Shouting swam through Jason's muddled head. The gun was hot in his hand. Rachel's attacker bled on the floor. Pain rolled over him in crashing waves, knocking his vision in and out. Men in blue vests surged the room. Blackness. The gun was yanked from his hand. Rachel was crying out. The wave receded. She was on her feet, cursing, being dragged away. Blood was on her face; had someone hurt her? He tried to reach for her, to help, but his arm didn't move. It lolled on the bed, strength spent.

And then people started dropping.

It was like a dream—maybe it was a dream, another impossible, blurred moment brought to his eyes by the heat at his forehead. A man dark as a shadow strolled through the room, touching one person after another. At each touch, their eyes rolled up and they collapsed. After a moment, the only ones standing were him, a gasping Rachel, and a skinny young man with his arms crossed. Their conversation sloshed in and out of Jason's ears.

"...have long..."

"...just leave witnesses..."

"...not be happy—"

"...doesn't call the shots!"

A hand twined through his. He blinked up at Rachel. The hospital lights sent stars shimmering across his eyes, making it hard to see. She wasn't looking at him anyway. "That woman's going to die," she said, "if you don't do something now."

"You have medical experience?"

"Would I have brought him here if I did?"

His brow creased. He squeezed her hand weakly in question, and she squeezed back so sharply it hurt.

Voices snapped back and forth at one another. One of them was Rachel's. She was scared, he thought. She always sounded angriest when she was scared.

Then her face was over his, lips forming his name, face haloed by the bright lights. He tried to read her lips as her words phased in and out. Gonna be okay, she was saying. Monitors blared. Her hands worked over his skin, and wires fell away. They're gonna get you out of here.

Someone scooped him up out of bed. He felt weightless.

And then the world disappeared.

Rachel gaped at the spot Jason had just been. One of the men, the younger one, had hoisted Jason onto his shoulder, and she'd jumped forward to steady them both. She'd thought for sure the scarecrow going to drop him.

Instead, they'd both blinked out of existence.

Her heart hammered in her throat. She stepped forward, grasping at thin air. "H—" The word stuck in her throat until it exploded out. "How?"

"You have no clue what you're into, do you?" Light shone off the other man's bald head and broad shoulders as he bent over the woman Jason shot. Blood soaked his hands as he bound up her wound with bandages he'd snagged from a nearby cart.

She'd felt Ana's snake song in her brain. She'd seen Rafe do... something, a second ago. The pang of her broken finger could let her dismiss it as a trick of the eye. But this—vanishing from reality, like a magician snapping his fingers, but there was no smoke, no mirrors—was on a whole different level.

"Where—" she stammered. "Where—"

The man hoisted the woman Jason had shot—his aunt? Josalyn. They'd called her Josalyn just a moment ago while arguing. Wasn't Josalyn his aunt?—up in his arms. Her head lolled against his shoulder, bare in a white tank top speckled with blood. Around their feet lay the doctors that could easily save her, their chests rising and falling in some strange sleep.

"Cut your losses," he said. "We'll take care of your friend."

He pushed past the curtain.

Take care of him, Rachel thought, or use him? She didn't know what pawn Jason was to either of these groups, but the scent of blood stank in her nostrils. The whole thing smelled of a turf war. The curtain ran past her shoulders, and her breath caught.

The whole floor of the intensive care unit was littered with the bodies of doctors and nurses. Sleeping, she hastily corrected as she saw their chests move, and struck the image of a massacre from her mind. But the moans of their patients wound into Rachel's ears. One monitor blared, and somewhere else, another started up. How long would it take the rest of the hospital to realize no one was tending these people?

Mr. Muscles strode through the limp forms like they didn't exist. Her lip curled. Rafe would have done the same.

Rafe.

She scanned the room, not sure if she was hoping he was dead or just checking to make sure he wasn't going to jump out and grab her. She was both relieved and nervous to find him among all the others, laid out on the floor cold.

She crouched down beside him and pulled off the mask. A bit of stubble coated his jawline, and his normally crooked lips lay slack. He didn't flinch, and her heart gave a dangerous little trill. She could do anything she wanted to him. He was completely at her mercy.

A door swung open. She glanced up to see Mr. Muscles disappearing through. With a quick hand, she slipped under Rafe's neckline for the thin silver chain he always wore. It had belonged to his uncle before Rafe had killed him. With a spin of the chain and flick of the clasp, she took it off his body and hurried away. Now, it belonged to her.

More sleeping figures greeted her in the next hallway. She raced to catch up to the man's long strides, and he pushed through a door into the bright desert sun. She held up her hand against it.

"I can't just cut my losses," she snapped, lengthening her stride to come even with his. "They know who I am."

He paused. The full weight of his gaze bore down on her from a full foot above. He watched her with doubtful, dark eyes. "You're sure?"

