Aunt Mary barely blinked. “I’m so sorry you got mixed up in this, Sarah. I didn’t plan for it to go this way.”
Dang it. Dang-it-dang-it-dang-it.“Then how did you plan for it to go?”
Aunt Mary’s shoulders dropped, and she looked down. “It was nice to talk to someone who wasn’t afraid of me and didn’t want anything from me, and I do like Russian history.”
A good girl would have been despondent that she’d been lied to and cried prettily at her aunt’s betrayal.
Sarah yelled, “Whatthe living heck,Aunt Mary!This isn’t right.I thought you loved me because I’m your niece!I love you!”
Aunt Mary nodded. “I am sorry about how this turned out. Logan, it’s time to get this over with.”
Logan Bell,her own dang brother,encroached on where she and Blaze stood, placing his shiny dress shoes ever so precisely on the white carpet. “I can’t shoot her, Dr. Bell.”
Sarah’s heart leaped. Heck, yeah, he wouldn’t. Logan was her brother and was defending her.
He said, “If the neighbors hear gunshots, they’ll call the police.”
She screamed at him, “Logan,no!Ibelievedin you!”
Aunt Mary shrugged. “You’d think the builders would have soundproofed your apartment better for that price.Fine.Take her somewhere and get rid of her, and bring Blaze Robinson to me.”
The screen went black, and the tiny green light at the top of the monitor flickered out.
Prayers in English and Russian started looping in Sarah’s head, all but blinding her to the black holes of the guns pointing at her face. She babbled, “You were just telling her that to get her off the call, right? You aren’t really going to shoot me?Please,Logan. I’m your sister. You’re the only family I have left!”
Blaze whispered,“Remember what to do if I told you to run.”
Logan stalked forward again, still holding the semi-automatic gun straight out in front of him, his arms braced in a taut triangle. Still not taking his eyes off her and Blaze, he turned his chin toward the other two men in the living room. “Micah, you heard Dr. Bell. Let’s get them down on the floor so we can take her somewhere and finish this.”
The frickin’ second location.
Every true-crime podcast and video screamed through Sarah’s head at the same time.
If the serial killer took you to the second location where they had all the power, you were dead.
You had to take your stand in the first location and force them to fight you immediately.
Not where they had more power.
Not where no one would hear the guns fire or her screaming.
The other guy with the gun strode toward them, holding the gun up and at eye level. His steps covered the white carpeting as he paced toward them.
Sarah didn’t look down but bent sideways, grasping for the stone-like vase on the floor.
Blaze stepped backward again, the heel of his running shoe landing between Sarah’s scuffed farm boots as he leaned back, squeezing her between his muscular back and the wall.
No,he was smashing her so tightly that she couldn’t grab that dang vase. If a smidgen of an opening happened, she needed to beready.
Even though the odds were impossible withtwomen glaring at them over their guns.
Even if she tried to bean one of them with the vase while Blaze immediately figured out what she was doing and simultaneously moved on the other guy, at least one of them would manage to move his trigger finger a fraction of an inch and shoot.
And then he’d shoot again.
It wasimpossible.
No,notdarn-it impossible.
