“Fuck,” he growled, limping and readjusting the light strapped across his forehead.
I couldn’t stand. With my hands still tied behind my back, I barely had enough strength to inhale, let alone fight him, but I tried anyway, kicking out with my one good leg.
He caught it in both hands, his eyes empty, hollow sockets of shadow cast by the harsh headlamp he wore.
“Let go of me,” I snarled, trying and failing to kick him off balance.
He chuckled, placed one heavy boot on my shattered leg, andpressed.
My vision blacked out again. If I screamed, I couldn’t hear it.
“You have to hold on, Reece.”
“Charlie?”
“Just a little longer, now. Please. Just a little longer.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can.” The force of his words rumbled through my murky thoughts like thunder. “We’re coming for you. We’ll find you. Hold on.”
Was it really him? Was he with me, somehow? Still latched onto the life force I’d so freely share with him, if he’d let me? Or was I only imagining he was there, so I wouldn’t die alone?
If I could choose the face death wore as it lulled me into that peaceful goodnight, it would be his.
“No!” he snarled. “Hold on!”
I came to as I was heaved up by the shoulder into a sitting position. Leonard grunted from the strain of lifting me with his injured leg and propped me sideways against the edge of the boat.
Even though I didn’t have the strength to look up and read his expression, I knew he drank in the sight of me so close to death, vulnerable to his every whim.
It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever experienced.
“Why?” I croaked before coughing up bloody spittle all over my shirt. Charlie’s words echoed through my mind.
Hold on, hold on, hold on!
Leonard knelt in front of me so I could finally see him. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find in his face, but I had expectedsomething.
Instead, it was like staring into a void. He didn’t sneer or grow defensive. He merely cocked his head and furrowed his brow, those dead shark eyes giving away nothing.
“Because I wanted to.”
Then he reached behind him and pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants and shoved the barrel right underneath my chin. “Now, get in the water.”
The boat had drifted while we fought, and the moon hung over his shoulder now, even closer and brighter than before. I could feel thechop chop chopof that strange thrumming in my chest.
That’s not the moon.
Moonlight didn’t zig-zag across the tree tops, as if guided by a?—
“Helicopter,” I breathed.They’re searching for me.
Leonard did snarl, then, briefly looking over his shoulder before turning back. “Hurry up. In, before they come this way.”
“I need to help them find you,”Charlie had said. Or was that a dream?“We’re coming for you.”
Not fast enough, though.
