“Angelo’s still under the water!” She managed to shout and pointed in the direction where the car had been. She didn’t ask how the bodyguard had found them. It was his job to know, and she was grateful.
“Stay here!” Asher commanded before he flung his jacket at her and plunged into the water disappearing from sight.
She was so focused on the surface of the lake, tears blurring her vision that she didn’t hear someone approach until it was too late. Someone grabbed her arm and whipped her around. The blow hit her so it hard it simply turned the lights off.
When Kara came around, her head aching, and her stomach churning with nausea, she heard angry male voices nearby. Her body vibrated with a gentle, steady rumble.
She was in a car. The windows were tinted but she could tell it was night outside. It took her a moment to remember the car, the crash… the water rising and Angelo telling her he would be right behind her. But he wasn’t. He’d… he’d never surfaced.
“Ye could’ve killed her.” Someone growled, his accent heavily Irish. That sent a chill through her.
No… no… no…
“Well I didn’t,” another man snapped, this one with an American accent. “She’s fine.”
“We’ll see,” the first man spat. “Ye’d better call the boss.”
They had to be Cormac’s men.
She struggled to move, but her hands were bound behind her back, and she lay on her side in the middle row of an SUV.Something had been taped over her mouth, making it hard to breathe as she struggled to cry.
Angelo.She’d left him to drown. She’d never gotten the chance to go into the water after him.Oh God…
He was the only thing that mattered… the one person she dared to love, dared to trust and she hadkilledhim. Because she had insisted that they run. He had warned her not to. He’d known this might be what exactly what Cormac wanted, and he’d tried to tell her. He’d been right. Her foolish need to act without thinking had killed the only man she ever loved. Now she was going to be delivered to a life that would kill her spirit and destroy her soul.
This is why you never should have fallen in love. Why you never should have let him into your heart.
She lay still, unable to do more than breathe and think. A long while later, the SUV made several turns and stopped. Both men got out, the doors slamming behind them. She struggled to sit up and spotted the lights of a private airport hangar. She squinted, trying to get a better view of the small private plane that looked like it was being made ready for travel. A pilot climbed up the stairs to the plane and disappeared inside. The two men who’d driven her here were talking in front of the car. Then one turned to face the car as the lights from the car struck his face, she gasped.
Those eyes… It was the man who’d attacked her in the alley, the man who had attacked Angelo in the hospital.
He came toward the door nearest her and opened it. She didn’t fight him as he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the car. She tripped and nearly fell as her legs gave way beneath her, but she stayed upright, dragged forward with her hands still bound behind her. Kara was so tired, too tired to fight, too tired to think. She felt like she was going to throw up. But with the tape around her mouth, she knew she’d choke on it.
“Get up!” The man jerked her back up, holding her more forcefully in the air which twisted her right arm sharply.
Somehow, she managed to get across the tarmac and up the narrow stairs into a private plane without falling again. She paused just inside the plane, taking in the sight of half a dozen empty seats and two men who were speaking at the back of the plane. When they spotted her they both stopped talking and came toward her.
The man with hazel eyes and a cruel twist to a once handsome face was the one who approached first. She knew by the possessive gleam in his eyes that he was Cormac Callahan. The other man behind him had to be Jim O’Leary, his second in command. He had a less certain look about him, as though he didn’t entirely like her being here but wasn’t going to say anything.
“Kara O’Brien.” He smiled but no emotion other than possessiveness touched his eyes. He reached up and ripped the tape off her mouth, making her gasp in pain.
“Why is she wet?” Cormac demanded of the man who’d escorted her from the car to the plane.
“Your men crashed my car into a lake… with me inside,” she answered. “I almost drowned.” Her tone held a mixture of contempt and hardness she’d never thought she’d be capable of.
“What?” Cormac glared at the man behind her. “Get out. Now.” He barked.
Cormac lifted Kara’s chin up to stare into her eyes, and she twisted her still bound wrists, wishing she could push his hand away or step back, but there was nowhere to go.
“Ye have his eyes…yer father’s eyes,” Cormac declared, his lips twitching. “I never thought they were pretty… until now.” Then his gaze moved to her mouth and then down to her breasts.
His fingers beneath her chin slowly trailed down her neck, pausing between her breasts before he let his hand drop to his side.
“My name is Cormac,” he said with a crooked grin.
“I know,” she replied, her tone full of ice.
She wasn’t afraid anymore. The fear she had carried her entire life was gone. She hadn’t outrun the bogeyman of her father’s past, and she’d lost the only thing she couldn’t afford to lose. Angelo was dead, and she… she was hollow inside. There was nothing left to fear, nothing left to be afraid of. This was the end.
