Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
He's screaming now. "Who the fuck sent you!"
But he still doesn't understand.
It's this realization that pisses me off.
Not the fact that he got me. That he's winning. That I messed up—again—all because I was too distracted by Scarletta Mae Desmond to thoroughly check out my prey.
It's the lack of clarity.
You can't balance the scales if your prey doesn't understand why.
Everything goes black.
Chapter 15
Scarletta
The fucking asshole.
Caleb MacLeay is a controlling, motherfucking asshole.
Two hours of switchbacks and my knuckles are white, my nerves are frazzled, and cursing Caleb MacLeay's name and damning him to hell is the only way I know to process this fucking drive.
I am not cut out for this. There's a reason I stay on my side of the fucking Tetons! They're sketchy, and twisty, and fucking elk and moose are trying to throw themselves in front of my Jeep at every switchback.
And what's waiting for me at the end of my Teton Pass struggle session?
Who the fuck knows? A dead body? Some crazy torture session? Nothing, because he's not even here?
Could be any of those.
Torture… I picture how he killed that Russian man on the island.
Oh god. My foot presses down on the accelerator, speeding up on the dirt road, when the navigation says, "Turn left now."
What? I slam on the brakes, twist the wheel to the left, and Tokyo Drift my way under a ranch archway marked with a skull and crossbones.
I'm here.
I accelerate again as I climb the steep driveway. Towering pines thick enough to get lost in blur by, all caution for elk and moose out the window.
Caleb's log mansion materializes through the trees. A tower of timber and glass, it's perched on the mountainside like some psychopath's wet dream of isolation and control.
I slam on the brakes again, this time kicking up a cloud of gravel and dust between the house and the barn.
"You have arrived at your destination."
I take a deep breath. Yeah. I sure the fuck have.
I get out of the car and immediately, I'm confronted with the sound of something exploding. For a moment, I'm just stunned, processing. Frozen.
Then I hear grunting, and panting, and… what the fuck is happening?
"Who sent you? Who the fuck sent you!" The yell echos through the trees.
"Ryan?" I scream. Then I'm running. This stupidity of this doesn't hit me until I'm at the threshold to the barn. Why am I running towards this? What the hell is wrong with me?
Because there they are! On the ground. Fighting. Ryan is naked and covered in—I have no idea. Blood. Splotches of it cover his whole body, smudging his bird tattoos as he and Caleb twist and grapple on the concrete.
This is when I see the shotgun at my feet. It's very short. Very illegal. Very much a signal that whatever is happening here is bad, bad, bad.
That's what that noise was. Not an explosion, a shotgun.
My fingers wrap around the stock before my brain catches up to my body.
What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?
But I'm already lifting it. Already feeling the weight of it—heavier than I expected, the metal still warm from being fired. The smell hits me next. Gunpowder. Sharp, and acrid, and real in a way that makes my stomach lurch.
I've written this. I've written this exact moment a dozen times. The heroine finds the weapon. The heroine takes control.
But I'm not a heroine. I'm a fucking mess in yoga pants who drove two hours to confront a murderer and now there's two men covered in blood and I don't know which one is the monster anymore.
Rack it. You have to rack it.
The thought comes from somewhere outside myself. From every action movie I've ever watched. From the scene in Captive Hearts where Lydia disarms her kidnapper. From muscle memory that doesn't belong to me—that belongs to characters I invented, women who were braver than I'll ever be.
My hands move.
Chk-chk.
The sound is obscene. Mechanical. Final.
Both men freeze.
The fighting stops like someone hit pause on a video. Ryan's arm is locked around Caleb's throat. Caleb's face is red, his eyes bulging, but now they're both staring at me.
At the gun in my shaking hands.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.
I'm pointing it at them. At both of them. The barrel swings from Caleb to Ryan and back again because I don't know—I don't fucking know—
"Don't move." My voice comes out wrong. Too high. Cracking on the second word like a teenager's. "Don't fucking move."
Ryan's grip on Caleb loosens slightly. His eyes—they're calculating. Reading me. Seeing exactly how terrified I am.
He knows I don't know what I'm doing.
"Either of you." I force the words out louder. Swing the barrel back toward Caleb, then Ryan, then somewhere in between. "Don't. Fucking. Move."
My arms are trembling. The gun is too heavy. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, in my throat, behind my eyes.