Nick pressed his hands to his temples. One came away sticky and wet. He looked at his palm and found a hand covered in blood.

Was he still bleeding?

What had happened to the bullet?

“Help me up,” he said again. “I need—we need—”

“You still need an ambulance,” Adam said, his voice finding that quiet confidence. “Quinn, I’ll run up the road and see if I can find a place with a phone. Keep him still—”

“No,” said Nick. If there was any chance the Guide was out there, he didn’t want them to separate, too. “No.”

“Yes.” Adam put his hands on Nick’s shoulders. “I don’t care what you want this time. You were—you were—” Now his voice faltered, and he visibly struggled to keep it together. “You’re hurt. We’ll call the cops, and—”

“No.” Nick caught his wrists. “We need to get out of here. We need to warn my brothers. He’ll shoot them next and they won’t—they won’t—” Now Nick’s voice broke. Gabriel had been able to stop a gun from firing once. Nick had no idea whether he could do it again, especially without Hunter’s power helping him focus. Chris and Michael would be on a job, oblivious to a threat sneaking up on them.

Nick thought of Chris’s voice, the last thing his little brother had said to him.

I love you, brother.

It sounded so much like a good-bye.

Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. This wasn’t helping anything.

“Help me, Adam.” Nick squeezed his hands and heard his voice break again. “Please. Help me.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

“Me, too, Nick,” said Quinn. “Me, too.”

“Me, three,” said a voice, and a shoe crunched on broken glass.

They all jumped and scrambled, ready to face a new enemy.

But there in the frame of the broken window, looking shaken and frightened himself, stood Tyler.

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 31

Nick swayed with the motion of Tyler’s truck. He leaned against Adam and wished his head would stop aching. At Quinn’s insistence that they couldn’t drive around town covered in blood, he’d washed his face in the studio bathroom—at least the water worked—but now he was damp and cold and shivering. Shock, probably.

Or maybe it had something to do with the agonizing pain he’d felt when he’d pried a bullet fragment out of his own forehead.

Adam had found him on the tile floor, and he’d been ready to drag Nick to a hospital again.

But now they were in the truck.

He didn’t trust Tyler. At all.

But what choice did he have?