Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series) by Jessie Humphries

eyed me as if gauging my composure under pressure, which quickly made me straighten my jaw and assume the ready position. Both hands on weapon, eyes up, steady breath.
    “Five. Four. Three. Two.” Quinn nodded as he reached for the door handle. “One.” He opened the door and threw the grenade out into the forest line.
    An explosion rocked the whole mountain, or so it seemed. And before I knew it, Quinn was gone. The door was left ajar, and I assumed his previous position to look out, cover him, and watch for his signal. Soon the night was alive with the sound of gunfire coming from every direction, and I lost my visual on him.
    I pulled my gun in tight. How could we be expected to go out into that?
    A moment of panic crept in with the crisp night air. I couldn’t even find Quinn in the dark, let alone be ready for his signal. Alana started whimpering until Chase had the good sense to hold her. She wouldn’t make it if she couldn’t pull herself together to run.
    Another explosion went off to our left, and I pulled the door shut a little more. But when a smattering of pebbles hit the door, some of them flying through the crack, I realized it was Quinn’s sign to run. I didn’t hesitate.
    I grabbed Alana by the arm and gripped my gun. “Go.”
    Head down, I led the two of them outside and across the open backyard, lit by flames. We sprinted as fast as we could while sounds of rapid fire and death swirled around us. I could’ve sworn I felt bullets zip past my body, but I didn’t stop moving until I hit a cluster of trees for us to hide behind.
    In the distance, the sound of Big Black rumbling to life and peeling away filled me with hope. Perhaps all of Quinn’s “distractions” worked and helped Liam get away.
    “Move,” Quinn urged as he appeared beside us. “This way.”
    All four of us began sprinting again. Through trees, over rocks. My heart faltered when a bullet took out a chunk of a tree trunk right in front of me. Alana screeched in terror, unable to contain herself, but Chase kept her going. We all kept scrambling as fast as we knew how through the darkness and unfamiliar terrain.
    “Faster,” Quinn ordered from the back of the pack. H e’d stopped to empty a clip at our pursuers. I wanted to do the same, but I couldn’t afford to let Alana stop moving.
    A few moments later, a flash of lights down the ridge caught my attention.
    “There,” Quinn yelled as he caught up to us, pointing to the silver four-door sedan parked alongside a copse of bushes on an old dirt road. He started it remotely with his keychain, and as we sprinted toward it, I wondered how none of Martinez’s men had managed to find and destroy this means of escape.
    As if on cue, a bullet sparked off the hood of the vehicle, just twenty feet away now. Quinn and I both paused to fire a few shots at the fast-approaching figures behind us.
    When I turned back around for my final sprint to the car, a force as strong as a twenty-foot wave, concentrated in spots as small as bee stings, knocked me to my knees. I’d been shot in the back. But the vest Quinn gave me must have stopped the bullets from shredding through my skin, because instead of feeling blood pour out of my chest (where the bullets would have exited), I felt like someone had taken a pickaxe to my back.
    A scream lit up the night. It was Alana, from behind me. I turned to find her with blood all over her right shoulder. Oh, please, no. I froze, analyzing the situation. She appeared to be hit because of all the blood, but her posture was too straight. I looked to the ground beside her. It was Chase. He was the one who’d been shot; the blood must have sprayed onto her.
    “Help,” Quinn said to me as he reached down and picked Chase up off the ground to throw him over his shoulder. “Get Alana.”
    I hurried over and grabbed Alana by the arm, then forced her to run the rest of the way to the car. I opened the passenger door and pushed her inside. Quinn opened the back