“It’s true! I didn’t hurt them. I swear to you!”
Tell me you love me, Mommy.The memory of his bloody masturbation invaded, and the lingering smell of his semen assaulted her senses. No way any woman left this room alive. It wasn’t possible. If one had, she wouldn’t be here now.
“How fucking many?” she shouted.
Tears spilling over, Bryan hung his head, guilt fixing his stare to the floor between them. “Twelve.”
The whispered word ran her over like a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer.
Twelve.Eve’s heart stopped beating. The weight of the number too heavy a burden to bear.
“I swear to you. I never hurt them!” Bryan cried.
Twelve women dead.The blood drained from her head, and she sagged against the padding of her prison. Her body’s protective instincts taking over, her shoulders caved inward, and her free arm curled around her waist, the knife in her hand all but forgotten.
“Please, Eve! You have to believe me!”
Daughters. Sisters. Friends. Lovers.
Abducted. Imprisoned. Assaulted. Murdered.
Nausea, vile and thick, choked her.
“You know me! I’m your brother. You know I’d never hurt anyone.”
Twelve grieving families.Loved ones never knowing how or why. No answers. No burials. No closure. No peace.Her lungs burned for oxygen, her limbs went numb, and her vision blurred as a cold sweat slicked over her skin.
“I swear it’s true! Please, give me the knife, and as soon as my father gets back, I’ll tell him to let you go! I promise. Once you sign some papers, everything will be fine! Just like the others.”
Twelve women dead.Her knees buckled, the world tilted, and Bryan made his move.
The knife. The knife. Use the knife.Her mother’s voice sang in her ear.
Too late.
She felt the cold bite of steel across her abdomen and the gushing warmth of blood as Bryan wrenched the knife from her grasp. A precursor of what would come? Who knew? And what did it matter anyway?
Eve was as good as dead. Today. Tomorrow. Didn’t matter. She was lucky thirteen—her mother’s favorite number—funny how life worked out sometimes.
“Jellybean!”
From far away she heard the knife clatter against the concrete, and then blackness descended, a welcome oblivion as consciousness slipped away.
CHAPTERTEN
By Saturday morningthe temperature had dropped again, a hint of the approaching storm, and a cold gust of Montana air chilled Adam where he stood on the covered porch of the lodge.
“Lucky Charms in gear, asshole.” Sac-tapping Grant hard enough to cause damage, Cody nodded farewell as he walked past. Limp still noticeable, he descended the two stairs to the gravel drive in one move.
“Give me a minute, fucknut.” Dressed in a worn Carhartt coat and a faded green Lucky Charms T-shirt, Grant wouldn’t move his balls until he was good and fucking ready. “You sure about this?”
Adam didn’t need a map and compass to make out where the man was going with the inquiry. Grant would already be feeling Gray’s absence. “She’s safe.” Hands in his pockets, he leaned against the doorframe and watched the dust kicked up by his sister’s departure settle.
With Chase and Gray on their way to the airport, he mentally scratched the first task off his to-do list. “I trust Chase, and Petrova’s men will have his back.”
Traveling by private charter as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Chase and Gray were spending the next week vacationing in Mallorca with a six-man security detail. It was one hell of an expensive holiday, paid for by Johnson’s backers, and worth every damn penny.
“Kincaid,” Cody shouted, sticking his arm out the window of the JTT’s new top-of-the-line GMC Denali and smacking his palm on the roof twice. “Let’s roll.”
