Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“What the fuck is going on?” I demand, shouting loudly.
“Don’t talk,” the stranger roars at me.
The summer ghost-town feeling is ten times worse now. I look all around for a sign of anyone at all, but it feels like this is the emptiest Crimson has ever been. I can’t see past the trees on one side, and on the other, I see the black SUV that we’re heading towards.
Is Maks really just going to let this happen?
He’s going to let me be fucking kidnapped because he’d rather protect whatever the fuck is in that box?
I’m more certain than ever I’m going to die tonight. Or worse, tortured and held as prisoner in some mafia war, and who the fuck knows what these freaks will do to me in the interim.
The switchblade.
Where did I put the goddamn switchblade?
I’d felt silly earlier bringing the knife at all, and I even considered leaving it behind because I thought I’d never need to use it. One of my hands is still free, and I awkwardly try to move without this guy realizing it as he pulls me down the hill.
I reach slowly with my free hand down toward my front pocket, but I don’t feel the blade there.
It’s in the pocket that’s on the same side I currently have a goddamn gun pointed at me.
Think, Vancliff.
Fucking think.
“Shit. I—I think I left my bag back at the parking lot. I have a lot of cash in there. I have so much money I could pay you with, actually, so could we just go back?”
I sound pathetic even to myself. I can hear the falseness and desperation in my own voice.
I really would give him money, fuck, I would shower him with cash if he let me go alive. But why should he believe that?
He shoves the gun harder against my ribs and I groan in pain.
“Shut up,” he barks at me.
We’re getting closer to the SUV now and something about it seems particularly bad, very, very bad, like if I get inside that vehicle something truly terrible is going to happen to me. His associates all have guns drawn, too, just like Maks’ did, and I realize that I’m literally at the center of what could erupt into a mafia gun fight.
I use my peripheral vision to glance at the side of the guy.
If he didn’t have goddamn steel pressed up against me I would think I could take him with no issue, but…
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
We’re near the car now.
I can see that the driver’s seat is empty, but there is another man in the passenger seat, looking out at us in the dim glow of the street lamp on the sidewalk.
My heart thuds in my chest.
I feel like there’s a ticking time bomb inside me now.
Like there’s an invisible line drawn on the asphalt of that side road, and if I cross it, I won’t be able to turn back.
I can’t do this.
I can’t.
But I have to.
In one quick, solid motion, I use my arm to shove the guy’s hand away from my side, pushing the gun away from my ribs. The guy is surprised and he stumbles a bit, going down onto his ass on the ground.
And in that split second where he’s disoriented, I turn my heel in the grass and I fucking run.
There are so many people who could shoot at me now.
But I make a break for it anyway, hoping like hell I’m fast enough, and that the trees are enough of a buffer.
We’d been descending a hill and now I have to run back into the trees on an incline, and I feel adrenaline crashing over my nerves again and again, a dirty fuel I desperately need right now.
Might die.
“Don’t move,” the guy calls back toward me. He’s already up, starting to run after me.
A gunshot goes off, breaking through the night air like a firecracker.
A cold jolt shoots down my spine.
I’m not hit.
And I will my legs to run faster than I’ve ever run in my life.
Going.
To fucking.
Die.
The guy is speaking in a different language now behind me, and I don’t know if he’s on the phone with someone or if he’s calling after me with words I can’t understand.
And then suddenly, I hear him scream.
A low, sudden scream that breaks off at the end, like he hit the ground and got the wind knocked out of him.
I turn to glance behind me for the first time and see that he’s been jumped.
Someone else is on top of him, punching him over and over in the face.
They’re on the grass in between a cluster of trees, and I come to a stop, catching my breath.
More gunshots are going off.
My ears are ringing, not from the shots but because I can’t fucking think.
When I finally move forward enough to see through a clearing in the trees, it’s clear that Maks and the other guys are shooting at each other. People are running between trees, but other than the stranger, no one else is currently pursuing me.