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“You aren’t throwing,” he crooned, inclining his masked head to the blade in my fingers.
“You aren’t shooting,” I countered, swallowing hard.
“Not yet.”
Nothing in my periphery. No one else was here, but they would be soon. This cliff side ran the whole way around the lake, there was nowhere else for them to go.
Diesel, moving slowly, removed his mask from his face and discarded it on the ground, taking a deep breath as though it’d been suffocating him.
“Do you know how many bodies I’ve buried in these woods?” he asked, lifting the crossbow in a way that told me he knew very well how to use it. Maybe almost as well as I could use a blade.
I leveled out my breathing, deciding not to play his little game of intimidation. He was either going to shoot me or he wasn’t, the rest didn’t matter. I needed to keep my eye trained on his trigger finger. If it so much as flinched, I’d throw.
And wouldn’t it be some kind of irony if Diesel St. Crow was killed by a blade his own son put in my hands?
“I’ve lost count,” Diesel admitted after another moment, shifting to his left a bit, making me readjust my position to counter him.
He grinned at my movements, interest piqued.
“But there’s one,” he continued. “Buried right there.”
His gaze indicated a spot only a few feet from where I stood. “His name was Foley, and he begged for a spot on my crew. I gave him a chance, and do you want to know how he repaid me?”
“Not really.”
His lips twisted into a cruel smirk. “He was going to betray us. He was going to take down my son.”
Something in my stomach fluttered, and I worked to clamp it down.
“Do you want to know how he died?”
“Let me guess. Crossbow?”
Diesel shook his head. “No. When I caught Foley in these woods, I fought him man to man. No weapons. Just fists. It was personal, you see.No onehurts my family.”
A pang in my chest at his words made my brows draw together and my grip falter for a second before I was able to recover.
“I’m not what you think I am,” I said in a low whisper, meeting his stony gaze, but the words sounded like a lie even to my own ears. And Officer Vick’s face flashed in my mind’s eye, making my throat tight.
When he didn’t say anything, and I heard the muted sounds of movement approaching, I chanced looking away from Diesel and into the trees, trying to judge how much time I had left before I was fully surrounded.
I was fucked.
Was this his plan all along? Keep me pinned here until his minions could get to us? So that he could have one ofthemkill me. For him to be able to keep his hands clean of my death?
Idiot. I should have run.
I still could if…
“Uh, uh, uh,” Diesel chided, seeing what I had planned in the jerky movements of my gaze. “They’ll be here any second. There’s only one way off this rock that might end with your survival.”
His cold stare tracked to the water below and back.
“Why not just shoot me?” I asked, my stomach already fluttering at the prospect of the long drop. There were rocks down there, too. Big ones. And smaller ones. It would be a small miracle not to hit any of them.
He hesitated, his hands tightening on the crossbow.
He couldn’t, I realized. He wouldn’t risk alienating his sons for good. He could let someone else do it, though. Or he could let me jump and hope the rocks below would do the job for him.
