The horror on Blaze’s face cut Sarah’s heart. “If you hurt her, I willfuckingkill you.I swear on all my dead brothers-in-arms that I will slit your fucking throat.”
One of the other guys tried to grab Blaze with an arm around his neck, but Blaze was too tall. The guy bobbled on his tiptoes in his combat boots, so he grabbed Blaze’s elbow instead.
Another guy grabbed his other arm.
Blaze yelled,“Let her go!I’ll surrender. It’smeyou want.”
“I think it is both of you we want,” the terrible guy said from behind Sarah’s shoulder.
22
RESPONSIBILITY
BLAZE
Panic blasted through Blaze like a shotgun.
His fighting faltered, a stutter and a retraction, but then he was windmilling his arms and staggering on his bleeding leg, trying to get to Sarah.
That asshole mercenary with a skull trim shook her again where he clutched her hair, jerking her off her feet as he pushed the muzzle of the gun into her cheek, puffing the flesh around it. “On your knees, Robinson! Or I kill this bitch right now!”
Blaze saw the moment when the mercenary moved his finger from the side of his steel semiautomatic and curled his knuckle around the trigger.
He was going to shoot her.
Tremors shook Blaze, horror sweeping through his flesh, driving sweat out of his pores.
Blaze’s legs crumpled under him, and his knees slammed against the wooden floor. As he went down, the two guys holding him let go.
The standard position for surrender was hands behind the head. As Blaze raised his hands, the mercenaries twisted his arms behind his back. The rasp of plastic and tight pinch around his wrists was one of those assholes binding him with zip-tie handcuffs.
Sarah’s dark eyes were huge with terror.
Blaze had failed, so utterly failed, to save her.
Dammit, she’d gotten away from the other room while he’d been fighting. Why hadn’t she run?
But the failure was ultimately his and his alone.
The responsibility was always his.
23
ALMOST TO THE MINUTE
SARAH
Planning housework while tied up before her impending murder felt ridiculous.
Plastic bands cinched Sarah’s wrist and ankles as she lay face down on the rug between her couch and the TV.
Grains of grit lodged in the furrows between the cords of braided rags. Vacuuming wasn’t getting it clean enough. Sarah needed to take this rug outside, hang it from the line, and beat out the dirt.
She called out, “Blaze, are you okay? Are you—” Sayinghurtordyingmight make it true. “—okay?”
Blaze’s voice spoke from near the computer desk behind the couch, though he was uncharacteristically breathy. “I’m okay. The bullet went through the meat of my leg. It must have missed the femoral artery. Otherwise, I would have already bled out.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah started, but he interrupted her.
