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I blew out a breath, determined, and moved quickly to the trunk. The wind tugged at my hair, and I shivered through my hoodie, but I knew the effort of digging would warm me up soon. I lifted the hatch.
A face stared up at me. For a second, I thought there was a corpse in the trunk; the man was so still, his eyes staring up into nothingness.
Then abruptly, he lunged toward me.
Chapter25
Aurora
Iscreamed in surprise and tried to slam the trunk back down again on the man who’d attacked me. But it was too late and I stumbled back, scrambling to grab my knife.
My attacker thrust something against my body, and I realized it was a taser as I was trying to get away from it, but I was too late. The taser connected with my arm and pain jolted through my body. My legs stopped working. My whole body twitched as agony coursed through me; my body jerked against the ground, my view suddenly filled with twigs and dirt.
My attacker scrambled out of the trunk and got down on top of me. He started to yank my hands together, securing my wrists with a zip tie.
My body stopped jerking only to find myself being loaded into my own trunk.
“Who are you? I demanded weakly, because exactly what enemy I faced now mattered. There was a big difference between escaping my father's elaborate, poison-laced traps and escaping some random off the internet. Maybe Remington hadn't managed to sweep the internet for all traces of me as well as he thought.
“Remington’s father sends his regards,” he snarled. “Think about that and what you can look forward to now, bitch.”
Fuck. I knew what a monster Remington’s father was. He must have survived after all…then a beat of doubt made me pause. Remington’s rage at his father had seemed real. But what if Remington had left his father alive instead of having him killed?
I wondered for a second if this guy might take me back to the club where Remington’s mother had been. But Cain had control of the club now. It was hard to imagine Remington’s father would ever use it like that again.
The door slammed shut, giving me plenty of time to piece through every faint clue and think through every dark possibility. The hours hummed by, carrying me further away from my earlier mission to retrieve Carrie Heyward’s hand and files.
I’d been dreading digging in the woods, but now I felt nostalgic about the idea.
The car finally came to a stop, and I tensed, ready to fight even with flexicuffs cutting into my wrists. My body was one aching knot, and I tried to ease myself from side to side, limbering my muscles. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
When the hatch was opened, I found myself facing three men. One was the man who had kidnapped me. One was Remington’s father. And the third I didn't recognize at first.
Slowly, I realized that we were in that same garage once more. I stared around at them, wondering if they had chosen to do this here because they wanted to hurt the guys, or if…I didn't want this terrible dark idea to be true, but I had to confront the possibility the guys had given these men their blessing to hurt me like this. Maybe the entire situation with Remington had been set up. The thought made me feel not just rage, but a sudden surge of grief and loss that burned through my veins.
I didn't want the men of the Sphinx to be my villains anymore.
And I didn't want to be a villain to them.
But if Pax, Remington, Cain, and Stellan created this situation, and these men hurt me, then I would have to kill them.
The realization was hard and brittle in my chest.
“Leave her here for them to find,” Remington’s father said. He wasn’t looking very good, the only silver lining to this situation. The slash on his face looked infected and there were bandages on his fingers. I was sure that underneath his shirt wasn’t looking too good either.
“And we'll make sure they think the Black Wings gang did it,” the third man said, the one I didn't recognize. “Fighting that war should keep them busy for a while. Get these boys to do some work for us and grieve this bitch.”
Relief swept through me. They were planning to lie to my men; that meant at least the guys weren’t in on the situation.
“Let's do this and get it over with, then,” the third man said. He seemed bored and impatient about the whole thing. He was a tall hulking man with shaggy brown hair and tattoos crawling up his arms and neck. “We can have her carved up afterward. There's no reason to waste time here. If Cain discovers we were involved…We don't need that kind of war. Not when the boys can do so much good for us.”
“Think this through.” Remington’s father’s eyes glittered with lust… lust to hurt me. “If the worst is true and they really do give a fuck about her, then they're going to do an autopsy. And an autopsy is going to show that she was mutilated after she was killed.”
The third man eyed him as if he could read right through Remington’s father's bullshit and see that he was just eager to hurt me. “No, because I'm the one they'll go to for an autopsy.”
“They don't have those kinds of resources. Not yet. Not without going through me.”
The big one gave Remington’s father a look. “That's why you're alive, after all.”
