“Go!” Liam nudged Emory toward the hall. “We’ll take care of this. Go.”
FORTY-ONE
AMELIA
Amelia scrambled to the wall. With her back against it, her heart hammered in her chest as her eyes darted across the room. The pipe was between Richard and the back door. It was her best option, but the window of opportunity was closing fast. Soon, it’d slam shut altogether.
No one’s gonna throw you the rope.She’d have to do it herself. The notion loosened her fear. Bit by bit, she broke from its hold and rejected the lies it told her. She could save herself and was strong enough to try.
In small, innocuous movements, Amelia eased from the wall. The Velasco man turned to her. She froze and let her gaze fall to her lap, but the weight of his stare pressed into her with silent warning. Beyond the metal door, noises came closer, just creaks and groans at first. Before long, though, they echoed through the hollow belly of the building.
The guard shifted uneasily on his feet and poked his head into the hall. Amelia eyed the pipe and rallied against a sharp splinter of doubt. One hit—one hardhit—would put the man down long enough for her to run. She might lose the battle, and with it her life, but no one would ever say she didn’t fight.
More commotion and the all-too-familiar sound of gunfire grew louder. Men shouted dissonant orders—go there, headthere, don’t come any closer. Confusion steadily surmounted as chaos made its way toward the room. The Velasco man clung to his gun with a white-knuckle grip, but his hands shook.
Amelia zeroed in on his fear. She held her breath, counted silently to three, and bolted from the wall. Shaky legs almost took her down. Across the room, she scooped up the pipe just as the guard rushed toward her.
Amelia swung hard as he lifted his gun. The pipe cut through the air. By instinct, he dropped his weapon, and the pipe collided against his palms. He yanked it and Amelia toward him. She lost her footing and tumbled to the ground but clung to the pipe for dear life. The violence of her fall sent the guard down with her. Her chin hit the floor hard and busted open her lip again. As her mouth filled with blood, the pipe rolled away.
On her hands and knees, Amelia clambered after it. The guard cinched her ankle and ripped her backwards. On her stomach, reaching, stretching, arm howling in pain, her open palm pounded the concrete. Amelia flipped to her side. Her unburdened foot smashed into the man’s face. Stunned, his nose gushed blood, and he let go of her ankle.
Amelia dashed for the pipe. She grabbed it up and spun around. The pipe cracked against his temple with a spray of blood. He crumpled to his knees before the upper half of his body toppled over.
Bedlam rocked the building as Amelia ran for the back door. Richard gaped at her and the utter audacity that she might survive and of her own volition too, strength in the so-called broken. He’d written her off as a victim—the sad girl who could hardly speak up for herself, let alone fight for her life.
On his knees, he reached for her with bound hands, his face puckered with swollen wounds and his mouth warped in fear.
“You can’t do this! They’ll kill me. Do you want that kind of blood on your hands?”
“Get fucked,” she said and ran for the white door at the back of the room as Richard cried out.
“Amelia!Fuckingcunt!”
The white door hid the great unknown. It could be anything, a closet or some other dead end. That didn’t matter. She’d take her chances before she’d ever accept certain death. With the pipe in hand, Amelia rushed through and into a short corridor line with windows to the outside, some busted out.
She sprinted to the end of the hall, through another door and into the night. A blast of humid air bathed her skin. Her senses dulled as she fled down a flight of metal stairs to the ground below. Along the building’s perimeter, headlights pierced the night and closed in quickly as she fled.
FORTY-TWO
EMORY
With blind wrath closing in, Emory sprinted after the shadow. His legs, faintly numb, moved of their own accord, propelling him forward as he followed the shadow into a room off the hall. Once inside, the door slammed shut and delivered him into the darkness.
What did Emory know of the abyss? Everything.
He knew how it consumed with an inexorable hatred that ripped at the soul. He knew its violent allure, the gruesome promise it made. And, as the shadow approached, he knew the internal fury it provoked.
Emory’s hands shot out in front of him but groped dead space. A maddening silence devoured all sound, all but the frantic beat of his heart, until a heaviness slithered up next to him.
“Little brother,” Ivan whispered, his fetid breath warming the shell of Emory’s ear. “You can’t know how much I’ve missed you.”
Bony fingers gripped Emory’s shoulder, the sharp nails digging in. Emory whipped around. Blacker than black, the shadow moved through the void again.
“Where is she?” Emory bellowed and charged forward, colliding into a table and upending items that clattered to thefloor. His knees locked, suddenly stiff and ungainly as he righted himself.
Ivan issued a horrid laugh, unchanged after all these years. The same laugh had taunted Emory through his childhood and in the nightmares since. Pressure built in Emory’s chest, and his throat ached.
“You brought Amelia into your world,” Ivan said and cast a circle around Emory as he spoke. “You knew this would happen. I think you wanted it to.”
