Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Remaining unseen and unknown—it’s built into me. I can’t allow my personal desperation and attachment to affect me. Not again. Creeping to the door, I take the handle and pull gently, flinching when the iron scrapes against the rusty frame. A damp stench smacks me in the face, along with a cool gust of air and the echoes of their voices.
Once I’ve let the door close softly behind me, I follow the sounds of the voices coming from the throats I plan to slice. I’m surrounded by abandoned machinery, all of it ancient and resembling torture devices rather than industrial equipment. I can still hear them in the distance, the old dilapidated building carrying the sound through the musty air. I pass through room after room, my gun constantly poised to fire, my eyes surveying every inch.
Then they stop talking, and my feet stop moving. I pull in behind a huge piece of machinery and hold my breath. The sounds of moving metal rings loudly all around me, followed by the labored breaths of one of the men.
One of the men.
“What the fuck!”
I swing around, finding the snarling, scrawny man Scott picked up en route, raising an old handgun. I don’t fuck about. Instinct has me aiming and firing before his finger even finds the trigger of his weapon. The noise is ear-splitting. The blast ricochets off the metal machinery around me, and I watch as the man drops like a rock.
As soon as he hits the ground, I break into a run, sprinting through the factory, trying my hardest to keep the pounding of my boots against the concrete to a minimal volume. Easier said than done when potent purpose is coursing through you, burning your veins, making your head spin. I wipe the sweat away from my forehead again before it trickles into my eyes and hampers my vision, and round corner after corner, listening carefully. Then I hear something. I slow to a stop. A distant shift of metal on metal registers in my chaotic mind, and I back up, my back pressed against a rusty metal-paneled wall. I slowly raise my gun and edge around the corner.
I know the second I find where they’ve been keeping her. The door is half-open, and slight sounds of a scuffle come from beyond. I pace forward quietly, cautiously, and push the door open farther. Only a little, but enough to see inside.
The scene beyond could break me. I shoulder the door open the rest of the way and fill the entrance, stance wide, gun poised.
I recognize Scott from his picture. And he has Cami held against him, her back to his chest, a blade at her throat. His hands are shaking wildly, sweat pouring from his brow. He’s panicking, and that only makes him more dangerous.
Cami is quiet, her head pressed back onto the shoulder of his filthy shirt, the length of her beautiful neck extended, her face pointed toward the ceiling. Her hands are bound. Her mouth is gagged. Her eyes are covered by a scrap of ragged material. Not seeing her eyes is my only consolation. Seeing her fear would tip me. I need to maintain my composure. Now, more than ever, I need to lock down my control.
“I’ll slit her throat!” Scott yells, backing away, dragging Cami with him. Her feet clumsily slip and slide along the dusty floor. “Don’t think I won’t do it!”
I force my eyes to his and make sure I keep them there. You can tell the most about a person from their eyes. There’s evil lingering in Scott’s, past the apprehension. I have no doubt this man is guilty of all of the crimes he’s been accused of.
Rape.
I momentarily lose my focus, having to blink the horrors away. If the thought has even crossed his mind, I’ll…
I force myself to concentrate. “Who are you working for?” I ask evenly, keeping my gun low but poised. He’s an uneducated piece of shit. He wouldn’t know how to mastermind a kidnap.
“I’m telling you nothing.”
“How do you communicate?”
“Fuck you.” He backs up some more, his face close to Cami’s, breathing on her. She flinches when a spray of his spit hits her face, and my focus wavers again. She’s twenty feet away from me and I can’t get to her. The blade pushing into her flesh, pulsing against her throat as she breathes, is smeared with filth, the handle rusty and bent. It won’t slice. It’ll saw.
I gulp, my grip tightening round the handle of my gun. “You made a really stupid mistake when you took this job,” I say, my voice loaded with a threat he shouldn’t underestimate. I cock my head, forcing the sight of Cami into a blur of nothing, the hollows of my cheeks pulsing as I bite down on my back teeth. “Really stupid,” I murmur.