Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Kane had done this, along with the bastard who now held me hostage.
Because of them, Jana was gone.
Lightheadedness swam as my face throbbed. My left eye was nearly swollen shut from the impact of the gun, but nothing hurt quite as badly as my heart.
“Let me go.” I thrashed against him, the words grit with the adrenaline that flooded my body as we stumbled out into a small break in the trees.
It was the smallest meadow, and what had to be the same stream as on Kane’s property ran through it.
The degenerate laughed a morbid sound. “Nah, I have plans for you. Same ones I had for your bitch sister who was putting her nose into places it shouldn’t go. Digging around like she thought she was going to stop us.”
Confusion ran rampant while tendrils of awareness wisped at the edges of my consciousness.
The intuition I’d had that something was off.
That she hadn’t just…fallen.
Emmalee.
Emmalee.
My spirit moaned as he kept shoving me through the brush.
“Should have ended you all the second I found out she had been in LA asking questions. But I guess I shouldn’t regret it too much since you led me back to Kane.” He hissed it at my ear.
Uncertainty spiraled. Pressing and pulsing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He barked a shock of laughter before he was back to wheezing. “Ah, so innocent. But you were, weren’t you? That’s why you were my favorite.”
With a lecherous grin, he dragged a finger down my cheek.
Bile surged, and I squeezed my eyes against his taunt.
The foul.
The depraved.
My heart raced, a desperate urging at me to do something.
I had to fight.
I had to fight.
Little Warrior.
Sunlight glinted through the leaves above, flashes across my eyes.
I stumbled on a limb and yelped when he fisted my hair tighter. “Keep moving.”
And that fear spun and spun.
Misery.
Grief.
It wound with the deafening roar of my blood. The tumultuous surging of adrenaline.
The air both dense and thin. A crawling of sensation across my flesh.
A flare of intensity.
A flame of severity.
I felt it move, the energy that stirred and incited.
And there it was, the awareness that had possessed me the first time I’d met him.
Kane.
I felt the violent, menacing presence of him rise over us from behind. The shadow of a wraith that covered and consumed.
The connection a blister of ferocity that I felt one second before Kane shouted, “Emery, get down!”
I let my weight go at the same second a thunderclap of footsteps suddenly burst from behind us.
Kane and the rest.
Oh God.
He came for me. He came.
Pain splintered across my scalp as I dropped to my knees, and the monster gripped tighter, refusing to let me go as he turned around and fired.
Gunshots rang out.
Chaos erupted.
Shouts and dust and animosity.
I fought, refusing the agony of the fistful of my hair being ripped out as I smacked my hand frantically around on the earth, searching for anything I could use as a weapon.
A rock.
I grabbed it, grunting as I swung it high and wide, and I whipped it around and slammed it into the beast’s hip bone.
He howled, and his grip slackened with his surprise, releasing the hold he had in my hair.
I used it to my advantage, sucking in a shattered breath as I scrambled onto my feet.
“Run, Emery. Run!” Kane’s voice penetrated from behind, and tears leaped to my eyes.
The torment at odds with the relief.
I turned to do just that, only the beast launched himself at me, his hand swiping out to get ahold of me. I spun, just out of his reach, though the sole of my shoe slipped against the slick, soft dirt. It nearly brought me back to the ground.
I fought the tumble, one hand hitting the ground, which I used to propel myself back up onto my feet.
The asshole reached out again and grabbed me by the ankle.
I yelped, struggling to break free.
“You fuckin’ whore. You don’t know what hurt means yet,” he growled.
Air rasped from my lungs, and I wavered for only a second before I gathered my strength and stomped on his face with the heel of my other shoe.
He roared as he released me. Frantic, I stumbled back, slipping and sliding on the damp earth as I struggled to find my balance.
“You cunt. You’re dead. Dead, just like your sister. You should have heard her begging as I tossed her over the side of that roof. Gonna make sure you do the same. Beg for days before I finally end you.”
I gagged at the cruelty he spat, my heart shredding apart, but I managed to force myself to move. Turning, I propelled myself around a tree and into the forest.
The second I was out of the meadow, mayhem erupted, and I froze as a hundred shots went off at the same time. Loud and disorienting.
Shock pinned me to the spot, my eyes wide with horror as I watched from behind the trunk of a massive tree as my captor staggered to his feet.