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“Hell was back there, in that room,” I croaked.
“Wrong.” His grip on my arm tightened as he looked down the hall again and pointed his gun in front of his chest. “It’s in here.”
What? I frowned as he started tugging me down the hall. Voices sounded, and he pushed me into the shadows.
One shot, two.
And he grabbed me again.
We raced down a circular iron staircase, our footsteps clanging with a hollow metallic sound. In all, about three minutes later, we left the main part of the building. I glanced up at a tall lighthouse standing in silhouette against a sliver of moon. He tugged my hand toward the top of a cliff, and sure enough, we were on a manmade island supporting a towering unlit lighthouse, surrounded by nothing but sinister-appearing, dark, choppy water.
“Get ready to jump.” He put one gun back into the holster strapped to his thigh and grabbed my hand, keeping his remaining gun in his right. “On the count of three—”
“Wait!” I jerked back. “I don’t know how to swim.”
He looked heavenward and muttered a series of curses. “You better learn in the next few seconds because I’m leaving with or without you.”
“My hero,” I deadpanned, surprised I was even speaking after all that shock or saying something that could set this guy off and force him to take me out, just like he apparently had the countless bodies I’d seen littered all the way down the dark hall.
He ignored me as gunshots rang out. “Now or never, jump straight down, and I’ll pull you up, panic, and I’ll shoot you, got it?”
I shivered in absolute terror.
How much more could my body take?
Or my nerves?
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was a warrior. This was my only chance. I could do this.
Fight.Pace’s final word to me before he died.
I would, I wouldfight.
“Got it,” I repeated in a hollow voice that nobody would ever possibly believe was trustworthy.
“Good girl.” He grabbed my hand. “One, two, three!” A gunshot rang out and met its mark directly into my left arm as we jumped, causing me to sag against him on the way down.
“Damn it!” he roared, shoving me away from him so hard I wondered if I was going to survive at all. Searing pain pulsed through my body as I barely missed a rock below and sank into the ice-cold water.
He had told me not to panic.
But panic took over.
I was shot.
Bleeding all over.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push through the water to get to the surface; it simply went right through my fingers like air. Cold waves dragged me closer to the rocks as I fought to get to the top.
I opened my mouth to scream, choking down water as my vision started to blur.
I was going to die.
Had he been shot too? Or was I just that disposable?
I choked down more water, my throat burned, and my body pulsed. And then I saw him. Pace’s smiling face teasing me when we were kids before our parents abandoned us.
Before the dumpster.
