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1
RANSOM
Everything fucking hurts.
My lungs burn, and my muscles are screaming from doing this much exercise this early in the morning, but with that Jeep gunning for us, it’s not like we can stop. The headlights of the black Jeep flash somewhere behind us, and we duck down another side street, desperate to get away.
At this ungodly hour of the morning, the only sounds on these little roads are our harsh breathing and the beat of our feet against the concrete, but that’s not even close to comforting right now. Someone could leap out of the shadows and intercept us, and we have no real idea where we are or what we’re heading into.
Nuevo Laredo isn’t a massive city, but there are houses sprawled out everywhere, and none of us are familiar enough with this area to make any kind of guesses about what we’re heading toward. It flashes in my brain that maybe the Jeep is herding us into some kind of trap, but I shake that off before it can take hold. At this point, it doesn’t really matter. We just have to keep moving and deal with whatever happens.
The Jeep’s engine roars behind us, and we pick up the pace, taking advantage of the fact that we’re more nimble on foot than the Jeep is. But it’s still a damned close thing.
“Fuckthis,” I curse with feeling as we stumble out onto the main road again a few minutes later. “Olivia can go fuck herself.”
If anyone were to look out their windows right now, they’d see four grown-ass adults running wild through the streets in the predawn hours of the morning, trying to get away from a Jeep.
Part of me hopes Olivia herself is in that Jeep so I can punch her right in her smug face if I get the chance.
Almost as soon as we pause to look around, there’s another flash of headlights. I don’t know how the hell the Jeep is moving so fast, but it’s right there behind us again, downing us in the glare from its brights.
Willow gasps, and before I have time to turn around and see what’s up, we’re moving again. Vic grabs her arm and yanks her off to the side, and we duck into another alley, sprinting as fast as we can.
“I saw… who was in the… Jeep,” Willow pants breathlessly, sounding like she’s having a hard time breathing and talking at the same time. “It was… Troy.”
My head whips around as I stare at her.
“What the fuck?” Malice growls. He turns to look at her, not slowing his pace. “Are you sure?”
Willow looks like she’s going to be sick, but she nods. “I saw him. He’s not dead. He must have… must have survived.”
Vic grunts breathlessly. “That means Olivia had help. Fuck, I didn’t know. I wasn’t counting on that.”
None of us were, but we don’t have time to dwell on that right now. If that asshole Troy has been hunting us the same way Olivia has, then we have to keep moving. I’m sure that bastard has a grudge against us too, considering we almost killed him and ran off with the woman he was supposed to marry.
“Come on!” I tell them, picking up my pace a little bit more, even though it feels like my heart is about to explode. “We can figure it out once we get out of here.”
Even though I’m the one who said we’ll figure it out later, letting go of it is still one of those ‘easier said than done’ kind of things. Even as my arms pump and my feet slap against the pavement, my mind starts conjuring up memories of all the shit Troy has done. All the ways he’s threatened Willow. The way he was planning to marry her, even though he sure as hell knew she didn’t want it.
I think about their engagement party, when he had that proprietary look in his eyes, acting like he had the right to decide who Willow was allowed to speak to, barely standing down because he didn’t want to cause a scene.
Olivia might be in this for the money, and she’s clearly willing to use her only living heir as a bargaining chip, but Troy is one of those assholes who’s just vindictive and petty. He’s not chasing us because of money, since he doesn’t need us for that the same way Olivia does.
He’s chasing us because he can’t stand to lose.
Anger wells up in me, hot and intense. I think I might hate that fucker even more than Olivia.
The idea of running from him turns my stomach, and I’m half tempted to stop and try to take the cocksucker out, but it would be a bad idea. We’re at a disadvantage, and a pretty big one at that. The thing that matters the most here is keeping Willow safe. Anything and everything else can come later.
So we keep running, sprinting along and ducking through more small spaces. We climb over garden beds and duck under someone’s clothes line, trying to put as much distance as we can between us and the Jeep. The more we run, the quieter it gets, and after several agonizing minutes, it seems like maybe we’ve managed to get away.
There’s no more roar of the engine behind us, and the streets are only lit by a few streetlights instead of the glow of those headlights. But we’re still running blindly through this unfamiliar town in Mexico, not sure where we’re going. It’s not like Vic had time to plot a route for us. Those bastards caught us completely off guard.
Wherever we manage to hole up next, we’re going to have to be a lot more careful.
And that opens the question of where we can even go. Unless Troy and Olivia somehow guessed we were going to Mexico days ago, they probably haven’t been here for longer than we have, but they have more resources than we do. Hell, they might even have people on their payroll living here, eager to help them. It’ll be hard to know which places are safe to go to. We need more distance between us, and we need to throw them off of our trail so we can regroup and come up with another piece of this plan.
We were supposed to have more time for that, but here we fucking are.
