This time when she woke, she could see. Overwhelming panic choked the scream which rose in the back of her throat as she caught a glimpse of a masked man in front of her. He knew she was awake, so she couldn’t fake being unconscious. She dug deep inside herself for the balls her mom had trained her to have. “Where am I?” Would you look at that? Not even a wobble. As soon as she figured out how to get away or escape and found a decent-sized town, she was rewarding herself with the biggest Big Mac she could find.
“It doesn’t matter where you are,” Scream Mask Man replied. “It only matters who is coming for you.”
She rolled and struggled to a sitting position. The jerk didn’t even offer to help her up and even had the audacity to laugh when she hit her head off the wall. Right there and then, Jorja decided she wasn’t going to give him a damn inch. “There is nobody to come for me.” She raised her chin. “My mom doesn’t have any money to give you.”
He laughed at her and snorted, “I’m not waiting for your mother to bring me money. I’m waiting for whichever one ofthe McKinley boys you belong to to come and try to take you back.”
This is about Gunnar.
Oh, shit… the list.
She decided there was no way she was giving him any more fuel, and maybe if she pissed him off, he’d leave. Forgetting to lock the door was too much to hope for, but for now she’d take him leaving so she could regroup. “Why on earth would they do that?”
“You belong to one of them?”
“No, I don’t.” She hoped she sounded convincing. “I don’t belong to the McKinley brothers. Nobody will ever own me. I was staying there because my girlfriend booked an apartment on Booking dot com. She couldn’t get off work and gave me a good deal, that’s all.”
That’s only fudging the truth a little… right?
“You were driving their car.”
“I needed to go to the store. They let me borrow it as mine wouldn’t start,” she replied. “They were being good hosts.”
“I don’t believe you.”
You better believe me, asshole, because that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
“I have no reason to lie.”
He ignored her in favor of his phone which beeped indicating an incoming message, then sneered. “If you don’t belong to them, why are they here looking for you?” He waved the phone almost in her face, but not stopping it long enough that she could read the message, then shoved it into the top pocket of his shirt. He grabbed her by the upper arm. “Get up.”
He came!
She shook off the relief and decided there was no freaking way she was making things easy for Scream-MaskA-hole. The second he cut the bonds around her ankles, she lashed out, connecting with his shin.
“Bitch.” His hand fisted into her hair and pulled hard, making her cry out in pain. “How fucking dare you.” He dragged her by the hair out of the room, through the house, and into the street, with her fighting him all the way.
“Jorja.”
Gunnar!
She tried to answer, but no matter how much she tried, not one sound came out of her mouth. She stopped struggling and lifted her head as much as she could, without ripping out her hair. In almost pitch dark she could make out the form of a man standing in the middle of the street about ten feet from her and her captor.
“You’ve come for your bitch!” His spittle landed on the back of her neck.
Ew!
“Now you get to watch her die.”
Behind Gunnar, a dark helicopter rose out of the night sky and a spotlight lit up the night. She had no idea where it came from, but when she managed to see past the spotlight by staring at the opposite side of the helicopter, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the man balancing on the step holding onto a dog was Talon, and the dog who looked like he was wearing goggles was Zombie.
The helicopter lowered almost to the street—if you could call it a street—level and Zombie was racing toward them. The asshole released her to swing his gun between where Gunnar stalked toward them, and Zombie snarled. Jorja scrambled on her hands and knees to get out of the way. As she did, first one shot rang out, followed by multiple more which sounded like they’d come from bigger guns than the first. She covered her head with her hands and silentlyprayed as chaos erupted for the longest ten seconds of her life.
Please, God…
A long-wet lick on the side of her face was the first indicator that the shooting had stopped, swiftly followed by dead silence. Jorja raised her head and peered down the street to where a bunch of men surrounded another who lay on the ground. She blinked slowly, her eyes checking for one man… “Gunnar!” She screamed his name as she scrambled toward them. “Gunnar.”
“Shh, he’s okay.”
