“He won’t.”Please, please, please, Liam, don’t come.
“Maybe at first. But eventually, once the dead bodies start piling up, he will.”
“How many people are you planning to kill?”
“However many it takes to get to him.” She retrieved her phone from her jacket pocket and held it out. I was guessing she wasn’t looking for a signal. She tapped her screen a few times. “There. The video’s in both Liam’s and Nate’s inboxes. How long do you think it’ll take them to come? Fifty minutes? An hour?” She tugged her ponytail free from the strap of her shotgun. “Probably less. Your brother . . . brothersarereallycrazy about you. Might take Liam longer since he’s in Boulder, though.”
Terror seized me. I shook so hard my teeth chattered. “Camilla, don’t do this. Don’t—I’ll help you free Grant.”
She snorted a chuckle. “My brother’s a dumbass. I told him to run after he planted the Molotov cocktail, and what does he do? He returns to the compound. I mean . . . Darwinistically-speaking, our species is better off without him.”
The rancid smell of death pressed in around me, made my insides heave anew. I wondered, as I expelled the remaining contents of my stomach, if the Sillin was out of my system. I called upon my wolf. She didn’t rise.
“He’s your brother. He loves you. If the situation were reversed, he’d do anything to break you free.”
“If the situation were reversed, I’d be as good as dead considering his ineptitude.” Camilla’s ponytail flopped over her shoulder as she crouched beside me again. “Enough talking. Let’s get you situated.” Her claws curled from her nail beds, sharp as shivs. She slashed the duct tape around my ankles but not the one binding my wrists. “Don’t feel like dragging you, but if you try anything, I won’t hesitate to blast off your leg. The one that still works,” she added with a curl of lip.
Camilla Hollis had always been borderline—theshoot-first ask-questions-latertype—but cruelty was new. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she’d always been inherently vicious. Apples, after all, didn’t fall far from the tree.
“Get up, Nikki!”
Between my trussed hands and the slippery floor, getting myself upright proved tricky, but the acrid reek of vomit and hemorrhaging body spurred me into motion. I rolled myself to sitting and then to standing.
My throbbing knee caused my legs to wobble. I probably would’ve crumpled had Camilla not clasped my bicep and hauled me out the door, toward the blinding-white arena in which she planned to wage her war against Liam. Against our pack.
A war which I prayed to Lycaon no one would charge into blindly.
Chapter 59
Camilla dragged me out onto the icy lake. Where her steps never faltered, I skidded in my sneakers. The wind whooshed around us, bending the crowns of the evergreens that cinched the enormous lake, burning my skin through the thin cotton sleeves of my long cardigan. My coat was at home, and my hair, although loose and long, offered little protection from the brutal elements.
I tried to coax fur from my pebbling skin, but the dose of Sillin I’d been given still stymied my magic. Perhaps I could fool my body into believing the air was a balmy seventy degrees if I repeatedI am not coldenough times.
“So, what’s the plan? A round of figure skating?” I was trying to crack the tape on my wrists but was merely succeeding at making it bunch up and cut into my flesh.
A low swish lapped at the hardened crust beneath my rubber soles. I kept my eyes on it, trying to decide if I wanted it to crack or not.
On the one hand, it would destabilize Camilla.
On the other, I’d go down with her, and without the use of my arms, getting out would be challenging. I reminded myself that seals didn’t have hands, and they managed just fine.
Camilla whistled as she hauled me along, stopping only once we reached the very center of the lake. “So the plan is, we’re going to get comfortable out here. I want to make sure Liam can see us.”
Or rather, that she could see him.
The barrel of her shotgun poked out from behind her shoulder, blazing silver beneath the bright sun. If only I could grab it and pry it away from her. Trying to keep my shoulders stationary, I worked my hands harder, trying to create space where there was none.
Unhurriedly, Camilla rooted around the giant pockets of her knee-length puffer coat and fished out two pairs of cuffs. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but yeah, I don’t trust you.”
She kneeled and slapped one cuff around my ankle. I almost kicked her with my free foot, but her threat of shooting my leg off hadn’t sounded like a bluff. Alternating waves of heat and cold smacked into me as I pulled and pulled on my hands.
As she snapped the second cuff in place, the duct tape rolled to the widest part of my hand.
Almost.
I was almost free. Another few seconds and—My hand slid out. I slammed my fist against her jaw, right at the juncture of her mandible. Her face jerked to the side, but somehow . . .somehowthe impact didn’t tip her.
Niall had made me practice this move over and over. He’d sworn that a well-placed punch to the jaw was as potent as one between the legs.
