Everyone was going to die, including me.
“Stay in your vehicle, sir.” The high-pitched voice of the second person bled nervousness with every word.
“Come on, sweetheart,” the first person seemed to be addressing me, but wariness tinged his tone too.
The trunk was safer at the moment, but I had no choice because I was rolled over Davenport’s body, lifted out of the trunk, and stood up on my feet.
Call for backup. Why am I not hearing police radios?
The man freed my wrists.
Escalating arguments swirled around me. Everyone was talking at once. I reached for my hood, aggravated that my rescuer hadn’t removed it first, but he stopped me.
“Don’t. Not yet,” he whispered.
What the hell? What was going on? Was I being pawned off to another faction? To make matters worse, I still couldn’t speak or object or ask questions.
“Don’t move another step!” the second person shouted.
I was being hurried away.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Viktor called out.
“Sir! Stay where you are.”
A blast of gunfire had me scrambling for the ground. I gritted against my scraped palms and knees. “Not yet” be damned. I yanked the hood off me and choked back a scream when I saw someone on the ground, his lifeless eyes staring at me, lit by the ambient lighting of headlights. Law enforcement, but not the NYPD. Gray uniform. Purple tie. State trooper. The man who rescued me.
Crunching footsteps approached.
My eyes fell on the dead trooper’s hand. Beside it was a gun. He’d drawn his weapon but wasn’t quick enough.
Viktor’s ominous silhouette split through the glare of the headlights, his features vaguely becoming discernible, but his intent was clear.
He stopped about two feet away.
“Now what do we do with Moretti’s niece?”
“My name is Lucy.” My chin came up defiantly even when my mouth had trouble forming words. A henchman came forward and whispered in Viktor’s ear.
He nodded before returning his attention to me. “I don’t like feisty women. You’re going to give me more trouble than you’re worth, but you fit perfectly into my plans.” He grinned. “But not alive. Sorry?—”
Two successive gunshots echoed between us.
Viktor’s shocked eyes stared at me and the gun I used on him before lowering to the hole in his chest. His henchman had already dropped right beside him.
He had other men around, but I was already on my feet, diving into the wooded area behind the traffic stop. Shouting erupted behind me. I wasn’t waiting around for the aftermath of my actions. I had no clue where I was except I was no longer in Manhattan.
I was an experienced runner who had run trails before—that was my advantage over them. The problem was I’d never done them barefoot. I lost my shoes when I’d been thrown in the car's trunk.
More shots reverberated in the night, and it almost sounded like a shootout. Did more cops arrive? I wasn’t hanging around to find out.
I took cover behind a tree and patted myself down to check for injuries. I wasn’t hit.
My mind scrambled about what to do next. Viktor confiscated my phone and disabled the tracker in my body. He was thorough, but not enough. I sneered. If there was one thing I learned in my life, men outside my family were quick to dismiss me as a pretty face, and I derived immense satisfaction from using their prejudice to bite them in the ass.
I needed to call Dom. My brother was going to assign me another security detail after I’d fought so hard to be free of one. The condition was I’d be outfitted with a subdermal tracker, but that went kaput quickly.
Zio Luca would be concerned since he was the one who asked me for the favor of talking Davenport down from confronting Viktor. I figured it was an hour past our designated check-in.
