^^^If you didn't see it on my profile yet, I'm going to start a prequel to Outlawry sometime in the future so keep an eye out for it!

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Too many things buzzed through my head. It could've just been the rain... I thought. My subconscious is playing tricks on me. It's just my imagination.

But no matter how much I rubbed my eyes, he was still there.

It was until he began walking towards me that I began to really panic.

I pulled the car in reverse and began to try to back around a corner so that I could turn around and get the hell out of there. But where would I run? Where would I hide? Luther knew where I lived. He knew where Nate lived. He knew where all of my friends lived. He was too smart, too cunning, too informed. The perfect predator. And I was the perfect prey.

Just as I started to drive down the street again, a car perpendicular to my own came speeding down the road. Before it even registered in my mind, my car was smashed and my airbag had deployed. I screamed in shock, not realizing what was even happening.

My eyes were shut and all was quiet for a few moments. The sound of raindrops falling steadily on the car roof brought a meager amount of comfort to me as I momentarily forgot what had just occurred. My eyes opened again to the sound of car doors slamming. Someone was coming.

I looked to my left and my right, trying to see if I could exit out of the car anywhere. The passenger side door was completely smashed in. There was no way I could crawl out that side. I looked to my door. If I found the strength to, I could reach and open it...

As I was extending my hand out, someone beat me to the handle and ripped the door open. The first thing I caught a glimpse of was his hair. My heart fluttered at first. My mind had led me to believe that it was Nate. That somehow he had come back and was coming to rescue me. But when the man reached in to grab me, seeing his cold, blue eyes revealed that he was not my savior. They didn't melt into mine, like Nate's would have. Too weak to scream, I allowed him to jerk me out of the car and onto the wet ground. My head hit the hard pavement, small pebbles painfully digging their way into the back of my skull. But I didn't move.

"Be more careful, you degenerate!" someone's eerily familiar voice rasped. A voice that I hadn't heard in months. A voice that I had thought I almost missed, but upon hearing it brought chills down my spine.

"Is this her?" A smooth voice asked. I opened my eyes and looked up at the grey sky above me. Raindrops fell into my eyes, causing me to flinch and close them again.

Opening them once more, I found four men all crouching around me, looking down at my face. A blond one, who had taken me from the car, a red head wearing an eyepatch, a brown hair and eyed man with half of his head of hair shaved off, and the source of the first voice I heard, his endless pools of emerald disdain staring down into mine. I arched my back slightly as the sight of him, lifting my neck up a bit.

"Luther...?" I questioned. I could hardly believe my eyes. The three other men all turned their heads and stared at him.

"It's most definitely her." His dark lips smirked down at me. I tried my best to sit up, but he placed a hand on my shoulder and shoved me back down into the ground.

"Let me go..." I wheezed out. I wondered if there was blood trickling down my face. It was either blood or tears. I writhed a bit. "Someone is coming for me..." I tried warning, recalling events of just moments earlier.

Gomez wasn't joking. Luther had escaped from prison. I was still surprised that they hadn't notified me of his escape. But there were bigger problems. Who were those men that had tried to take me? What interest was I to them? They had said someone's name. A name that I thought I had remembered. But now I wasn't so sure.

"What is she talking about?" the man with the eyepatch asked.

"I have no clue..." Luther breathed. "Maybe she's being delusional."

Suddenly, I remembered the text that I had received moments before I had seen Luther in the road. It was from an unknown number. It read "I'm here." Did Luther send it?

"Enough talk," the brunet one said. "Pick her up and get her in the car."

They all assisted each other in hoisting me up and bringing me over to their vehicle. As I was set down in the back seat, I quickly sat up and tried my best to analyze the situation before me.

"Luther," I groaned to the boy sitting on my right. "Did you text me?"

He looked at me as I practically leaned on his shoulder. I should've been more afraid; upset that he was taking me. But, for some reason, I felt some sense of relief. He raised an eyebrow at me as he continued to stare in my eyes. The brunet started the car and began to drive off, the blond next to him in the passenger side and the man with the eye patch sitting on my left.

