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Mr. Stokes swerved and narrowly missed hitting Axe.
He would have had he not jumped out of the way at the last second.
“Son of a bitch!” I cried and started to run down the stairs. “Axe!”
Axe, upon hearing me call his name, stopped where he was and looked back at me. Which was a good thing because Mr. Stokes took that corner so fast and hard that he would’ve run poor Axe right over had he stayed where he’d been.
I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing him go.
I needed to call Malachi.
Now.
He was supposed to be here. What made him go home?
Had he known that they were here?
Surely he would’ve come right over if he’d known that they were literally in my house, not just outside of it.
“Axe!” I called again when my dog stayed right where he was.
He was no longer looking at where the Stokes car had disappeared, but at the house with an odd expression on his face.
“Axe, come on, buddy. Let’s go!” I called again.
Axe started to run. I’m talking, the fastest I’d ever seen him run before.
All out sprinting that caused him to look like an antelope and not a dog.
He was halfway to me when I felt the pull of my hair from behind.
I gasped, turned, and froze when I saw the person behind me.
“Call the dog off.”
I licked my lips, then snapped them tightly shut.
“Fine, do it the hard way,” he said.
Then, before I could so much as open my mouth to say a word, Adrian Mastings reached up and punched me in the side of the head.
One second I was aware.
The next I wasn’t.
I woke up to pain.
Whole, all-encompassing pain.
My head throbbed in time with my heart, and my bones physically ached.
I tried to open my eyes, but found that I couldn’t.
My eyelids weren’t working correctly.
A commotion, barking, reached me.
“Axe,” I called. “Axe.”
My voice was weak, like a kitten.
And there was something around my neck.
It felt like a rope, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Axe,” I called again, but still I couldn’t get my voice up above a whisper.
Something was wrong with my voice box.
It felt weird when I tried to speak, like I was trying to force the sound out past things that it shouldn’t be forced past.
A shout had me freezing, wondering if the person that’d hurt me so badly had returned.
The weird hum that I’d thought was part of my head hurting idled down, but just as quickly as the sound stopped thrumming through my ears, the rope around my neck tightened.
Slightly at first, very slowly, until all of a sudden that rope started to pull.
I tried to claw at my neck, to loosen whatever it was, but my hands didn’t feel like my own, either.
I was about to die.
Seriously, I was about to die, and I knew it.
The baby inside of me would never get a chance.
Malachi would find me and…
I heard frantic voices, but my oxygen flow was so low at this point that I was on the verge of passing out again.
Then, just as suddenly as I knew I was about to pass out, whatever was at my neck was once again no longer choking me.
“Sierra,” Malachi said, his breath whispering across my bruised and bloody face.
Then, knowing that I was safe, I said, “Don’t let me go, Malachi. Don’t let me go.”
I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not, but I somehow knew that he wouldn’t.
Not until he was forced to.CHAPTER 19Lucky for me, I don’t have enough friends for an intervention.-Malachi’s secret thoughtsMALACHIUnsent letter to Sierra:
Sierra,
Today they allowed me a pen and paper in hell.
The guard obviously didn’t know that by handing me that, he’d just signed his own death warrant.
I told them that I wanted to write you because I knew I was about to die, and I didn’t want you to think that I was out there somewhere, and you not know what happened to me.
I’m writing this letter right now with the pen that I used to kill him.
It still has bloodstains on it, and that is what I’m smearing all over the paper.
It was worth it, though.
As long as it brings me back to you, I’m okay with just about anything.
I love you,
Malachi Gabriel Gnocchi
• • •
I frowned when I saw Axe come barreling up the driveway of my place and practically slam himself into the door.
I frowned hard and pushed the door open only to see Axe back away.
“What is it, boy?” I asked. “Did you follow Grans over here?”
“He came from the street,” I heard said.
Looking up, I saw Saint on his side of the road standing next to his dog, Smoke, on his front lawn.
Smoke was staring at us, regarding us in doggy concentration, as he waited to see what would happen next.
“What?” I asked.
“He came from the road, not from where your grans normally comes from,” Saint repeated himself.
