“Oops,” Slater growled.
“Good work,” Jedd said quickly.
I rolled to my side, unable to believe they were actually there. The sound of their boots charging closer to me almost made me sick with relief, but I was convinced that I was hallucinating. My head fell sloppily from side to side as I tried to widen my eyes and focus on them to see if they were real.
“Cortez, you dirty, rotten bastard,” Slater roared, charging towards him. “You’re dead.”
“No,” I croaked out weakly, raising a hand in the air. “No.”
“Fuck,” Jedd said, obviously registering the state of me for the first time as I lay there rolling around in shit. “Jesus Christ, Slater, we need to get him out of here.”
Slater was too busy smashing his gun around Cortez’s head, knocking him sideways before catching the back of his cut in his grip and forcing the fat bastard to stay standing.
Jedd was by my side in a flash, crouching over me but keeping his gun aimed high in case anyone else jumped out from the dark.
“Let me kill him.” I blinked slowly, my voice hoarse and weak. “Find Ayda. She ran somewhere. I told her to get out of here, so you better find her alive or so help me God…”
Jedd nodded, not questioning me for a single momentbefore he jumped back and grabbed whoever was beside him. I couldn’t bring myself to look as I pushed myself up and growled out at the absolute agony I felt everywhere. I was unfixable, but I wasn’t through yet.
I had two more things to do before I gave up and let my body fall to the floor in a crumpled heap.
I had to kill Chester Cortez without any mercy what-so-fucking-ever.
Then I had to pray again for Ayda. I had to find my girl; otherwise I’d be picking up the nearest gun and ending my own life in a heartbeat.
Chapter Forty-Five
Ayda
“Dogs like the chase, but you should know the Emps crave the kill. I can smell your fear, bitch.”
I pushed my hand over my mouth to hide the whimper of terror. The guy was huge. Even if I hadn’t known it from being under his boot, I could hear it in every measured step he took as he chased me through the room.
We’d been playing cat and mouse for what felt like hours. Every time he got close to where I was hiding, I moved as quickly and quietly as I could into the heart of the warehouse and hid anywhere I could find. It was like one of those horror movies Tate was always watching. The taunting going on only served to create more fear the longer it was drawn out. There was only so long I could run until I started to believe I was the proverbial mouse. What was worse, there was no exit other than the door I’d come through; the one fire exit was locked shut.
All I had was what I was doing, running and hiding for my life as I prayed and wished with everything I had that Drew was holding his own in the other room. I had no chance against this monster if he caught me, and even as I scurried around the place like a rat in a maze, I had no idea how to tellwhether the gun I had was loaded or not.
Running. It was all I had, and something I’d taken for granted when Tate had asked me to go with him almost every day for the past year. It reminded me of something Deeks had said once, when I complained about being a slow runner as an excuse not to run with Tate.
“You don’t have to be fast, Ayda. Just faster than the ones around you.”
I tried to ignore the ache in my chest at the thought of not seeing him, Tate, or any of the guys again. My fate right then was a pair of combat boots zigzagging through the dirt and broken glass of a dilapidated warehouse. My salvation was a gun that may or may not have been loaded in my hand, but I had to at least believe I was faster than him. Smarter.
I listened to him move around the place, stopping and starting as he searched for me. The footfalls grew more distant and closer in little waves of sound. I followed him around the place, dashing off in the opposite direction for as long as I could until I was faced with a wall and forced to turn back around to the side. I was trying to stay lost and it worked for a while… Then there was nothing but silence.
My only source of reference had stopped. The only reason I could imagine to explain why was that he’d figured it out. With no idea where he was, my heart was racing in my chest with a ferocity I hadn’t thought it capable of. I was crouched on my bent legs, my head swiveling and my eyes squinting to try and see the exit in the darkness, but the walls were closing in on me, making the blindness so oppressive I was struggling to breathe.
One wrong move and I was hopeless against him.
I sat panting as quietly as I could, the air burning as Iinhaled and exhaled. I had been running around on the balls of my feet to avoid the heels of my pumps hitting the floor and giving away my position. As much as I wanted to rip them off, I knew that the glass would tear my feet to shreds and leave a path of blood that led him right to me. So I dealt with the cramps that were settling in my toes and the arches of my feet in exchange for another breath pulled into my lungs.
The sudden scraping of glass behind me was so close, I instantly panicked. Standing and spinning forced my legs to twist under me, which wasn’t a good idea. I felt the instability of bad weight distribution as I swung the gun around and aimed directly at his chest. It all happened so fast, but I wasn’t fast enough. I hadn’t thought it through whatsoever. One swipe of the asshole’s arm and the gun was falling to the floor and sliding under a huge piece of machinery that looked as intimidating as he was.
“Now you’re fucked.” He growled with humor, his hand grabbing at my throat and forcing me against an exposed mechanism that seemed more fit for torture than creating something of use. If Cortez’s breath had been rank, it had nothing on that guy’s. All I could smell was stale cigarette smoke, stale beer and tuna. It made my stomach turn more than it already was until the bile rose with urgency.
Unaware, and probably not caring about my predicament, he slammed me against the metal machine violently with the hand around my neck while the other gripped my breast with brute force. It had been hard enough to breathe without the sudden thought of where this could be going flashing in my mind, and for a whole minute, I was certain I’d given up all hope.
It was only when I allowed the darkness in that I heardmy subconscious screaming in protest. Giving up wasn’t who I was, and it never had been. Before my parents died and even after, I fought tooth and nail, never once losing sight of that. Not just for me but for Tate and the people around me who I loved. I couldn’t give up now. No matter what horrors laid ahead, I had to fight the good fight and survive.