"What is she going off about now?" the brunet asked. He appeared to be the leader of this bunch of criminals. Who were these people anyway? Was Luther friends with them before prison? Were they friends of Gomez's maybe?

"Listen," I spoke a little louder, sitting up and straightening myself out in my seat. "Just before I saw you, Luther, my phone buzzed with a text that said 'I'm here'. Did you send it?"

Luther and the men all looked around at each other. "No," Luther replied. "None of us have cell phones."

I shrunk back in my seat. "Oh god..." I whispered.

"What is it?" the man with the eyepatch spoke softly. "What is going on?"

"I-I..." I stumbled over my words. There was too much for me to say, and so little time. "I can't explain now. We have to get out of here."

"We'll go to my house," Luther spoke. "No one will look for us there."

For the next few minutes, Luther directed the brunet man behind the wheel the way to get to his house. To my house. We pulled up to it and parked in his driveway, which was obscured by trees from the rest of the street. The rain was pouring down on us even heavier than before as the five of us walked out of the car and to his house. Luther tried to open up the front door, but it was locked shut.

"What the hell..." he whispered as the other three men all tried to break down the door.

"Wait, wait, wait..." I said as I pushed my way through them. I pulled a lanyard off of my neck and selected the key to Luther's front door. They all stared at me, confused as I opened the door up for them. We all walked inside, Luther shutting and locking the door behind him.

"Why do you have a key to my house?" he questioned.

The three men all began looking around curiously as Luther and I took a seat on his dusty couch. "Once you were sent off to the hospital, the city was either going to tear this place down, or fix it up and sell it. I requested that they do neither. So, with help from my mother, uncle and Nate, we all bought the place to preserve it how it is. So I have a key. I don't know. I just couldn't stand to see them take it down." I looked up at him, his green eyes never looking away from me all the while. "Or to see anyone else living in it."

He then looked down and around the room we were sitting in. I knew that the words "thank you" were strapped to his tongue tightly, unable to find their way out of his mouth, but he simply couldn't find it in himself to say them. And I don't blame him, either.

Luther rose up off of the couch and approached the three men he seemed to be partnered with. "I suppose I should introduce you," he spoke to me. "Boys, this is Ava Lane."

The brunet raised an eyebrow at me. Part of me wanted to trust him, part of me was severely skeptical, and all of me thought he was even crazier than Luther. I supposed I would make a more solid judgement on him once I got to know him better.

"This is Dennis," Luther began, pointing to the blond man who had taken me out of my car. "He's prone to temper tantrums, so try not to upset him."

"HEY!" Dennis shouted at the top of his lungs as he lunged for Luther a bit. The other two men had to hold him back.

"See what I mean?"

I chuckled slightly to myself, so as to humor the, what I then figured, serial killers in front of me. I had no clue how dangerous these men could be.

"This is Jack," Luther introduced me to the red head with the eyepatch. "He was a magician. A rather good one. We wouldn't have escaped if it wasn't for him." The man gave me a weak smile and a nod, to which I returned. He seemed unstable, as they all were, but trustworthy nonetheless.

My attention was brought to the one he hadn't yet introduced me to. The brunet with the half shaved head and the Cheshire smile. His presence was that of Luther's. It was domineering and could make you recoil your head into your own throat. But his stance, the way he held himself...It wasn't at all as uncomfortable or unpredictable as Luther. His social skills were surely impeccable. He was sure to be charming as hell. I braced myself.

"And last, but most certainly not least..." Luther spoke, gesturing to the tall, overbearing man. "This is Brams. He's the arsonist. The mastermind." The way that Luther stared at the man in awe caused some strange, unsettling sensation from within me. I had never seen him look upon anyone with such awe and reverence. He certainly never had looked at me with that sort of respect, let alone Gomez, for Christ's sake. And as for any one else? Well, he didn't trust anyone enough. So what was different about this man? This Brams?

