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“What are you gonna do, hero? Shoot me? You think that’ll get you in those uptight panties of hers?”
“Shut up and stay right there, because I have no problem blowing a hole in your goddamn skull.”
He laughed, sounding like a guy who’d smoked a pack a day since the third grade, and shook his head.
“You say that like it matters. Like there won’t be someone else coming along right behind us to kill your pretty little thing there.”
The chill that fell over me had nothing to do with the clouds building on the horizon and everything to do with his words.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the contract,” he muttered, spitting blood into the grass. “I’m talking about the fact that someone out there doesn’t want your girl alive. Her and the other one, from the sounds of it. So it doesn’t matter what you do to us because the person who hired us is still out there.” He smiled, a vile, filthy thing. “And you can’t protect her forever.”
My grip on the gun tightened, my hold so strong I could feel the muscles in my wrist starting to cramp, but I was unable to let go.
I hated that he was right. I hated that even if I got Daphne out of that house, out of the woods and back to the city, I would still have no idea who was trying to harm her and Penelope. I knew Stone and Hack and probably half the FBI were working on it, but would they be enough to keep her safe?
Would I be enough to keep her safe?
I was still creating worst-case scenarios in my head, when suddenly, the guy on his knees dove toward the house, flinging himself at the base of the stairs in an attempt to reach the knife again.
I lurched forward, scrambling to try to regain my footing, but my leg was really bleeding, and I couldn’t seem to get it to do what I wanted it to. Instead, I half-crawled my way to the edge of the porch, trying to regain a line of sight on the guy before he managed to find the weapon.
But just as I reached the edge and went to look over, the asshole popped up right in front of me, his one hand grabbing my wrist in an attempt to wrestle the gun away from me, his other hand holding the knife high, ready to strike.
“Silas!” Daphne screamed, but before I could go to her—before I could do anything to reassure her that everything was going to be alright—the quiet clearing rang out with an all too familiar sound.
A single gunshot.