Rachel nodded. If there had been any doubt before, Rafe's necklace in her pocket burned it away.

Mr. Muscles's chin jerked, and she followed him around the back of the hospital to an ambulance bay. An empty Jeep waited among the emergency vehicles, and as they approached, he cursed. Shifting the woman in his arm, he tugged on the back door, and when it didn't budge, cursed again. "Come on, Isa!"

Rachel cradled her pounding hand above her heart. Her eyes roamed the empty bay. She felt strangely vulnerable without her gun. She kept waiting for someone to pop out of an unexpected corner.

Or for Rafe to catch up.

"I'm sure there are plenty of cars in the parking lot," she said, still scanning the concrete expanse. "We can circle around, take one that's unlocked."

Mr. Muscle's eyes cut to her. "You've been on the run for a while, haven't you?"

"Long enough to know I'd like to get out of here."

He scowled and didn't move from the Jeep. "Don't worry about the cameras."

The cameras had been the last thing on her mind, but now her eyes flicked over the wall, picking each one of them out. It was impossible to tell if they were on or off, so she wasn't sure how he was so confident. "You sure you don't just want me to go find another—"

Muscles laid Jason's aunt on the pavement. "I want you to stay here. I'll be right back."

He didn't wait for her argument, taking off at a jog. He'd hardly gone ten paces, though, when a gore-soaked figure came around the corner. Her face was so smeared and her hair was so short, for a second, Rachel wasn't sure it was a woman. Two long, needled knives dripped blood on the pavement. Her black leather clothes were in tatters, riddled with slashes and holes, but she strode forward like she didn't have a scratch on her.

"There were more of them," she said simply as she sheathed her blades.

"This wasn't a hit job, Isa!" Muscles protested.

She shouldered past him and unlocked the car. He grabbed her arm.

"You wanna do this?" she hissed. "Right here, right now?"

He glanced over at Rachel. She met his eyes, not wanting to reveal any of the fear starting to hatch beneath her breastbone.

"We'll talk later," he hissed and released the woman. "You're driving."

"Well I do have the keys," she snarled. She started to walk around the car, then froze, looking down at the limp form beside Rachel. "Is that who I think that is?"

Her blade sang free of its sheath. Rachel hardly had time to flinch before Muscles snagged Isa's upraised wrist. "You're driving," he gritted out, "unless I put you to sleep and stuff you in the trunk. Understood?"

Isa's lip twitched. She glared down at the unconscious woman, then shook free of Muscles and jammed her knife back in its home. Rachel looked between the two of them as they both approached the Jeep. Her chest tightened. Where did I just send Jason to?

"Up front." Muscles jerked his chin at Rachel as he picked up Jason's aunt. "Now."

"You gonna stuff me in a trunk too?" The challenge fell from her mouth by reflex, and she snapped her jaw shut.

"No," he said, loading the unconscious woman into the backseat with him. "I'll just leave you here."

His door closed. The engine started. Rachel scrambled into the passenger seat.

They drove for about an hour in complete silence. Rachel kept her lips pressed tight despite the questions bubbling up behind them. She didn't want to ask the wrong thing and them decide to drop her off halfway. The desert passed by out the windows. The whole car stank of blood. The woman in the back moaned occasionally, letting Rachel know she wasn't dead yet. She wasn't sure why that relieved her. Her throat was still sore.

Her fingers curled around the door. The smell of blood, the moving car, the strangers with her life in their hands, it threw her back three years, to the day Rafe's uncle had shot her dad. The full car had hummed quietly. The strangers had been just as silent. They'd made her sit in the front seat then too. Every now and then, the guard behind her had tapped his gun on the back of her headrest the way someone might tap his pencil against a desk. Salt had crusted against her cheeks. She'd felt like a trapped rat, and she'd held tight, tight, tighter to the door to keep herself from crying. Rafe and his uncle had sat in the back too. It'll be your hide, the uncle had said, if she doesn't work out.

She'd been glad when Rafe shot him a few days later.

Isa's fingerless gloves shifted on the wheel. Her face, still spattered by red, flicked toward Rachel. "Put her out."

"Wait!" Rachel said, finger tightening around the door handle. "I can be an asset. I'm not a useless stray. I—" Her breath hitched, and she was standing in her dad's apartment again, staring down at his dead body, rambling about how useful she would be as Rafe's uncle debated selling her off or killing her on the spot.

"Kiddo," Muscles interrupted. "No one's kicking you out."

"Fletch," Isa said, voice hard.

"I'm going to put you to sleep now, alright?" he said. "You'll be fine."

Rachel barely had time to twist in her seat before the man's large hand reached out and brushed her face. Her vision fizzled, and she slumped against the door. Sleep crashed over her like a hurricane.

Author's Note: Thanks so much for keeping up with Lie Like a Villain! The story will be going on a holiday break for the next few weeks. The next update should be January 13th, 2025.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year!