Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

19. Evie

Chapter nineteen

Evie

Evie was dreaming again.

Sweeping purple skies over dark, troubling waters that churned violently from within. The sky broke apart as she watched and smoke began to seep out, streaming over the water and choking her as it filled the world, horizon to cloud.

The caustic bitterness of it settled into her throat and caused her to cough, burned her nostrils and set the small fluttering of panic starting in her throat.

She was in France. The forest was on fire before her. She stood staring at it, mouth open. Her hair fluttered across her eyes and swarmed into her mouth while she tried to untangle herself from it.

“Go, go!” A soldier caught her up by the shoulders and shoved her hard toward the tide of soldiers and Red Cross volunteers fleeing the ambush. “Don’t just stand there, you’re going to get yourself killed! ”

Another bomb fell and the explosion rocked her from the inside out, woke up the hypnotized animal inside her and she ran, ran like a rabbit with a wolf at its heels.

There was the water again, the purple waves boiled before her and she shifted back and forth, prepared to feel their agitated movements but found herself on startlingly solid ground. The burning trees. The falling soldiers. The drone of airplanes.

She stumbled to her knees and looked down, her belly growing more and more distended by the second. Something hot and wet began to gush between her thighs. She reached between her legs and brought her hand up, black with blood.

Not the baby, too.

She tried to scream, but nothing came out. She tried again and again, but all sound was bleached from her terror. She was helpless. Helpless.

Another cough came and began to stir the dream until it fragmented and began to fall away.

With a surge of adrenaline that was almost painful, Evelyn sat up, panting, hands on her abdomen.

The baby was gone.

The blood was gone.

The dream was gone, but the smoke was still there. God, was she back in France? She listened for the murmur of soldiers and the clink of canteens, the subtle crackle of rifles shifting. Boots stepping.

Nothing .

She blinked hard. The smoke was burning her eyes in the dim light of the single oil lantern in the corner of the room. The little dark room, the closet where she was hunched over on the floor with Lindsay’s jacket falling off of her.

The abduction. The men. Vivid, wicked lust and terror all mingled together.

She was locked in a closet and there was a fire.

She blinked at the smoke furiously, fear trilling through her. The image of the fire raging through the room beyond and suffocating her in this tiny godless place clawed her and choked her along with the smell of smoke that kept creeping into her lungs. She shoved Lindsay’s coat the rest of the way off and stumbled to her feet.

“Hello?” she called through the dorm, banging her hand on it. “Hello!” She waited, holding her breath. “Ryan! Lindsay! Alex!”

Terror was coiling in her belly like a tangled spool of thread. They left her at night. They always left her at night. She didn’t know where they went or how long they stayed away, but what if they were all gone now? What if she was stuck like an animal in this cage, with no escape?

No longer a slow gathering, terror raged through her like a thunderclap. “Hello!” she screamed. “Help me!”

Those fucking idiots had trapped her in this closet and she was going to die here, the stupidest death imaginable.

No. No fucking way. She didn’t make it through the war just to die trapped in a hole somewhere because of Walter Stanley .

She beat her fists against the door until they were bruised and bloodied, teeth bared like a wild animal. She kicked at it until she was sure she broke one of her toes. The pain was something distant, muted. Something to be noted and dealt with later.

“FUCK!” she screamed.

Then, as if in answer, the door to the room opened.

It was Ryan.

She wailed with relief. “Oh my god, I thought– I thought–”

He looked like a god, blue eyes blazing.

“The building is on fire,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a way out, but we’ve got to go. Now.”

He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. Didn’t bother to restrain her. Hell, he didn’t need to. She went with him, step for step, though this meant she practically had to run to keep up with his long, swift strides as they crossed into the cluttered large basement of the building. Here, the smoke was thicker and starting to settle in the air visibly around the lamps.

“What caused it?” she said. “Where is it coming from?”

“Above,” he said, not looking at her. His big hand closed around her wrist and he pulled her along with him.

