I’m reaching for my gun, but tracksuit is fucking fast, even at slow motion.
Mikhail grunts as he doubles over, and I feel the flash of heat across my shoulder, knocking me back a half-step. I whirl back with a snarl on my lips, just in time to see the two Ukrainians booking it for the back door. The pain is ignored as I grit my teeth through the it, bringing my hand up and squeezing the trigger.
Tracksuit catches it in the back of the head, red mist splattering the wall as he drops like a bag of sand.
That’s when I’m aware of the presence behind me, and that’s when I whirl.
And none of my calculating - none of my analyzing the scenarios and outcomes here could have ever in a hundred million years imagined the scenario where the girl from the bar I just kissed walks in on me and two dead bodies, with a gun in my hand.
Fuck.
I see her eyes go wide, I see the color drain from her face, and I see her mouth open as she gets ready to scream.
And I act.
I’m not a bad man, but I am one to make the moves that have to be made. And I’m sorry this one has to go like this, but it does.
I grab her, yanking her small body against my large frame. She kicks and lashes out, gasping, squirming, fighting me.
It’s not one she’s going to win.
My arm goes around her throat, squeezing just hard enough to make her know how serious I am. The gun goes against her temple and my words hiss into her ear.
“Do not scream.”
She freezes.
And I know what to do here. Deep down - or even not that deep, really, I know the solution to this mess. I’ve got the silencer already on my gun, the music is insanely loud back there in the venue.
She’s a loose end, and I don’t have those, not ever.
I know the move here. I know what I’d do in every other version of this scenario.
It’d be clean. It’d be quick. It’s the obvious choice.
She squirms against me again - still fighting, despite the arm on her throat and the gun to her head. It’s like she’s still trying to get free - like she still wants to believe there’s some sort of scenario here where that happens.
And I like that she’s still fighting.
Something clicks inside of me. Some little part of me fights the rational outcome, and the clear move, and the obvious choice.
I grab her instead, shoving the gun into my belt and covering her mouth with my hand. She’s light as I easily lift her up, moving past Mikhail’s body and stepping over tracksuit’s.
Every part of me is screaming to just fucking stop this madness and just finish it right here, but I keep moving.
I keep ignoring that voice.
I’m parked right outside the back door, and the music is so loud, and she squirms so sweetly against me.
“Please,” she manages to gasp as my hand slips from her mouth. “Please don’t kill me,” she whimpers.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I growl as I kick open the back door of the bar, glance around for anyone, and stride for the trunk of my car.
And I’m not.
Because I’m going to take her instead.
Chapter Four
Sierra
I’m screaming in the darkness, even though I’m positive no one can hear me. Even though I’m gagged.
I kick out, screaming in agony this time as my ankle catches something sharp and metal, sending pain shooting up my leg. The gag bites into the corners of my mouth, and whatever he’s used to tie my hands behind my back digs into my skin, rubbing it raw.
The car jolts, like we’ve gone over train tracks, and I cry out as my head thumps off the floor of the trunk.
It’s dark back here.
And cold. And it smells, and I’m freaking the fuck out because I’ve just been fucking kidnapped.
The space between me kissing this man and him tying me up and throwing me in the back of his car is a blur. It’s a whirlwind, culminating in me screaming as he grabbed me in his powerful arms.
I’d screamed through the hand cupping my mouth as he dragged me out the back door, even knowing it was worthless with the band blaring in the venue.
Jayson’s band.
I close my eyes tight as the car takes a turn, rolling my body cross the floor of the trunk.
Why did I come here tonight? Why has any of this happened?
The answer is choices - my bad ones, specifically. And now I’m in the trunk of a car of a killer, and I’m almost one hundred percent sure I’m going to die. I wonder briefly if he’s going to be more like the Saw movies, with elaborate torture machines, or more like Dexter with a clean room and plastic sheets everywhere.
…Because my entire frame of reference of murder and killers is movies and TV, apparently.
My heart leaps into my throat, and finally, I start to cry.
I’m going to die.