Page 67 of Boneyard HEA

The ratchet of the mechanism as I do so is a small dose of doom.

I fucking hope this isn’t going to be an execution.

He drags me to my feet and pushes me forward, halting us where the trees and the grass peter out to meet the expanse of sand.

“Shawn, darling.” Zasha chuckles as the other three come up the beach and stop a few yards away. Aaron and Juniper are shoved to their knees and a gun is put to Aaron’s head.

Bad? This looks disastrous. I hunch my shoulders, rolling them, half-wondering if I can do that trick and hop over my cuffed hands so they’re frontwards. I can’t. I know this. I’d faceplant in the sand.

“No heat signatures?” Shawn asks.

“No one else here. We are good.” Then Zasha turns to me. “Here we get tricky. We don’t want to keep you. Behave and you go free. Karsten says you are good man and do great work for him. Trustworthy enough, hey?”

I shrug. Damn, what is this?

“So, you do as we say and you can go.” He pulls a second smaller pistol from a waist holster, checks it. “One round only. You shoot Mr. Loxland, and then we tie you up and leave you for someone to find you. Mr. Karsten will do it if we tell him to. Da?”

It only takes me a second to realize this is my only way out. “Da.”

“Good.” He places the gun on a cloth he lays on the beach, then goes behind me while Shawn keeps his weapon trained on the others.

I still have little chance of killing or disabling both before they kill me.

I have to do this. I shrug, give Aaron a final smile. “Sorry.”

He sends me a mean glare, which is only fair.

Uncuffing me, carefully, Zasha steps further away and gestures then pulls out a phone he switches on. “Get it. Do it. I film you. We keep this as evidence. Just a little insurance. Do it and you’re free. Do not and I regretfully have to kill you instead.”

They’re going to video me shooting Aaron.

I have to do this. There’s no choice. It’s kill or be killed.

Aaron

He wouldn’t, would he?

I don’t know for sure. Who knows the mind of another man or woman perfectly? No one. If I die here, I hope one of us gets away and Zasha and Shawn meet their own end in the most grisly way.

I brace myself as Tomás comes nearer, gun held down, pointing at only sand until he stops beside me and raises it, then he puts it against my head.

“I am so fucking sorry,” he says loudly. Loud enough for the video to catch it.

I wince as I hear the trigger make some infinitesimal sound I am likely imagining.

Click.

I wince again.

Click-click.

“A fucking test?” Tomás growls. “Was that all this was?”

“Of course. Silly boy,” Shawn says. “Now drop that and step backward to Zasha. You can still die.”

“Oh well.” Tomás shrugs at me as he obeys. The empty gun has landed before me. It’s a weapon that is unusable, and yet the potency of what it represents feels like a missed chance. If only my hands were free and it had bullets in the magazine.

How are we getting out of this?