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"So," Merc says "Let’s go get her now It’s only been a couple days"

Nick’s eyes burn but his words are eerily calave her away by now"

"What?" Ja about?"

"Last year, on our eighteenth birthday? That wasn’t the one"

"The one what?" Merc says, throwing his hands up "Will you stop talking in fucking code? Just spit it out"

Nick looks at Ja you, ht But it was never to you And in a few days, e turn nineteen, ood on that promise"

"Where?" Jaonna be a big party Her prootta tell you--"

And for a second I really think he will I really think that Nick is gonna tell Ja he needs to know that he has no idea he needs to know Ja here A shift from potential to realized consequences

Ja sound and then he’s gone Dropped down Or hit Bullets spray into the house I screaed to the back of the house

Chapter Nine

Sasha

"Sasha, run!" Nick is pulling me out the back door and we run so fast down the hill, I fall face first and roll Nick scoops me up and carriesthis tiunfire is still rattling off AK’s spitting out bullets

After a few e dotted with pine trees and then we both slip because the incline is so severe and we are a human landslide Rocks and clumps of dirt splatter out in front of our boots and then we plop to the ground and keep running There’s no trees here and Nick runs faster "Hurry, Sash Hurry," he prods me

But my stitch in my side is so painful, my pathetic attempts to suck in air so painful… "I can’t, Nick I can’t run anyet under the cover of the pines "Just a little farther," he huffs as he boosts me up the side of a small cliff by the butt He cliain "Hurry, hurry, hurry We need to get out of here before they co so fast I think I ht die My phone buzzes in my pocket

"Answer it," Nick barks atme to stop with him when momentum takes me forward "Give me your phone"

I jerkon"

"Who’s calling you?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Look," he growls in my face "Look who it is"