The door to the stairs opened and Alex appeared, letting more smoke billow into the basement. They all raised their arms to their mouths and coughed.

“I can’t find Lindsay,” Alex said, his voice sharp with anger and alarm .

Evie’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean you can’t find him?” she asked, coughing.

“Get below the smoke,” Ryan barked at both of them. “Goddammit, Alex, you should have left the building.”

“I’m not going to leave you behind,” Alex said, voice hard.

A look passed between them that she didn’t understand. Her curiosity would have been more piqued if she wasn’t full of primal, animal terror with the way the smoke just kept creeping in around them.

“Come on, we don’t have time to fuck around,” Ryan said. He proceeded to go to his hands and knees to lead the way up the stairs. Though normally she might have found the sight of this big, beautiful man crawling upstairs amusing, there was nothing amusing about it now.

“After you, Dolly,” Alex said, gesturing her on. Evie went to her hands and knees, crawling up behind Ryan as fast she possibly could. The glow of the fire touched the mouth of the stairs, causing her to hesitate. Alex’s hand came up and pushed at her feet.

“Go, go, go,” he said. She emerged after Ryan and nearly stumbled back from the force of the heat. It stole the breath from her lungs. The building was a blazing inferno that was so disorienting, she didn’t know which way was up.

A large hand took hold of hers and pulled her.

Behind her, she could hear Alex shouting, “LINDSAY. LINDSAY! ”

Her heart cramped painfully and she looked behind her at Alex, who was turning and calling. A beam collapsed a couple of paces away from him, forcing him to jump back. Then he turned toward them and ran.

Ryan led her to a door and though there were flames licking at the glass on the outside, it seemed like their only chance. Ryan lifted his foot and kicked the door open with one enormous effort. It collapsed forward and flames leapt at them. He lunged through them, pulling her with him as he went. The smell of singed hair suddenly filled her nose. Behind them, Alex was shouting. Lightheaded and coughing as she stumbled away from the smoke, she turned to look back at him. Flames were licking across one of his arms. Ryan was standing beside him, beating his arm as he shouted, until the fire was gone.

Then Alex shoved him aside and began to walk around the building, hands cupped around his mouth, shouting.

“LINDSAY!”

“I’m here!” A voice said from a way off. They all turned and Alex ran toward it, stopping short.

A dark silhouette appeared on the outside of the light cast by the fire.

“Pony!” Alex shouted at the silhouette and then ran toward him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What’s happening?” Lindsay shouted back. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Where were you?” Alex demanded.

“I went for a walk! ”

Beside her, Ryan was capturing her wrist and opening his mouth to say something else when a voice from the other side of the building stopped him.

“They’re over here!” Someone shouted from behind them. She and Ryan were both starting to turn when a series of low pops ripped through the night.

“GET DOWN!” Ryan bellowed. Evie threw herself down with him onto the rough concrete, feeling her knees split under the wool of the trousers she wore.

France again. The smell of smoke. Gunfire. Screaming. Airplanes. Would she never leave?

Ryan was kneeling in front of her, shielding her with his body, firing rounds with his revolver toward two figures, dark against the brilliant light of the burning building. One of them shouted and went down. Ryan fired another shot and the second one went down.

More shots being fired back and forth behind them. A cry of surprise and pain that sounded like Lindsay.

Everything was a shimmering blur. Her hands were numb, like dead flopping fish at the end of her arms as she pressed them against her ears. A thick barrier, like a column of water, stood between her and the world around her. Buildings. Concrete. No–trees, tents, and wagons with screaming horses. Dead horses.

Ryan fired another shot and the other man dropped. He turned and looked over his shoulder and Evie turned too. Alex was crouched on the ground. Beside him Lindsay lay in a heap. Ryan leapt to his feet and ran toward the two of them .

Evelyn was standing now too. She could run into the trees.

And she did, she turned and moved toward the darkness of the forest. Away from the fire. Away from war and death.

