“Get down!”
In that instant, everything transitioned to a slow motion feed, the curl of Eric’s lips into a thin smirk, the twist of his finger around the trigger, and the sound of Brutus’ voice followed by the heavy hit of his booted feet as they stomped towards her, his fingers just pulling her down as another window went out. Viv screamed as she pushed Aggie deeper into the mattress, and Brutus mirrored her movements on the ground. Even louder than the gunfire dotting the breached perimeter were the cries from the other room, Jax’s voice the loudest in the bunch as more bullets seemed to ricochet off the farmhouse’s interior walls and back again. Lena shuddered at feel of glass raining down on her hair, and she offered no protest as Brutus pulled her deeper into the room.
“Don’t make a move, Viv!” he barked up at the bed. “Stay with Aggie!”
Lena saw the girl barely nod through her tears, and Brutus roughly grabbed Lena’s face as her held her shaking body to the corner.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he challenged. “What the hell were you trying to do?”
“I thought I could take him,” Lena said as she eased her gun before his eyes. “Maybe take him by surprise or something.”
“Awesome plan,” he scoffed. “Now we got nowhere to hide.”
Jax burst into the room, falling to his belly at the sound of another shot, and he crawled to Lena’s side.
“Get off her!” he demanded as he tore her away from Brutus.
“With pleasure. This one here ain’t none too bright.”
Absorbing the insult, Lena watched with wide eyes as Brutus scrambled back to the edge of the bed.
“Viv? You got a hold of Aggie.”
“I… yes.”
“Then roll over.”
“Roll…?”
“Just do what I say!”
Viv obeyed, and Aggie groaned as they fell into Brutus’s waiting arms. He brought the women, one wounded and one nearly wailing close to Lena’s side, overturning a table along the way to shield the waiting bodies.
“What now?” Brutus asked. “No fucking cover, thanks to this one.”
“I said leave her alone,” Jax said. “Like one little move makes all the---”
His speech was cut short by another hail of bullets. Viv started to scream, and Brutus clamped his hand over her mouth.
Lena made no sound.
“What?” Jax asked. “She doesn’t get the talking to?”
“She didn’t open the door on this, bright boy.”
Suddenly there was silence and the sound of a motor revving to attention surround by cold, cruel laughter.
“So what was the plan, Kid?” Eric bellowed through the broken windows. “Rally the troops? Run home to mommy?”
Again there was the sound of his gun firing into the air, and Jax gritted his teeth as he wrapped his arm around Lena’s waist.
“Bad call, Jax,” Eric continued from beyond the house. “Now everyone has to pay the price.”
“Jesus Christ…” Viv murmured under her breath. “What do we do now?”
“I ain’t going down like some dog,” Brutus said as he cast a quick glance at Aggie. Her eyes fluttered open as he gingerly patted her pale cheek.
“We’ll handle the dirtbag. I swear.”
Jumping in one motion, tucking and rolling in the next, Brutus made his way to the broken window. He rested his body to the wall and clutched his gun. Eric’s laugher continued to fill the room, and Jax looked past Lena to his mother.
“Jackson, don’t let him get away with this. Not this time.”
“What am I supposed to---?”
“You stand. And you… fight. It’s what your father would have wanted, little man.”
Lena slowly shifted her eyes towards his face. Even as his jaw was set like steel under his lips, Lena saw the fear brimming through his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Never wanted to bring all this back to your door.”
“Too late for that now,” Aggie groaned as she fell into Viv’s shoulder. “Just…high time someone finished it.”
Aggie slipped into a fitful, uneasy sleep, and Jax anxiously reached for her wrist.
“She’s… is she…?”
Lena pressed her palm to Aggie’s chest and exhaled a soft sight or relief.
“Think she just fainted,” Lena said in a flat voice. “No thanks to me.”
“Fucking second that,” Brutus hissed from the other end of the shattered room. Jax started to lunge towards him when she seized his hand and forced his eyes to hers.
“Jax, was I wrong to come back?” she asked.
“No way,” he assured her. “Don’t even think like that.”
“But look what’s happening? You mom. These men…”
“Lena…”
He kissed her tenderly, his eyes moving down her arms until he focused on the gun still resting in her hands.
“Only if you have to,” he said, echoing his mother’s sentiments as he clasped her close and laid his lips on her brow. “But I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to stop this.”
With that he was gone, twisting and twirling on his back as he hit Brutus’ side and readied his gun.
“What’s our play here?” he asked. “Distract him so Milo and the others can pull off a sneak attack?”
Brutus looked ready to knock him out, but another cry from Eric’s lips seemed to bring him back to the problem at hand and all that ways that they might lick it.
“Best bet,” he sadly confessed. “Though somehow I doubt we’ll be standing to celebrate.”
Lena eased her body away from the table as Jax nodded his head. Even in the dim light, she could clearly see the sweat streaming down his cheeks. One more moment, one yes to Brutus, and he’d meet his maker, end up no better than his father. Just the thought of that turned her heart to ice, and Lena grabbed Viv’s shaking shoulder as she pressed her lips to her ear.
“Tell me you know how to use this,” she whispered.
“I… what?”
“If this doesn’t work, don’t let them hurt you. Or his mom.”
She lightly touched her fingers to Aggie’s still face and waited for Viv’s answer.
“What do you think you’re---?”
“They want a distraction?” she asked. “I’m the distraction. I can fix this. Can you use the gun?”
Viv still seemed unsure, but Lena had no more time to waste or wait. Abandoning the gun with Viv, she stretched to her knees and escaped the room.
“Lena! Stop!”
She shrugged off sound of Jax’s voice. Bypassing the main room and the sound of the Silver Horses entertaining their own strategies, she hit the mudroom and started to crawl up the length of the door. She was barely on her feet when a jagged shard of glass fell from her hair.
“What the hell is…?”
Realizing what she had and what she could do, she hid the broken glass in the folds of her skirt, praying it would stick as she rose to her feet and hit the night with her hands in the air.