AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Who are your men?"
I try to glance at her from the corner of my eye, but all I can see is her black hoodie. "Ever heard of a town called Rosewood?"
"Should I have?"
I lift a shoulder and glance in the mirror across the room. The angles are all wrong, and even if they weren't, it's too cloudy to see much of anything clearly. "It's where I was, when that asshole took me. The same asshole who's probably looking for me right now." I pause to inhale, the ever-present internal clock ticking faster inside my head. It feels like a warning, like I'm running out of time. I clear my throat and switch angles. "I thought I could, I don't know, appeal to your sense of sisterhood to help me, but I can see that was a miscalculation on my part. I'll take my chances with the guy behind the counter."
“I’m pretty sure that old fuck has illegal shit happening in the back room of this shithole gas station. He’s not going to let you call the cops on your panty-snatcher,” she grumbles.
"I'm not going to call the cops. And the guy out there is a person snatcher.” My brows furrow together, frustration thinning my lips.
“Jesus Christ, he’ll take one look at you and lock you up in his backroom, moron. He’s not going to give you his phone once you tell him your sob story about being abducted,” she says with a scoff, her tone telling me exactly what she thinks of me.
Alarm blazes through me. I don’t like the finality of her tone. Like I’m already a tragic footnote in her story. I shift my weight to my back foot, my muscles tensing, just waiting for the right moment. I will myself to think. What would Lincoln do if he were in this situation? Nova or Silas? What would any of them do if they were in such a precarious position?
Anything, I imagine Nova saying.
Everything. I would do everything, imaginary Bane vows.
There are no limits to what I would do to come back to you, fictitious Silas says.
My brows furrow when it occurs to me that I might very well have a concussion if I'm imagining Silas of all people waxing on about his devotion to me.
The woman behind me digs her fingers into my shoulder, jostling me. The cold steel of the knife presses harder against my throat. “Don’t faint on me. If you go dead-weight, you’re gonna cut your own throat, and then no one will find you because that asshole won’t call the cops, remember?”
I jerk my shoulder forward, wincing at the bite of the knife against my skin. "Jesus. I'm not—" I exhale sharply. "I just want to make one phone call. And then I'm gone, I swear."
"So you can signal to whoever the fuck sent you? I don't fucking think so," she snaps, turning us around so I'm facing the doorway. She nudges me forward with a hand in the middle of my back. "Let's go." She pushes me forward with more force than I expected, and I reluctantly take a step toward the door.
"Go? Go where?"
"We're leaving. If I walk outside into an ambush, I'll drag this blade across your throat and your flailing limbs will still supply me with the distraction I need to get away from those motherfuckers."
14
EVANGELINE
"What the fuck," I drag the words out on a breath. "Is wrong with you." It's not a question. "I don't know who you are or who you're running from, but I swear I have nothing to do with it."
"We'll see, pretty girl. We'll see," she mutters. "Open the door."
I shake my head, the edge of the knife dragging across my skin sharply. The metal is cold under my palm as I wrap my hand around the door handle. “I thought you were going to be my salvation.”
“Didn’t you know?” she asks with a tsk. “I’m everyone’s ruination.”
I don’t even know what to make of her cryptic words, but my heart races with anticipation as I try to imagine who or what could be waiting for us on the other side of the door. Will it be the guy I left in the ditch, or the gas station employee? Or maybe whoever she’s running from is waiting to ambush us.
With a heavy breath soured with dread, I open the door and brace myself. But only the deafening sound of thunder greets me. The loud crack explodes across the sky, rippling outward like the tide and rattling the walls of the bathroom.
She nudges me with her hand on my back, guiding me around the corner and never easing the sharp pressure at my neck. “Over here.”
Rain sluices down my face, icy droplets stinging my eyes as I stumble forward. The wind howls like a wild animal, the violent force of it whipping against my clothes, tugging at my hair.
We stop next to the driver’s side door of an older model luxury car. Panic pricks against the back of my scalp when she shuffles me to the side. It’s hard to see much with the rain in my eyes, but I can almost feel someone’s gaze on us—on me. It’s intrusive and unyielding.
"Wait," I blurt. "Take me with you."
“No shit, Hollywood. Get in, you’re driving,” she grits out as she finally removes the knife at my throat. She opens the driver’s side door and shoves me into the seat in the next breath.
