Page 101 of Boneyard HEA

“About his name?”

Shit, I’ve confused Rafael. I start to growl an explanation, but he slaps his hand over my mouth and pulls me back, again. “Let’s walk calmly a⁠—”

Lunging further over the seat and accidentally gunning the engine, Alden interjects, “I’m trying to save you! Get the fuck in before they get here.” He shoves open the passenger door.

Two men are running in our direction from the park. Joggers? No. They’re in suits. Twenty yards ahead, a man threads, with a hurried stride, past a woman with a pram.

“In!” Alden repeats. “Both of you.”

“We’ve no back-up, and there’s a van coming.” Rafael checks our front, back, and the park. “Whoever they are, choose fast. Them or him.” He releases me.

I got this.

“Him. You, back. Me, front.” Before he can object, I glide into the front passenger seat and slam the door. Alden shoots me a measuring look, barely waits for the rear door to shut, and accelerates into the stream of traffic.

Curses are thrown in our wake by the men chasing us.

I put my hand into my jacket pocket and carefully position my fingers around the handle of the wrapped object. The doctor had a few good possibles. Thankfully, my missing finger is on my left hand.

Meticulous, as usual, Rafael fastens his safety belt before he leans forward between the seats. “Explain what just happened.”

Alden slows to a stop at a traffic light, glances at me, at Rafael. “I’m Alden, brother of the man who sent some killers after Georgia, a month ago.”

A month? Was it a whole month? My gut churns and claws at itself. Killers? If they’d only been killers, I would be under the ground by now.

“I don’t believe you.” I slip the point of the scalpel into his side, feel it penetrate the cloth of his shirt as if it were made of butter, see him wince. I smile at the blossoming of blood on the ivory-colored cloth. “Why are you doing this?”

“I just rescued you, and you cut me?”

Rafael is frowning. I ignore him.

“Your family sent me to be tortured by the most evil of men. They’re dead now. Tell me why I shouldn’t make you dead too.”

“I’m not my brother. I don’t kill women who say no to me.”

He thinks that is why Joseph tried to dispose of me. He doesn’t know. Or he is still lying.

“If you knew your brother is willing to murder over something so trivial, why didn’t you go to the cops? Granted I did kick him in the balls.”

“Ouch,” Rafaels says, maybe just to remind us both he’s also in the car.

He laughs, takes a whole long-ass minute to run his gaze from my breasts down to my legs.

I swallow my irritation at what that does to me, and a memory sweeps in…

Lying on my stomach and waking in his bed to his gray eyes looking down at me while he inspects my body.

“All of that, you’ll have to wait to hear, but if you shoot me or stab me, you’ll never find out why.”

The last month of rape and cruelty crashes in. My head throbs in time with the changing lights. I switch the scalpel to his neck, snarling, “Lost something on the floor? Light’s green.”

He grimaces and presses the accelerator. The scalpel draws a red line on his neck, and he barely misses an old lady leaving the crossing.

Rafael whips his arm around to my front and pulls me into the headrest, hard. He’s pinned my scalpel-bearing hand to the seat.

He’s inches away, mouth tight, expressionless. “Be still, Georgia. Let go of that knife. Keep driving, Alden.”

“Of course.” Alden smiles. “Now the fun begins.”