Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
But then the driver’s door of the SUV swung open.
No. No!
The monster I’d been running from stepped out, a grin blazing across his face and a silver gun hanging at his side.
For a single heartbeat, I couldn’t move. It was as if gravity had been multiplied by a thousand.
Run, Jason’s voice shouted in my head.
It was so loud it was deafening, but it was also like a starting pistol. I scrambled for the other side of the car, pulling at the door handle to no avail. Fucking safety locks. Cold air sliced at me when the back door was pulled open. Frey shoved his head inside, bringing us face-to-face.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Get away from me!”
He climbed into the back seat and wrapped his arms around my waist. His gun was terrifying, but I didn’t let it slow me down. I slapped and kicked and tried to gouge out his eyes. But it was futile. He overpowered me easily.
“Stop fighting me,” he was pure menace, “or I’ll make you.”
I refused to listen to his threat.
He ripped me from the car, his arms banded around my waist, even as I screamed at the men in the front seat for help.
But they sat like uncaring statues. Frey’s rough hands clamped tighter, and I winced with discomfort. My muscles screamed in protest as I uselessly struggled against him.
“Enough,” he barked, squeezing my arm so hard it made me gasp in pain. The gun wedged into my side, the barrel pressing right in between two ribs. “I understand you’re upset, but I need you to calm down.”
Angry tears were blinked away, and I bit down hard on my tongue to keep from saying something that would get me killed. The bastard official who’d set me in this car turned to Frey and asked something in German.
The barrel was gone from my side, only so it could put two bullets through the windshield of the vehicle. The glass splintered on impact, spiderwebbing cracks across it and partially obscured the looks of surprise that splashed across the men’s faces.
I screamed when the car lurched forward and rolled across the road slowly as if unmanned. It careened at an awkward angle into the brush at the edge of the pavement, snapping fallen tree branches under the tires as it went. It was followed by a sickening crunch of metal when it drove into the wide trunk of a tree, the wheels spinning uselessly in the mud.
The gun was jammed back in the same spot, where I could feel it dig in with every breath. Only now the barrel was hot, even through the layers of my jacket.
Frey’s eyes were chaotic and terrifying. He’d killed them so easily, my body turned to solid ice. At least it made it more difficult for him to pull me along the gravel-covered shoulder toward the passenger seat of his car.
There were a million things I should be thinking about. How to disarm him. How to escape. But only one question came out. “How did you find me?”
He shoved me into the passenger seat, my backside slamming into the leather. “Give me your hands.”
So he could put handcuffs on me again. “No.”
“I fucking hate that word. Your hands, now.”
I glared at him so violently, my eyes burned. “No.”
His face hardened, and my mouth went dry. He leaned in so he was all I could see. “You wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for me. Do you understand that?”
What? What the hell was he talking about?
“The people I work for want that,” he muttered. He dug into his jacket pocket with his free hand and moved with lightning speed, clasping something cold and metal against my left wrist. Not plastic handcuffs this time. I squirmed, trying to resist because I didn’t want to give an inch, but his gun bit painfully into my side. A sob died in my chest when he latched the other handcuff around my wrist, binding me.
“I’ll shoot you if I have to. Somewhere that won’t kill you but will be excruciatingly painful. Do you believe that?”
Yes, I did. I blinked back tears and nodded quickly, pressing my lips together.
His piercing gaze scanned my face, evaluating me as he grabbed the seatbelt and stretched it out for me. “Buckle, and don’t try anything,” he ordered. “Don’t make me do that.”
He said it like he didn’t want that any more than I did. Like he might actually care about me. The idea was horrible, and my hands shook as I fumbled to buckle myself in.
Satisfied, his gun and his focus stayed on me while he shut the passenger door, closing me in. He rounded the front of the SUV, opened his door, and slid into the driver’s seat in one smooth motion. As soon as he started the engine, his gun pressed into the meat of my thigh.