She slips the long chain and leather strap onto her shoulder and sends me a warning glance through her lashes.I decide to let her carry her bag just this once, but only because of the extenuating circumstances.If having it helps her feel in control or lessens the vulnerability in her eyes, then I’ll suffer the insult.Plus, no one from the office will see.
I tuck my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants and offer her my arm.She hooks her elbow within mine before weaving our fingers together.Satisfied, I open the door and check the hall before stepping out of the room.
I keep one eye on my baby doll and the other on our surroundings.Mingling with my reluctance to leave is an indescribable sense of dread.
We ride the elevator down to the ground floor, check out and compensate the couple who allowed us to use their room, then return to the elevator and wait as it carries us to the parking garage.
My sedan waits outside the double glass sliding doors with my driver behind the wheel.Concern heightens my senses as he sits slumped forward with his phone illuminating his lax face.
A band squeezes around my chest.This is wrong.I slip my fingers away from Audrey’s and stick my hand in my pocket for my phone as I turn and crowd her back toward the elevator.
The glass doors slide open behind me.After a loud pop, fire streaks across my back and electricity scorches my insides.My entire body seizes.Audrey screams.
I collide with the concrete but barely feel the impact through the agony ripping through my every cell.
For a horrifying moment after the current ends, silence and darkness rule my senses, but my heart gives a sluggish squeeze before galloping into overdrive.My senses return in a rush.I watch in frustrated terror as three men grab my unresponsive limbs—one on each arm and the third grabbing my legs—while a fourth rushes past to Audrey.
As they shuffle me through the doors and around the front of my car, my warrior goddess swings her purse with surprising accuracy.The idiot reaching for her spins from the force of her blow—with his chin leading the way—and smacks headfirst into the wall.
I chide myself for expecting anything less from her.I may not have seen her hit Mr.Williams with her tablet, but she took him out with a single swing as well.
The man holding my right arm curses as it finally responds to my commands, but the weak, sluggish movement is not enough.
They round the bumper of my car.The two at my shoulders tug and twist me as they climb through the open sliding door of a panel van.
“Be careful!”
Cold fury forms a ball of ice in my stomach as I recognize the voice.
Marilyn Swanson sits in the passenger seat.
The clingy rich bitch is trying to kidnap me.
Audrey lunges through the glass doors and disappears behind the valet podium, and I both thank the heavens she’s seen reason and is hiding and curse the sense of betrayal and sadness roaring through me.
The men dump me on the floor of the van.
I use the jumble of emotions to pull my knees to my chest.The idiot who had my feet reaches for the slider door handle.I kick the man in the head with both feet.
My kick launches him out through the door and onto the concrete.
Audrey shouts.Everyone’s attention turns toward her.
With a vicious shove, she sends the opened valet podium toward the front of the van.
She wasn’t hiding.She was breaking open the key compartment and unlocking the wheels.
Too shocked by the unexpected attack, the driver curses and reaches for the shifter, but the podium collides with the grill at an angle and sends metal keys, plastic fobs, broken glass, and shards of wood everywhere.
The front windshield shatters.
Clingy rich bitch screams.
Smoke plumes from the engine compartment.
The two men at my shoulders pause, look at each other, then scramble out the slider, grab their friend, and haul ass toward the exit of the garage.
I roll halfway onto my side and prop myself up with an elbow.
