Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
His body jolted and lurched as he was impaled over and over.
He dropped to the dirt, and a piercing silence suddenly swept in, a cloud of smoke and dust and a keening ring that reverberated in my ears.
River stepped out into the fray and came to stand over the body that lay limp in the middle of the ground.
I covered my mouth as he stood over him and fired once more.
Theo and Otto ambled out behind him.
Though Kane. He turned those eyes on me.
The same aura of duplicity radiated around him, but his wickedness was no longer shrouded.
My spirit moaned and pled and screamed.
I wanted to drop to my knees and beg.
But instead, I turned and ran.
Ran from the fear and the pain and the confusion.
From this man I had known better than falling for.
I needed to find Maci. Get to her and get her out of here. She had to be terrified. Scared and wandering and alone.
“Emery!” Kane’s shout carried on the gust of wind that whipped through the trees, and I gasped, pushing myself harder.
“Emery!” Desperation filled my name, and I could feel the pound of his boots as he began to chase me.
With each step, the ground rocked beneath my feet.
An earthquake.
A landslide.
A black hole that I’d known I’d be sucked into.
“Emery, please. Please don’t run from me,” he begged.
Breaths wheezed from my aching lungs as he neared.
The energy thrashed. Thrashed and whipped through the howling branches of the trees.
The connection wailed.
Bowing between us in a force that I couldn’t fathom.
He was right behind me.
All around me.
His aura surrounding.
I dropped to my knees.
He couldn’t stop his momentum, and he stumbled into me from behind, his arms wrapping around me as he took me all the way to the ground, pinning my stomach to the earth.
Gently, though it felt as if I’d been hit by a truck.
The crashing and grating of our bodies.
“How could you? How could you?” It was a sob that erupted from my soul. The grief I’d held for so many years burst free of the boundaries where I’d tried to keep it shored. “How could you? How could you?”
Kane’s heart battered at my back, and his breaths jutted violently from his chest. “Emery.”
“How could you?” I fumbled around, trying to push out from under him, my feet kicking up and my fingers sinking into the soggy soil beneath me as I struggled to get away. “How could you?”
Kane gripped onto my calves, and a low moan of agony rolled out of him. “No, baby, no. I—”
“You took her. Where did you take her? Jana… Oh, God, Jana.” The cries hurtled out. Caught up in the storm that raged around us.
“Emery, please, listen to me.”
Kane gripped onto me with those hands, crawling up so he could wrap his arms around me.
Trapping me.
Holding me.
I couldn’t tell.
“Where is she?” I begged as I pounded my fists against his chest, no strength to the punches as I wailed against him.
He shook his head, and he held me closer as he buried his face in my neck. As if he could stop me from floating away on the deluge of grief. “I don’t know, Emery. I don’t know. I tried to stop them. I fucking tried. I tried so hard. But I failed. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“No, you were there. It was you.”
Misery poured from his being. “I was. I was there that night. I told you I wasn’t even close to being a good man. That I’d done horrible things. But the second I saw what was in the back of that truck…”
He swallowed thickly, the words trembling as he released them. “I saw my purpose for my life, Emery. I knew exactly what I’d been meant to do.”
My head thrashed against the wild grasses and dirt, while my entire being bowed toward him. “I remember you.”
I wanted it to be an accusation, and it somehow came out in some kind of prayer.
“I remember what you said. You were wearing that bracelet.”
He angled back to look at my face. Shame covered him whole. “I know what I said, Emery, but I had to so they wouldn’t catch on to what I had planned.”
Confusion bound me as I tried to process everything that had happened that night. But I had been close to delirious by then. Our senses distorted since we’d been blindfolded for so long, plus we’d hardly been given any food or water. Compounded by the trauma…
I sucked for the air I couldn’t find as it slammed me.
It had been reported afterward that there had been a gunfight between the police and the criminals inside the truck. They’d managed to rescue four girls, while three had been lost.
But I could almost feel it then.
His aura.
His scent.
The ferocity of the man who’d pulled us from the back of the truck.