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“Yeah. Did she meet you today? At a house on Gavin Street?”
“Yeah, that’s where Nadia took me,” Josh said. “She said it was her place, but I guess it was this mobster guy’s house all along—hey, man, are you OK? You look like you’re going to be sick, or something.”
Nick was so fucked. More than fucked. He was doomed.
“So where the hell is my sister?” Josh demanded.
He tried to suck in enough air to answer. “Somewhere she shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’ve got to haul ass to go fix it.” He turned to Tam, who was trying to throw her deadly pendants over her shoulder.
The baby was grabbing for them, chortling with glee.
“Becca was telling the truth,” he said. “I have to go get her. Zhoglo had her tagged. He could trace her to the place where I left her.”
“Ay. That’s bad. Go, then.” Tam’s eyes went bleak. “We’ll finish here without you. Run like the devil is after you, Nikolai. Because he is.”
He did, spurred on by bone-chilling fear, and crazy hope.
CHAPTER33
There was screaming in the room behind the picture window. Something shattered against the wall. Zhoglo was in a bloody rage.
Eventually he would take it out on her. That was going to be bad.
But it hadn’t happened yet. One thing at a time. Becca still had a few moments to smell the pines, throw her head back, look up at the moon lighting the holes in the clouds, and weep for joy.
Josh and Carrie were safe. She’d seen it with her own eyes on the monitor. Seen Nick, bursting in at the last moment and stopping those monsters from cutting that poor girl. And if Sveti was saved, then Josh and Carrie were, too. And all the rest of them, too. Free and clear.Saved.
Zhoglo’s henchmen had forgotten the monitor, which kept on transmitting the live video feed. Sveti still lay on the table, with a woman in scrubs bending over her, checking her pulse. Seth stood next to her, half visible on the screen, grimly holding a gun on someone, or many someones, all of whom were off camera. Someone was moaning and babbling in pain. Not Sveti. Seth didn’t appear at all concerned about it.
Becca was crying, but she didn’t care. She flung her head back, sniffling, listening to the trees rustle above her head. Dragging in lungfuls of the sweet breeze. A big circle opened in the clouds, lined with light. Stars, clouds, moon, trees. Beautiful.
Carrie and Josh would have to live it for her. Love it for her.
She ached with sorrow for her own loss, but Josh and Carrie would go on. They would grow up, choose mates, make families. Ripen into strong, happy people. Live long, full lives. She hoped for it desperately. Wished it for them, with all her strength, all her love.
And when it came to living fully, well. She may have skimped on life experience up to a week ago, but her affair with Nick had been so intense, it was like years of living crammed into a few short days.
She’d loved him. Fully. Not wisely, but well. That was a blessing. More than a lot of women had to look back on at the end of their lives.
She would cling to that as best she could, when the time came.
Nick had never driven so fastin his life. He floored it through the interior of the warehouse complex, his flesh creeping at the thought of Becca, staked out in the dark. The virgin sacrifice.Innocent.
He fished in the glove box for the flashlight. He should’ve left it with her in the first place. Hell, he shouldn’t have left her at all.
Moonlight came and went as clouds scudded by. Inside, that place would be as dark as the pits of hell.
And he was the one who had chained her there.
Stop. Focus. No point in flogging himself for fucking up again. He had the rest of his life for that. Becca herself could do the honors. For now, he was focused on making it right. As right as it could ever be.
This kind of wound was the kind that never healed. He knew about wounds like that. He’d watched them inflicted, seen them fester, for his entire childhood. Until love was just a distant, bitter memory.
She would never want to see him again. He knew that. But it would be enough to know that the Becca he loved still existed on earth, exactly who he had believed her to be the first time around. Even if he wasn’t worthy of her himself, cold, suspicious, screwed-up, brain-dead bastard that he was.
But even all alone, the idea of her existence would comfort him.
He heaved the doors open, with a rattling roar. The beam of his flashlight sliced through the cavernous dark, and caught a small, furry body that scurried for cover.Rats.Oh, Jesus. Another nail for his coffin.
