Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Jason ignored that. He raced forward, bent, and swept her up into his arms without a word, which was stunning and only made her angrier.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
He barged out of the bathroom so quickly, I had to step back to stay out of his way. “We have to go,” he said urgently. “Juric’s in the open.”
Her understanding of the situation was immediate, her face going white, and she struggled in his hold. “Put me down. I can walk.”
It made my heart hurt. My sister lived in constant fear of this moment.
There was a dull ache in my fingers from how hard I was squeezing Shawn’s hand. We trailed behind our siblings, following them out onto the lawn and the party there. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves, oblivious to the danger my sister faced, and it only illustrated how unfair this all was.
“Where are we going?” Shawn asked. “Should I activate the flight crew?”
“No,” Jason said. “That’ll take too—”
There was a rumble in the distance, too loud and unnatural to ignore.
A pod of semi-trailers, each with an Osterhägen logo branded on its side, sped toward the brewery. They didn’t use the service entrance. Instead, they came single-file up the front drive, and their growling engines were loud enough to bring the party to a grinding halt.
The trucks pulled into the circle drive, trapping the party on the lawn between them and the brewery behind us. There were two on each side, leaving a small gap between them at the center of the U they formed.
I glanced at Shawn. Was this part of the event, perhaps some sort of presentation or birthday gift for him? Everyone around us eyed the trucks, curious.
But he looked confused. Suspicious. Whatever this was, he wasn’t in on it, and that made my heart vault into my throat. Dread rolled through us both, and his hand tensed on mine.
The angry hiss of the trucks’ air brakes was almost simultaneous, and the drivers opened their doors, stepping down out of the cabs.
Guns.
Scary, deadly-looking automatic guns were clutched in their hands. The drivers didn’t have to fire a single shot to stir people into a panic. All they needed to do was descend rapidly on the crowd. One of the biggest gunmen leapt up on a table, kicking a flower arrangement out of his way.
“Frau Hayward!” he yelled, making time stop.
My sister was ten feet away from me and frozen in place. When I tried to move toward her, Shawn’s arm locked tightly around my waist. He crushed me against him to stop me, to try to keep me safe.
“Nein?” the driver said.
He smiled and produced a small device, perhaps a phone, but it was difficult to tell. His hand moved as if pushing a button.
The ground rocked beneath my feet and a tremendous boom struck my body like an enormous fist. Air and heat blasted from behind me, making my hair blow forward. Glass and debris from the windows of the brewery shot out and rained down on the lawn.
My lungs refused to work. My mind couldn’t process what had just happened or—
The next explosion was like nothing I’d ever heard or felt. It came from all around, knocking everyone to the ground with either its concussion or their own fear. My legs buckled and I buried my knees into the thick grass.
All four trucks exploded in the moments after the eruption from inside the brewery. Even after the initial blast was over, there were secondary explosions inside the building that rumbled and groaned with catastrophe. Not more bombs, but unavoidable explosions caused by the deliberate one.
The trucks were engulfed in searing flames, so hot that it scorched the earth beneath them. Even from fifty yards away I could feel the heat. The building behind us, the brewery Shawn and Jason’s great-grandfather had built, sounded like it was collapsing on itself.
There was nowhere to go; everything was on fire. The gaps between the burning semi-trucks and brewery were blocked by the gunmen.
People lay stunned on the ground, some wounded and others hysterical. Through the smoke that made my eyes water, I spotted my sister shielded by Jason, his arms wrapped around her and concealing her face.
Another explosion from inside the building drew my attention momentarily, and then I turned to see Shawn. The headquarters of his empire was burning. This was a new Shawn I hadn’t seen before, or maybe it was the real Shawn stripped bare of his disguises by the emotion of what had happened.
A woman in the crowd screamed.
One of the gunmen had pulled a blonde from the crowd and examined her critically. The gun was shoved in her face and the loud crack of it going off was just audible over the burning carnage around us.
The woman collapsed and was shoved away, lifeless, as people screamed.