The two days I’d spent here while Cameron was with me were a breeze compared to the time after she disappeared.
Nightmare after nightmare. A nagging question that wouldn’t leave me alone. What if I never saw her again? What if he killed her?
Something inside me told me Annie wasn’t alive, which meant Cameron wouldn’t survive Roar’s grip either. Every time I came to that realization, I lost my fucking mind. I tried to break the chains, each time fainter than the last, my strength betraying me. Then I cursed the day I was born. The day he was born.
Wasn’t it enough to have the blood of a little girl on my hands? Now the blood of the woman I loved would be there, too.
Another realization that drove me insane.
I was in love with Cameron. How I worried sick about her safety and not mine, how my life meant nothing when hers was on the line, how much I was willing to sacrifice and who I was willing to kill to protect her, how I was ready to do anything to save her even if it meant my own death, proved I didn’t just like Cameron, my captor, my enemy, but I was deeply and madly in love with her.
And I’d lost her. I couldn’t save the girl I loved. The only girl I loved.
The flashlight had died out a while ago, but, desperately, I kept staring toward the door. “Please,” I begged the emptiness. “Please, let her be safe.”
The silence taunted me for what seemed to be an eternity. “FUCK!” I snapped at the chains, cursing my helplessness. I couldn’t just give up. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did. There must be something I could do. A way out of here before it was too late.
I stared up at my wrists and the shackles secured around them. Those weren’t cuffs I could break my thumbs to get out off, but it was worth the shot. I had to get out of here and a broken hand was a price I was willing to pay to save my girl.
One good thing about dehydration was that my wrist and fingers were shrinking a bit and the shackles weren’t as tight as before. Screaming my lungs out, my famished, freezing body and the wounds blistering on my ankles screaming louder at me, I curled my thumb under the rest of my fingers and dislocated it. “Mother-fucking-fuck!”
Shaking and sweating, I squeezed as hard as I could to slip my hand out of the restraints, but goddamn those beefy hands that still wouldn’t budge. Nauseated, I took a deep breath and decided I must break my pinky too. It was the only way, and I must do it fast before my thumb swelled and fuck everything up.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I snapped my pinky and was on the verge of passing out. Biting my lip on the pain, I shook my head to stay awake. Then I growled, pulling my fucking hand down, the metal flaying my skin until my arm dropped as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
I couldn’t believe this. My whole left side was searing with pain, but my arm was finally fucking free. One limb down. Three more to go.
I didn’t mind. I was ready to take any kind of pain for Cameron. The one girl that brought me to my knees and owned my heart.
Suddenly, a noise like a distant key rattle penetrated the silence. It must have been my mind playing games on me.
More rattling. I blinked, startled. Then my heart skipped a beat when a familiar screech penetrated the never-ending silence.
“Cammie?” I called out.
The door swung open, the glare of incoming light sliced by one form. Not Cameron’s. What the fuck? “Who the fuck are you?”
CHAPTER 25
Cameron
Tears streamed down my face out of control. My jaws split apart as I intended to scream, but it seemed that I’d lost my voice for a few moments. Then a crescendo of sobs seeped out of my chest followed by a deep moan that sounded like wailing underwater.
Roar and his woman didn’t utter a word, but their silence said everything. The confirmation my sister was gone.
Annie is gone.
All that time, she was dead. I’d kidnapped a man and hurt him, and now I was Roar’s captive, who certainly would murder me. All for nothing.
Roar won. I’d lost everything. Even my own life.
“You fucking killed her!” I cried out hysterically, indefinitely, my insides contracting in pain, until I passed out.
In my unconsciousness, I saw Annie. She was riding her bicycle in a pink helmet and a white dress in Dad’s house backyard. He was still alive, too. They were calling out my name, but I couldn’t speak or touch either of them.
Then Sylvia appeared.
Anger shot through me. I didn’t want to see that woman ever again. I swooped down on her, choking her, yelling how much I hated her. She felt like stone in my grasp. She just stared at me with no expression on her pale face. Then blood covered her head.
