Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
“Don’t have the guts, do you?” she asks with snide laughter in her voice. “You only think you do.”
She’s right. I don’t have the guts to kill her.
But I do have the guts to pick up a lamp from a table close by and bring it down on top of her head.
It’s not so much the breaking of the lamp that’s loud. It’s the way her unconscious body hits the floor with a heavy thud that sets off rapid footsteps coming up the basement stairs.
“Cecilia?” a man asks. “What happened?”
I don’t think—I react, spinning in place and meeting him in the kitchen by the time he reaches the top of the stairs. All it takes is our eyes meeting from across the room for me to know who he is. Deborah looked a lot like her dad.
There’s a second that might as well be an eternity when we stare at each other. Time stops. There’s nobody but the two of us, locked in a staring contest.
Before he lunges.
And I fire. Like magic, a wound appears on his thigh, which begins oozing blood that soaks into his jeans.
“Shit!” he barks, stumbling backward, pressing a hand to the wound, not stopping until it’s too late. Until his eyes bulge even wider, his mouth falls open, and he reaches out to grab the doorframe to keep himself from tumbling backward down the stairs.
He’s too late.
The sound of him falling is loud enough to make me cringe and wince as he hits every step on the way down. When I work up the guts to go to the top of the stairs, I look down at where he landed and stare in sickened disbelief.
He’s lying on his stomach but looking up at me. His head is twisted in a way it shouldn’t be.
He broke his neck. He’s dead.
It’s like I split in half on the spot. One half of me is horrified, ice filling my veins, nausea twisting my stomach. He wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t shot him. I am responsible for his death when I look at it that way.
The other half stares down in triumph. Grim satisfaction tugs at the corners of my mouth until I’m smirking down at the bastard who was beating Nix when I first looked through the basement window. I wouldn’t have shot him if he wasn’t doing this, if he hadn’t made a move like he wanted to hurt me. He got what he deserved.
When the other man—who I’m now guessing is George—rushes to him and stands over his body, I train the gun on him.
“Don’t move!” I shout. Again, I don’t recognize the voice coming from me, just like I don’t recognize the thrill of watching disbelief play over his face when he looks up at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He’s almost laughing, like he doesn’t believe what he sees. “Making our job easier? Because you’re next. Don’t think you aren’t.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about when you say ‘our job,’” I reply, slowly walking down the stairs, watching his every move—every twitch of his jaw, every direction his eyes travel. “Because it looks like he’s dead, and the woman upstairs is unconscious. Maybe even worse—I hit her pretty hard.”
“Cecilia?” His voice has a note of desperation that only grows louder when he calls her name again.
“I told you. Back away,” I warn, and I have to force my hands to be steady as I reach the basement floor, stepping over the body lying at the foot of the stairs.
“Leni,” Colt grunts.
I don’t dare look his way. I don’t trust this guy in front of me. He looks unhinged, and now he knows he’s in this alone.
“Untie them,” I demand, jerking my head in their direction while staring at the sweating man who tried to run Colt down. “George, is it?”
“Yeah,” he grunts. “And you can get fucked, bitch.”
“Things not to say to a woman holding a gun on you,” Nix quips, because even now he has to be a smart-ass and pretend there’s nothing seriously messed up about this situation.
“Fine. I’ll do it myself. But don’t you move,” I warn, backing away from George toward the chairs where the guys are tied up.
“There are knives over there,” Colt tells me, nodding toward a small table under the window. I couldn’t see it from where I was looking in earlier—there are a few of them lined up in a row, telling me how tonight was supposed to end before I got here. I grab one at random, holding the gun in one hand while using the knife on Nix’s ropes.
“How’s it going there?” George asks.
There’s a crazed look in his eyes. He has sweat through his shirt, big dark stains under his arms and around his collar. My gaze keeps moving back and forth between him and the ropes, since I’m afraid I’m going to cut Nix in the process. “Not that easy, is it?” he asks with a snide laugh.