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As we move, the dogs start to trust me more, picking up speed until we’re all running for the door in front of me. There’s another explosion, bigger than the others. The night sky flares red and yellow.
I look across at the house. Black smoke is pluming up, illuminated by an inferno below it. The house is alight. A section of wall on the second floor is missing and I can see inside. It’s like an X-ray of the building. There’s the bathroom only my father’s allowed to use. The toilet is dangling out into empty space, water gushing out of a burst pipe, spraying upward in a fountain.
From the light of the fire I can see a figure sprinting toward me across the grass. It’s a man, dressed all in black, a pistol in his hand. He’s coming straight for me, gunfire following him. Bullets thud into the door beside me. I dart into the stables, pulling the dogs in after me.
I put them in the end stall, sliding it shut to keep them inside. I don’t want them to bolt out into the open and get shot in their panic. I cross back to the main door, planning to shut and barricade it.
Before I get a chance to push the door shut, it bursts open again. The sprinting figure has thrown his shoulder against the wood, rolling inside and thudding straight into me. The dogs start growling and snarling from inside the stall but they can’t get to me.
I see a flash of dark eyes glinting like a shark as the man grabs hold of me, yelling out into the open. “Don’t shoot, I’ve got a hostage.” He grabs hold of me, spinning me around, his arm around my throat. His voice is a furious snarl, deeper than the dogs.
“Let go of me,” I say, trying to fight him off but he’s way too strong. He presses his body into my back, the pistol in his free hand moving up until it’s digging into my temple.
The gunfire out there slows and stops. I hear people shouting to each other as my captor pushes me toward the door. The dogs are still fighting to get free, throwing themselves against the stall door.
The man shoves me through the open door first, cowering behind me, gun pressed to my head. “You shoot, she dies,” he yells in a deep snarl that reminds me again of the dogs. He walks backward from the stable as he talks.
In front of me, I can see several figures with guns pointing our way. I recognize them. My father’s guards. There’s Pietro, looking straight at me. “Let her go,” he yells. “It’s over.”
“The hell it is,” the figure shouts over my head. “He’s dead. Why are you even fighting anymore?”
The words are just a feint to give him time. As he’s talking, he’s reached the helicopter which is already taking off. He rolls back through the open door and I think he’s going to let me go.
I get the feeling he’s trying to decide and then he chooses to keep his human shield. He lifts me inside with one arm like I weigh nothing, keeping me in front of him as we rise into the air so fast my stomach drops out of my ass and gets left somewhere down on the ground.
I feel like throwing up as the chopper rushes forward. Looking down, I can see the men left behind, lit up by the inferno that was my house. The wind is rushing in through the open door and I swear I can feel the heat rising from the obscenely large flames.
As I look, there’s an explosion from the house and the men on the grass are swallowed up by the flames. The sight will remain with me forever. One moment they’re there. The next, gone.
Another few seconds, and all I can see is darkness, the chopper turning to the left as we rise even higher. Just darkness. Darkness outside the helicopter and sitting next to me, his gun still pointed at me, more darkness. It’s like I’ve been abducted not by a person but by the night itself. He’s wearing a balaclava and only his eyes are visible.
He reaches out to me and I shriek but all he’s doing is strapping me into my seat, pulling the door closed beside me. He shoves a headset onto me and the deafening roar of the rotors fades a little.
Those eyes are staring at me again as I put my head in my hands. I think of a shark once more. Dead eyes. I am nothing to him. He’s circling in the water.
Any moment now his mouth is going to open wide to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth. When that happens, I’m going to get torn into pieces so small, no one will ever find me.
Fourteen
Nico
* * *
Iwalked right into a trap. I can’t believe how stupid I was.
“What happened back there?” Andy says into his microphone. “That was not clean or clinical.”
“No it wasn’t,” I reply. “We were set up.”
“David and Ricky?”
“Dead.”
“Shit.”
“You’re telling me.” I look at him. He’s holding the stick weird. “You all right?”
“Shot in the arm but I’ll be fine.”
