, and they’re too close.”

“Any eyes on Jaykob?”

Dom jerks his chin in a negative, and my breath hitches. Jayk.

Beau’s hand finds mine and squeezes, but he keeps his eyes on Dom, who only spares me a tense glance.

“What about the shed? Can we get to the weapons?”

“It’s right in the line of fire. No chance,” Dom replies. He checks his gun. “I’ll take the rear from the trees—you get to Bristlebrook. Cover the tree line and keep them off our guys’ asses.”

Beau shakes his head. “I’ll take the rear. I can do more good on the ground if the others need a medic.”

Dom hesitates, then nods, jaw tight. “Fine. Keep your comms open.”

Reading between the lines, I’m guessing the rear is going to be more dangerous. I bite my lip against saying something silly —like begging them to stay safe.

Smoke is creeping through the forest now and it burns my nose. I can’t see the blaze from where we are, but it has to be big to cause this much thick, filthy air. An inferno, Dom said.

My stomach sickens.

I try to zero in on the shouting, desperate for any reassurance that my guys are safe, but I can’t make out individual voices no matter how hard I strain. Jasper and Lucky are pinned? What does that even mean? Are they hurt? And where is Jayk?

“What can I do?” I whisper. My hands are shaking, and I press them against my thighs so they don’t notice.

“Stay put, Eden,” Dom tells me in a low voice. “I need you to stay out of the way— really stay out of the way this time. We can’t be worried about you right now. Go to the cave with the animals. It’s hidden. No one should find you there. If we don’t come for you in half a day, don’t wait any longer. Leave at night and move fast.”

Bile rises in my throat. “But you—you’ll come back for me. You’ll be fine, all of you. We got here. We’re here now.

Everything’s going to be okay.”

Beau tugs me to him and presses his mouth to mine in a fierce kiss. “Be safe, pet.”

Tears fill my eyes and the adrenaline of the last few hours catches up to me. But that’s not what they need right now. They need to be thinking about the others, about getting them out. I force myself to breathe and swallow down the thick lump in my throat. It’s coated in ash.

“You too, Beau,” I whisper, touching my fingers to his cheek, slightly coarse from his stubble.

I sear his face in my mind. I want to go back to the three of us tangled in the moss and that brief moment when everything was okay.

His cheek lifts under my fingertips in a half-smile, then he pulls back and leaves. My heart hammers as I watch him go. I turn to Dom. I’m about to speak—though I’m not sure what to say—when he takes my hand. He buries it inside his.

“Come with me,” he says gruffly. “I’ll get you as close as I can.”

He holds his rifle in front of him, releasing me when I follow him without question. The urgent speed from earlier has vanished. Dom scans the trees as we move steadily, ducking from one to the next as cover. We stay back from the exposed line of trees closest to the clearing.

As we move farther from the fire, I notice there’s a creeping hush over this part of the forest; the shouts and bangs and snaps of bursting, burning wood seem out of reach. Around us is a thick, deadly quiet. Smoke mars the way and the flickering light transforms everything into a smoggy, nightmarish haze.

Still, as we move closer to the tree line, I catch glimpses between the leaves and need to stifle my sobs. The barn looks like something from a hellscape—an angry orange blaze with a blackening skeleton underneath. Flashes of gunfire light up the darkness like fireworks.

Jayk.

“He wasn’t in there, right? He got out, didn’t he?” I can’t stop my shaky, panicked questions.

Dom doesn’t stop moving, but his lips tense. “I don’t know.”

I bite my lip, nodding. Nodding too much. I’m about thirty seconds from a panic attack.

I think of Jayk’s guitar and his messy bed and the photo of the woman in the dress and the boy with the missing tooth. I think of how he kissed me and his smirk and the look in his eyes when I asked to work in his barn beside him. Mostly, I just pray he wasn’t in there when that barn went up, even though I know he barely leaves it. My palms feel sticky and the thickness in the air makes my breaths rough and sore.

Abruptly, there’s a flash of movement in front of us and before I’ve even flinched back, Dom has lunged forward with the even, deadly speed of a viper. The man lurking in the bushes is disarmed and disabled in seconds, lying at his feet.

“I—”

Dom lifts his hand in a silencing gesture, and I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood. After a moment, he nods and grabs my wrist, tugging me closer to the tree line.

“Did you kill him?” I mumble, shocked at how quickly that happened.

“Yes.”

I swallow hard, then follow him through the darkness, stepping around the body. From here, we’re about a hundred yards from the action. There are men everywhere, firing toward the barn. There are men all through the trees too. It’s hard to see through the smoke. It’s chaos. Pure chaos.