“There she is,” he murmurs. “Knew you had some teeth.”
I suck in a ragged breath that tastes like cloth and cold and panic. My hands tear at the covering over my head, nails catching fabric, skin, anything. I twist hard enough that we stagger sideways into a wall.
Pain sparks through my shoulder.
I don’t care.
I open my mouth and scream anyway.
It comes out muffled, useless, and ends up swallowed again.
His hand clamps over the lower half of my face through the fabric, and suddenly, breathing is work.
“Don’t,” he says softly, and there’s something so much worse about the softness of it. “You’ll make this ugly.”
My heart is slamming so hard it hurts.
I kick again. Miss. Kick again.
Think.
Think.
Zane’s voice in my head, calm and practical:
Make noise. Leave evidence. Don’t make it easy.
I go limp without warning.
Dead weight.
It’s instinct and strategy colliding in one desperate move.
His grip shifts automatically to compensate.
And that tiny adjustment gives me enough room to rip one hand free and grab for anything, his wrist, the fabric, the air, anything.
My fingers catch the chain at my throat instead.
Evie’s locket.
The one I almost lost. The one I’ve touched a hundred times without thinking.
I yank it free so hard it bites my skin, curl it into my fist, and when I drop it, I aim blind toward that thin strip of light near the back door.
Let it fall.
Let a part of me stay behind.
Then the world tilts.
He lifts me.
One arm under my knees, the other crushing my upper body tight against him, the hood still blinding me, smothering me. I buck wildly, kicking, twisting, but he’s already moving fast.
I hear a vehicle door open.
My pulse spikes so hard I nearly black out with it.
