Ayuh, he thought, join the club and go on and judge me.
“That was the wrong answer.” Boss gave a sorrowful shake of his head.
Before Hew could say anything else in his own defense, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He tugged it out, glanced at the screen, and?—
Nearly shit his own heart.
Sabrina. She’d typed one word.
Help.
41
Three blocks from Black Knights Inc.
“Careful!” Black Widow hissed when the toe of Sabrina’s patent leather pump caught on a crack in the sidewalk, nearly sending her sprawling onto her face. The assassin jerked their joined wrists so hard the metal handcuff bit into Sabrina’s skin and bruised the bone beneath. “If you go down, I go down.”
There’s a thought, Sabrina mused. I could end all this by jumping in front of the next city bus.
She would be dead, of course. But so would Black Widow. And that might make it all worth it.
She regretted her shoe choice with every step. The narrow back straps were cutting deep furrows into her heels. She regretted the underwire bra she’d put on since it was doing its damndest to puncture a hole clean through her armpit. But what she regretted most of all, what she cursed herself for, was not going full rabid raccoon on Black Widow the moment the assassin sat next to her on that park bench.
Should’ve punched her square in the mouth, she thought, her temper flaring hotter with each passing second and each painful step. Should’ve scratched her eyes clean from her head. Should’ve ripped out her newly dyed hair by the roots.
Then she reminded herself that she hadn’t had the time. The unforgiving press of cold steel against her ribs had precluded any chance of going on the offensive.
A pistol trumped punishment any day.
But, oh, the fantasy was nice.
Surprise—and no small amount of wariness—slammed into her once they turned a corner and she realized where they were headed. “Why are you taking me back to BKI?”
“Shut up,” Black Widow snarled. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Possibilities pinged around in Sabrina’s skull like pinballs.
Did Black Widow plan to use her as a ticket inside the compound? If so, to what end? Sabotage? Revenge? Carnage for the hell of it?
Or maybe she planned to march Sabrina up to the big, wrought-iron gate and pull the trigger there…knowing one of the Connelly brothers would be in the guard shack to witness the murder, knowing security cameras would catch it all.
She didn’t put it past the assassin to be cruel for cruelty’s sake. Or for her to mete out retribution for Hummer even though she claimed the contrary. But neither did Sabrina peg the woman for a fool.
Black Widow had to know what it would mean if she killed Sabrina. The Black Knights would never stop hunting her.
Sabrina could still hear Boss’s deep voice. There’s no corner of the world you can go to where we can’t find you. There’s no amount of protection you could pull around yourself that we can’t penetrate.
It wasn’t bravado or bluster. The truth had rung clearly in his words, shone fiercely from his eyes. Surely Black Widow had seen and heard it the same way Sabrina had and?—
Where the hell was Hew?
It was impossible to keep track of time when her blood raced with high-octane adrenaline. Each second stretched, warped, and extended until she would swear it’d been an eternity since she’d thumbed out that text.
Of course, logically, she knew no more than a few minutes had passed. The little park was only a few blocks from BKI and?—
A terrible thought suddenly occurred.
What if he hadn’t received her text?