"So you're that famous arsonist the police took in a couple months ago?" I questioned, my mind finally clicking as to who this infamous man was. "I hear you were just burning Utah to the ground."

Brams shrugged as he smiled, the stubble on his face making him look mildly rugged and dangerous. "Eh, well..." he trailed off. "They caught me going after the Salt Lake City Tabernacle. After that I was going to make my way to Washington and do some real damage there."

"You wanted to burn down the Mormon tabernacle?" I questioned. "That's an awful big building. Any reason as to why that one?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know. Those Mormons always got a bit under my skin." His nose scrunched up a bit. "You know. With their chins held high, but their skirts below the knee and the "genuine" niceness."

"You have a history with them?" I asked, raising my eyebrow, slightly intrigued.

"Yeah, I was raised one."

That attracted stares from all of the men. Apparently this was a little fact about their ring leader that they were not previously aware of. I smirked to myself. I was getting more out of this man than I thought. Was he telling the truth? Did he trust me for some reason? Or was this all bullshit? I knew he wasn't telling me this just so that he could kill me later and forget he ever told me; Luther would never let that occur. Maybe it was because I was being cooperative. But in my mind, I was coming up with dozens of ways to escape these men.

"Oh really?" I further questioned. "I would've never guessed."

He chuckled. "Good," he spat. "And what about you?" Brams took a step closer and eyed me. Luther simply stared at him, not doing a thing to stop him. Not even stepping forward to put a hand between us. That was when my faith wavered. He trusted the arsonist too much. Maybe Luther wouldn't be my saving grace if Brams tried something. "Do you believe in God?"

I turned my head for a moment before looking back to him. I flared my nostrils slightly as I stared deep into those trying, brown eyes of his. It was as if he already knew the answer. They never blinked. Not even once.

Did I believe? If so, he wasn't helping me out much lately, with the luck I'd been having. I went to church every Sunday and listened to my Uncle preach. But did I believe a word?

"I was raised Lutheran."

Brams pulled back, his arms crossed, and smirking slightly. Letting out a small 'hm' he replied with, "That's not what I asked."

I stared him down while he then ignored me and then turned to Luther. "Do you mind if we restock here for the time being? Maybe spend the night here?"

"I don't know about that," Luther said. "If the cops are on the look out, this'll be the first place that they look."

"Speaking of the cops," I said, standing from the couch. "Why didn't I get a call that you had escaped?"

Luther shrugged. "Maybe you did and you missed it."

I shook my head. "Absolutely not. I have that hospital number saved into my phone. I would never miss a single call from them."

"It's because I blew it up," Brams said. "It's completely obliterated."

Luther furrowed his brows. "Hang on," he spoke. The room fell silent, like the moment before you fell on a roller coaster. Only this was no amusement park ride. "If the police never notified Ava that I escaped, or that any of us did, then that means they didn't know we even escaped."

"He's right," Jack chimed in. "Any and all security footage and witnesses were destroyed. And they wouldn't have found anyone's bodies in there. They very well might assume that we blew up with them. That there was some freak accident."

"So no one is actually looking for us?" Dennis shouted excitedly, practically jumping for joy.

Brams smiled and shook his head. "No sir. We are home free."

The psychotic blond and his ginger companion all started shouting and dancing around in euphoria. Even Luther let out a whoop or two. Brams watched them for a moment like a proud father before turning to me.

He took a seat on the couch and leaned back before speaking. I turned my head toward him just before he did so.

"Isn't it funny?" he spoke, his chocolate eyes sparkling. I was anxious to hear what his deranged brain had concocted.

"What's that?" I asked, my lips slightly quivering.

He let out a single chuckle as he looked into my eyes. He stood up and towered over me, never breaking eye contact all the while. Before he spoke, the boy's cheering seemed to mute from my ears into an abyss of nothing.

"You can look straight into my eyes whilst talking of arson and murder like its small talk, but you shy when I say the name of God."