Page 11 of Until the End

His wide jaw flexed. He glared down at her as if she were a mosquito who’d dared nip a dragon.

“Please.” She knocked her fist against his thick forearm, bending her knees, shoving her hips back, throwing her entire body into breaking his iron hold. “Please, don’t kill me.”

He hauled her along anyway, dragging her feet across the ground, not looking fazed by her giving-it-everything-she-had exertion.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice was deep and dangerous, cutting to the marrow in her bones. “Unlike Frick and Frack, who just killed your friend.”

As the juggernaut of a man tugged her forward, she glanced back. Gary was facedown on the pavement. Rigid. Unmoving.

The two men—Bravo and Delta—still stalked her, closing in from opposite sides.

“If you’re not with them, let me go.” She tried prying his fingers loose to no avail. He’d only said he didn’t want to hurt her. Nothing about not killing her.

There are worse things than a quick, painless death. That was what Bravo had said before shooting Jasper in the head.

She yanked her arm as hard as she could, but his broad hand was superglued to her. “Please, let me go.”

“Sorry, but I need you.”

Whoa. I need you? Famous last words from a satanic cult leader to the abducted victim of a ritual sacrifice. Hard pass on being diced up and ground into dog food.

She clawed at his stone fingers and kicked his marble leg, but all she achieved was breaking another nail and stubbing her toes. Damn it.

Sharp pain bit her foot.

She slapped his arm and chest, drawing his irritation at the very least, if not his blood.

He didn’t even flinch. Not a solitary step faltered, not a single drop of sweat formed. But he headed toward the stairs, right for the exit point she’d wanted.

If only she knew who to use the pepper spray on. Which devil was worse? The ones who wanted her dead or the one who needed her for some unknown purpose?

She had no choice but to roll the dice and take her chances with the kidnapper. It beat catching a bullet to the head.

“How far back are they?” he asked in a voice so calm it was shocking.

“I don’t know.” She craned her neck, checking. Bravo and Delta were still there but seemed to maintain a set distance, and they both kept glancing at their watches. “Fifty feet maybe.”

“I’m not talking to you.” His tone was clipped, low.

She shot him a perplexed look. “Then who on earth are you talking to?”

“Shush. I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

He wasn’t wearing a phone headset and she didn’t see a communication device, but he was talking to someone anyway.

Omigod. He was listening to a voice…in his head. Worse, he was talking to that voice right now. The voice that had probably told him to take her.

“Have you seen the way they move? They’re pros and won’t shoot in this park. That’s why they used the needle on the guy,” he said—but not to her. “They won’t want any attention from the Capitol Police.”

She’d drawn the same conclusion. Without the help of a psychotic voice. She reached for the pepper spray in her bag.

“What?” he asked. Once again, not to her. “Damn it. I forgot about that.”

Oh crud. What had the voice said? Forgot about what?

Then she blinked, and pandemonium unfolded at warp speed.

The big guy whirled, doing a one-eighty, whipping her around with him in a blur. He drew a futuristic-looking gun from a holster she hadn’t noticed before. Bravo and Delta pulled guns fitted with silencers from their jackets and peeled off in separate directions.