“Come with me,” he said. “Right now. Walk away from this place, and everything stops. I’ll dissolve Pinnacle. I’ll make the calls. All of it goes away. I saw you get my rose. I saw how muchit meant to you. I know you want this as much as I do deep inside.”
He’dput the rose in my truck? I was going to vomit.
He was waiting for me to say yes. I could see it in the certainty on his face, the absolute conviction that any reasonable person would see what he was offering and take it.
Now something insidemesnapped.
I couldn’t do it. I could not sit here and pretend like I was going to go back to him. Not even to get out of this car.
“You are out of your mind.” My voice came out level and cold. “I am not leaving this property. I am never going anywhere with you. Ever.”
Everything behind his expression shifted. The performance fell away. What surfaced underneath was the thing I’d seen once, years ago, in the instant before a glass flew in my direction and my entire world had shifted.
“I was afraid you might say that, although I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out some sort of cheap prepaid phone that you got at a gas station. He opened an app on the screen, something simple with a single button, and pressed it.
He pointed at the barn.
I looked. For a second, nothing. Then there was a flicker in the lower windows, small and orange.
What the hell? Had he placed lights in the windows?
“I told you I’ve been on the property,” Carter said. His voice was calm. “I placed the incendiary devices around the barn. They don’t do much, just a little fireball that could be triggered remotely. But with all that dry hay…”
The orange light grew. No, not light at all.
Fire.
Oh my God.
My animals were locked inside that barn, settled in for the night. The horses in their stalls, the dogs in their kennels. Even Clarence in his cage. None of them could escape.
I had to get to them.
I ripped myself away from Carter’s hand and slammed my fist on the unlock button. I yanked the door handle with both bound hands, threw myself out, hit the dirt, and ran. My wrists were tied and the ground was uneven, and it did not matter.
The barn was ahead of me and it was on fire, and I was going to reach it.
Carter caught me before I made the fence line. His arms closed around my waist from behind, and he lifted me off the ground.
I screamed. I didn’t recognize the sound. It came from a place so deep I’d never so much as known it was there.
My babies were going to burn if I didn’t get to them.
I drove my elbow into his ribs and swung my bound hands backward and connected with his jaw. I bit down on his forearm when it crossed my chest and held on until he wrenched free. I kicked at anything I could reach.
Nothing trained, nothing planned. Just a body trying to get free.
He dragged me back to the car. I clawed at the dirt, at his jacket, at the doorframe. He threw me into the passenger seat and hit me across the face. My head snapped sideways, and the edges of my vision went white.
I dove for the door again, but he grabbed me by the shirt and punched me again. I fell forward, trying to remain conscious.
He got behind the wheel and started the engine.
The access road was narrow and dark, trees pressing in on both sides. I swung my bound hands into his jaw. He shoved my arms down and accelerated. I swung again. He grabbed my wrists and pushed them into my lap.
“Stop it, Eleanor.”
