What? His? What the fuck was going on?
“Sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt anything.” Ashley’s voice streamed from the outside, and then her feet blurred on the threshold. “I forgot my…b…ag.”
No. No. NO. NO! My heart thrashed, and Rush swore.
“You’re not Dusty.” She blanched, trembling, staring vacantly at Rush.
“Ashley, run! RUN!” I cried out as loud as I could so she could understand me.
Her eyes flashed at me for a split-second before she darted away.
“Shit. This’s gonna get very messy now.” He dragged me with him while he went after her. His free hand reached in the back of his jeans. Then he stretched his arm toward running Ashley, pointing a gun at her.
“No. Leave her alone, you son of a bitch.” I elbowed him in the stomach, stomped on his foot and kicked at him.
It didn’t stop or shake him.
Ashley couldn’t make it to the end of the hallway before the muffled gunshot pelted my ear and the bullet landed in her head.
18. Cameron
I lost my sister all over again.
That was exactly how I felt as Ashley’s hair swam in crimson blood.
Rush dragged me around and scooped Ash’s body off the floor as if she weighed nothing. Her blood left a trail back to the apartment.
He dropped her inside without a care in the world and shut the door. “Someone is gonna call the cops now. Gotta get this done fast.” He pushed me down so roughly I thought my nose broke when it hit the ground.
I was already in too much pain to feel any new strikes. Numb from the inside out. My mind played tricks on me that I thought this was one of my nightmares, and it would be over as soon as I woke up.
But it was real.
Ashley’s death was real.
Rush tearing of my pants from behind now was real.
“I’d knock you out, but I kinda need you broken over this.” He flipped me over, and I heard the jingling of a belt buckle. My eyes were too swollen to see it for sure.
He ripped off my panties. “For the record, I wasn’t planning on killing anyone tonight. If you’d come with me after school like I told you, she would’ve still been alive.”
My eyes twitched and throbbed as I felt his weight on top of me and his hand around my throat. As he was about to mount me.
Two choices flashed in my head.
One: drift in the darkness threatening to swallow me and let him do what he came here to do.
Two: do everything in my power to stop the son of a bitch. No matter what.
Something switched in me, a strength I didn’t know I still had left, and the second choice seemed so much more appealing.
I crashed my forehead against his chest as hard as I could. Once. Twice. Three times. He backed off a little, struggling to breathe. Then my knee shot up, hitting his hanging nuts with a crack.
“Not again, you bitch.” He plopped on his back with a loud thud, cupping his crotch, moaning.
I jumped to my feet. Or tried. His hand reached for my ankle, bringing me back down. I kicked, freeing myself, but stumbling into the couch. I crept away from him on the cold floor, glass splinters spearing me, going inside of me, my hands desperate for anything I could use as a weapon.
“Damn, you’re feisty.” He rose to his knees and came for me. “No wonder he fell hard for you. I like feisty brunettes, too.”
