She couldn’t move.
She could barely breathe.
“Stop fighting,” he growled, his face close to hers. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”
“Please.” Lauren was crying now, her voice breaking on the word. “She hasn’t done anything. Just let her go. Please.”
The second man said something to Lauren in a low voice that Rowan couldn’t make out.
Lauren went quiet. Tears still streamed down her face.
The man subduing Rowan loosened his grip on her wrists just long enough to crouch and retrieve one of the scattered pills from the floor near her feet. Then another. He straightened and held them in his palm between them, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world.
Rowan’s chest heaved.
She watched his hand and tried to think past the pain in her knee and the pressure across her collarbone and the fear that kept threatening to swallow everything else.
Keep thinking. Keep moving. Don’t stop.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
She clenched her jaw and turned her face away.
His hand came up and gripped her jaw, firm and practiced.
She couldn’t stand here and let him do this.
She drove her heel down on his foot, twisted her shoulders, tried to drop her weight.
But instead of loosening his grip, the man seemed to absorb every bit of it without loosening his hold.
Lauren made a broken sound from across the room.
Run!Rowan thought, trying to silently communicate with the woman.
But Lauren appeared frozen with fear.
Rowan’s vision blurred at the edges. Not from tears. From the effort of fighting a man twice her size who felt nothing about what he was doing.
His thumb pressed into the hinge of her jaw.
Her mouth opened despite everything.
“There,” he murmured.
He brought his hand toward her lips.
CHAPTER 48
Wes cutthe engine a hundred yards from the house and let the truck roll to a stop on the shoulder.
The gravel driveway was visible from here. A dark sedan sat parked just off to the side of the house, backed in toward the trees.
Blackthorne.
He quickly climbed from the truck, Remington at his heels. Then he eased the door shut behind him without latching it.
Wes grabbed his gun and moved into the trees, Remington falling into step beside him.