Ryan’s voice screaming Lindsay’s name. It broke through the thickness that had settled over her ears and hit her, sharp and hot like a hammer against an anvil.

“No, no, no, no,” Ryan said. She turned back to look at him, the big, beautiful man hunched over the limp form of his cousin. Alex was standing straight, holding a revolver with two steady hands as he faced down two more men coming toward them. More gunfire and the flash of sparks in the night as the gunpowder lit and exploded, propelling the bullets out of the pistol. The urge to run overcame her again, and she tensed, ready to move. Somewhere in the fog of her mind, she realized that this was her chance. This was her chance. She could run now and they wouldn’t catch her.

But Lindsay.

Lindsay was down.

Bullet wounds and faces blown away and arms ripped apart by shrapnel came swimming up to the surface of her mind. And before her, her hands working to clean, to stitch, to medicate. To heal.

Lindsay’s soft green eyes. His sweet smile.

And Ryan’s brother dead. Dead because of her .

She hadn’t done a single goddamn thing right since she came home from the war. Now was as good a time as any to start.

“Get the truck started!” she heard Ryan shout over the chaos. He was half dragging Lindsay around the back of the truck while Alex whipped the crank around until the engine started.

Ducking, she ran toward the back where Ryan was shoving Lindsay inside. Lindsay bit down on a shout, but there wasn’t time for gentleness. There wasn’t time for anything.

Ryan whipped around, aiming his pistol at her until he realized who he was looking at. Alex was already closing the door to the cab and bellowing, “GET IN.”

Ryan picked Evie up and threw her roughly back into the truck and climbed in after her.

“You came back,” Ryan said. Evie looked over at him and even in the darkness of the back of the truck, she could see the amazement in his face.

“I had to,” she said, though her stomach twisted unpleasantly. Panic was rising through her. Had she just made the biggest mistake of her life? Probably. She had a talent for it. But it didn’t matter because it was done. And if Ryan had an ounce of the humanity in him that she believed he did, perhaps he would allow this good deed to go unpunished. “L-Lindsay.”

“How is he?” Alex shouted from the cab of the truck through the little grated window .

Staying low, she turned to Lindsay who was between them.

“Not sure,” Ryan shouted back, crawling forward so that he was closer to Alex so they could hear each other better.

“Lindsay,” she said in her nurse voice. Commanding, but calm. “Lindsay, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said, though his voice was a gasp.

“Where are you hit?” It was impossible to tell in the dark of the covered truck bed. He was covered in blood. Her hands were already sticky with it, the way they searched over his body for the bullet wound.

“Shoulder,” he said. Her hand went to his face. And though he felt clammy with sweat, he wasn’t turning cold. Thank god. “R-Right shoulder. I don’t think it passed through.”

“Dammit,” she murmured. She felt along his shoulder as delicately as she could, feeling the sticky spread of blood over his linen shirt. Her fingers finally found the wound, hot and open.

“Fuck!” Lindsay shouted.

“What are you doing?” Ryan said beside her. “We need to stop the bleeding!”

“I know. I am–I was–Red Cross,” she said, tersely. “Help me get his shirt off. And light a goddamn match.”

She and Ryan pulled Lindsay forward into a sitting position with another groan of protest while they maneuvered him out of his shirt. She wadded it up and pressed it against his wound with as much pressure as she could, in spite of his protests .

“The good news is,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “shoulder hits are one of the easiest to survive. If nothing vital was hit.”

“That’s a big fucking if,” Ryan said between gritted teeth.

“We need to get somewhere where I can really have a look at him,” she said.

“Alex will take us somewhere safe,” Ryan said, looking down at Lindsay and then back up at her.

Something passed between them, though she couldn’t have said what it was.

“You came back,” Ryan said again, his voice full and gravelly.

“I hope that wasn't a mistake,” she said softly.

“Shit,” Ryan said, and dropped the match that had burned down to his fingers, throwing them back into a darkness punctuated by the chug of the truck’s engine and the sound of Lindsay gasping.