Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
This is Briar’s room.
Along the windows, the little glass habitats she keeps for raising caterpillars into moths and butterflies.
And on the other end, two people tied up in chairs.
Two people who are very much still alive, and safe, other than being tied up.
I feel relief well up inside me like I’ve never felt before in my life.
They’re alive.
Weston and Rayne are here, alive, and right now they’re alone in the room.
“Rayne. Weston,” I say, the world going surreal.
They both have tape over their mouths. Some sadistic criminal needed them silent.
People I care about.
The two people who are most important to me in the world.
I run over and rip the tape from both of their mouths and in my peripheral vision, I can see that the blood is dripping from Rayne’s hand.
He’s crying the moment he can speak. “I heard gunshots outside. Hunter, I thought you were gone—”
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
“It’s her,” Rayne says, panicked. “Briar. She’s—she has a British accent, and she’s fucking trying to kill us, Hunter—”
“We need to get the fuck out of here. Now,” I tell them.
My knife is on the ropes that tie them up a moment later. I cut them both loose, and they stumble up, the wooden chairs clattering to the ground.
“She said she would be back when she found you. Her brother is here, too,” Weston says.
My brother is shaking, and his face is covered in tears, more afraid than I’ve ever seen him.
I head out into the hallway first, checking that no one is out there.
“Her brother,” I say. “That was him. Fuck. So they both went back over to Onyx House to find me? Is there anyone else at Onyx House right now?”
“Ollie and Noah,” Rayne says. “They’re the only ones.”
“Goddamnit.”
“No,” Weston says as we take the stairs down fast. “They left. Right before Briar’s brother found me in the backyard, Ollie and Noah decided to walk to get food before they played that video game.”
Hope floods me again.
“Then they’re safe. I saw Briar’s brother on a balcony at Onyx House a minute ago. He saw me. Shot at me. We need to leave right now. Out the back door.”
By the time we make it through to the back of Luros House, I can already hear their front door swinging open across the house.
I run with Rayne and Weston into the backyard, and we head through the grassy yard.
“We have to hop the fence. Rayne, it’s going to hurt your hand, but you have to jump.”
“Forget about my hand. I can do it.”
My heartbeat is steady like a drum as I watch both of them get over the iron fence and land on the short leafy hedge on the other side of the fence.
All three of us make it onto the back lawn of Onyx House.
All three of us safe, and alive.
“To the other side of the yard. Let’s go,” I tell them. “We go to the side, make it up further onto Red Row, and run toward campus as fast as we can.”
Weston and Rayne round the opposite corner of Onyx House before I do.
And I see the Glock pointed at all three of us a moment later.
My heart skips a beat.
It’s her.
Briar is holding the gun, her hand steady as she points it at us.
The first true friend I ever thought I made.
A person I put my trust in.
“It was so easy,” she says. She does have a British accent, and I place it immediately.
It’s the same type of British accent that the Thornwick crime family have.
“You don’t want to do this, Briar,” I tell her.
She looks me up and down, shaking her head. “Well, it could have been easy, I suppose. You had to muck it all up for us, didn’t you?”
I hear a branch snap behind me and I glance and see her brother, Kai, coming up behind us with his own gun held out, too.
“We didn’t want to kill you,” Briar continues. “Just wanted to use you. For revenge. But now it’s all gone a bit messy, hasn’t it?”
“Why have you been threatening us? Threatening Onyx?” I demand. “What do you want?”
“You should ask your dear old dad, Knox.”
For a moment I don’t understand.
“What does he have to do with this?”
“There’s a reason I’m saying this all could have been easy,” Briar says. “We called your father the night of the first attack. Told him our terms. But he didn’t quite think James and Ethan were precious enough to bother with.”
“What the fuck?” Weston whispers.
“So we told him we were going to get closer and closer to someone your father does care about. When we attacked Rayne, it was only natural that Daddy’s boy Weston here would call his father and tell him all about it. Right, Weston?”
He puffs out a breath of air.
Briar comes forward suddenly, pushing the side of the Glock under Weston’s chin, and I reach out and grip her wrist as she does it.