Page 100
A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach.
“Dressed up like a whore. You couldn’t wait to open your legs for another man, could you?”
I feel my way across the concrete with a bleeding hand, desperately searching for a rock, the gun, anything. My fingers find only grit.
“That wrist giving you trouble?” He glances down at the cast, his lips curling into a smile. “Let me help you with that.”
He lifts his heavy boot and slams it down onto my fractured arm with all his weight.
Pain explodes behind my eyes in a brilliant, blinding flash. A ragged shriek tears from my throat. I fight for air, waiting for the agony to recede enough for my brain to function.
“Get up,” Troy snaps, grabbing my good arm. “We’re leaving.”
I try to crawl away across the concrete, but he grabs another fistful of my hair, hauling me upright by the roots. The world spins. Warm blood trickles down the back of my neck.
“I’ve got her!” Troy crows as he pulls me toward the remaining men.
My eyelids grow heavy. Consciousness slips away at the edges. The temporary strength Zevran lent me drains out of my body, leaving me cold and defenseless.
The last image that flashes through my mind before everything goes black is crushed metal, shattered glass, and the dimming red glow of Zevran’s taillights back at the intersection.
He isn’t coming for me.
No rescue. No safety. Just the dark.
30
Zevran
Cold air. The stench of high-octane fuel and scorched rubber. A high-pitched, endless ringing in my ears.
My eyes snap open, but the world is a blur of fractured lights and spinning shadows. Every breath feels like dragging shattered glass into my lungs. Warm blood trickles down the side of my face, soaking my shirt.
The intersection. A black SUV running a red and slamming into me.
Panic blares in my skull.
Cora.
She was right behind me in the car with Demyan and Ruslan.
“Hey! Buddy, don’t move. Jesus, don’t try to move.” A face materializes through the webbed glass of my shattered windshield, hands waving frantically. “The ambulance is coming. Just stay still, man, you took a crazy hit.”
The car is caved in, the driver-side door warped against my hip. The broken window has showered me with a thousand tiny needles of safety glass. I shove the deflated airbag out of my face and drag my body up. Every ragged breath sends a white-hot knife of pain straight through my ribs, and blood pours into my left eye from a gash on my forehead.
I haul myself straight through the jagged edges of the window frame. My shoes hit the asphalt and my knees instantly give out. I slam down on my hands and knees, the street rocking beneath me like the deck of a ship. A wave of bile hits the back of my throat, but I force it down, pushing myself upright against the crumpled side of my car.
I turn around.
The road behind me is empty. There are skid marks and broken glass, but no second car. Demyan and Ruslan are gone. Cora is gone.
Panic burns away the haze. I spin on the bystander who was trying to talk to me, lunging forward and seizing him by the collar of his T-shirt with both hands.
“The car behind me,” I gasp, smearing blood on his shirt. “Where did it go?”
His eyes bulge in surprise. “D-down the avenue,” he stammers, pointing a trembling arm into the dark. “They turned off toward the industrial park.”
I drop him and immediately notice a sedan idling with its driver-side door open, the radio playing. I throw myself into the seat, slam the door shut, and floor the accelerator before the man even has time to call out.
