"Get down!" screamed Logan, covering his head to avoid the shards rocketing their way towards him. Another window broke, but, this time, they all heard it for good, the sound of breaking glass. Logan cursed. "Those fucking bastar-"

Maddy never heard the rest; his voice got drowned in the ocean of bullets that were fired next.

Like a swarm of angry bees thirsty to sting anything that gets in their way -only more dangerous-, the metallic bullets flied around the five of them inside the living room, drilling holes into the expensive furniture, ricocheting off the walls and the hardwood floor.

It was almost laughable, how such a tiny piece of metal could cause such a catastrophe in less than seconds.

Maddy opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come out. She could hear men's voices shouting orders from outside, but couldn't make out what they were saying, the sound of gunfire deafening her.

A silver bullet whished right past her cheek, and the hissing sound was all she needed to finally move.

Her knees bent and she stumbled forward, sliding behind the second sofa of the living room, placed horizontally across the large windows. Her back smacked against the hard material of the tall sofa, chest rising and falling frantically from the panic she could feel twisting her stomach.

Sia and Mia had already dropped to the floor on her right in a crouch, and Logan collapsed next to her right after, his knee jabbing into her thigh. She yelped at the slicing pain, but the sound of bullets thudding into the couch cushions and the stuffing right behind her head made her forget all about the pain in an instant.

"Are you okay?" asked Logan concerned, acutely aware of the hit he had given her.

Maddy nodded yes, swallowing thickly, but then a voice at the back of her mind made her reconsider.

Umm... Excuse me, but which part of this is okay?

She could feel her heart racing, beating fast and extremely loud between her frenzied lungs, but the sound reached her ears slowly and thickly, as if it was muffled behind an airtight chamber.

A sob got ripped out of Sia's throat next to her, making her blink. Maddy snapped her fingers in front of her face to bring herself back to focus. She had to think of a way for them to make an effective, fast, and clean escape.

Think, Maddy, think.

Okay.

So the four of them were safely tucked away behind the sofa for now, but their makeshift fortress wouldn't last for long, so they had to-

Wait.

The four of them?

Maddy snapped her fuzzy head right and left, counting again. Her breath caught in her throat.

Carter. Where's Carter?

She pulled at Logan's sleeve wild-eyed, and when the boy turned to look at her, she saw the same question written all over his face.

Where's Carter?

His bright blue eyes communicated with hers without words. "Carter!" he screamed.

No response.

"Carter!" screamed Logan even louder, his voice gone raspy and on the verge of cracking.

Maddy felt Sia and Mia tense beside her. Sia had covered her trembling lips with her hand to suppress her sobs, and Mia's lips were barely visible, pressed into a thin, straight line.

Then, "I'm here!"

Maddy let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Logan's shoulders slumped from relief next to her, and Sia was shaking on her right.

Mia shut her eyes for a brief moment, and, when she re-opened them, they were burning with flames. "Get your ass over here!" she shouted, and her furious expression made Maddy think she didn't want to mess with her.

"That's easier said than done, you know," Carter shouted back.

His voice resounded from somewhere near the other couch -perhaps behind the coffee table, Maddy guessed blindly, but most probably behind the couch's side- where they were all sitting a few minutes ago, watching the TV.

Said TV was now crashed to bits, tiny holes marking the entrance of the bullets spread all over its shattered black screen.

Maddy thought she heard Carter mutter a pissed "Oh fuck it" through gritted teeth, but it was hard to tell with all that cacophony of bullets being fired in the room.

Next thing she knew, Carter had practically dived behind the same sofa they were hiding behind, smashing onto Logan with force from his momentum. Logan nearly fell in Maddy's lap, but she managed to grab hold of him in time.

Carter smacked his head against the backing of the sofa, breathing heavily, the veins popping on his neck. He was holding his left biceps, applying pressure with his right hand.

Maddy felt her pupils fleeing her whites when she saw a deep, crimson liquid coating his right palm. "Did you get shot?" she choked.

He didn't have time to answer.

A loud thud echoed from the entryway, and when Maddy snapped her head in that direction, her eyeballs almost jumped out of their sockets. The front door had just buckled inwards, smashing down against the hardwood floor in a poof of dust.

They just broke the front door, she thought, terrified, her skin gone pale. They just broke-

"Upstairs! Now!" Carter's voice cut through the horrendous sound of bullets being fired from the shattered windows.

Maddy's heart beat like a hammer in her heaving chest, her pulse completely out of control as Logan grabbed her forearm and dragged her up to her feet. She left her safe fortress behind, and her legs sprinted towards the staircase without her brain having to give the order. She ran up the stairs two at a time, silently grateful for her new pair of shoes. The pain was still there, but these boots went easier on her bandaged feet than her older Oxfords.

Logan shoved her into a bedroom, locking the door behind him and placing a chair right below its handle.

As if that was going to hold their pursuers back.

Maddy turned around to face a bleeding Carter grabbing a pair of keys from the bedside table. "We need to get to the car," he gasped. Drops of blood flowed down his forearm and landed on the soft, eggshell carpet, staining it a dark red.

"Not the carpet, man," sighed Logan, massaging the bridge of his perfect nose with his long fingers. He made a grimace, and then he was already headed for the next door inside the room.

Maddy hadn't even noticed there was another door, too blinded by her fear to even see what was in front of her. And Logan was worrying about the freaking carpet.

But yeah, there was another door. And now Logan held it wide open, revealing a flight of stairs immersed in eerie darkness. Maddy didn't want to know what shadows were lurking in the corners of those stairs. She swallowed hard, like a child afraid of the dark, glancing cautiously at the closet before going to bed.

But then she heard shouts and heavy steps from outside the bedroom, their sound almost an evil chuckle to her drumming ears, and she didn't pause to think before plunging into the darkness behind that door, pelting for the staircase.

"Go, go, go!" yelled Logan behind her.

She could barely make out the shape of each step in the dark, but kept running down the stairs either way, blindly, cursing herself for going first.

"They will fucking arrest us," whispered Mia somewhere behind her, and for the first time ever she sounded scared.

Thanks for the friendly reminder.

"Where are we going?" shouted Maddy, grabbing the railing for extra surety and balance.

"The terrace!" replied Carter, right behind her.

She almost halted her descent of the stairs at the answer, stumbling despite her firm hold on the railing.

What? He couldn't possibly be serious. The house was surrounded. They couldn't go out, not with all those cops shooting at them.

"What? Are you-"

"Yes, I'm serious. Now move!"

"But-"

"Just trust me, okay?"

Maddy shut her mouth.

Carter and the others had been there before. They knew the house better than her, and, frankly, she was the only who seemed to be freaking out at the prospect of going to the terrace, an open and fully exposed area. The other four were running towards that direction so determinedly, like it was their only shot at making it out alive. They had the same plan on their mind, and it had better be a good one. They must've been thinking the exact same thing, their coordination so telepathic that they didn't have to put it into words.

Well, too bad for Maddy. Because she had no idea what they were about to do, and yet, somehow, she was leading the way.

Just trust me, okay?

Hell no, you're an idiot, she wanted to tell him in reality, but something about the certainty in his tone when he pronounced those words made her reconsider.

"Okay," she mumbled instead.