Page 75 of The Ashes of Summer

"Tie her down."

Low. Rough. Empty.

"You want to be Summer Miller?" He wipes the blood from his lip with his thumb. "Fine. Then my men can treat you like Summer Miller."

Donnie's grin spreads. Jackson doesn't look at me again. He just turns and walks out, and I'm left on the bed with blood in my mouth and terror in my chest and the one unbearable fact settling over everything else.

I had one chance.

And I failed.

Chapter 25

Ninety Minutes

Jacob

Kurt's finally run out of things to give me.

He's slumped back against the pillows, wrung dry, everything I dragged out of him spent and lying between us—his brother, Annalise, what Miller did, where he's keeping her. My knuckles ache from being fisted so tight and I don't uncurl them. Constance is white against the far wall. Adelaide hasn't moved from the window. Tamara hovers like she can hold him together with her eyes. And under all of it, one fact sits in my chest like a stone: ninety minutes of black mountain road between me and Summer, and every one of those minutes is one I'm not there.

Then my phone goes off in my hand, and Carter's name lights the screen.

I answer before the first ring finishes. "Talk."

"They’re live-streaming." Carter's voice comes clipped and tight, road noise running behind it—a man driving too fast. " I'm looking at it right now."

Everything in me goes still. "You've got eyes inside."

"Yeah." A beat too long. The engine fills it. "Jacob⁠—"

"Send it to me."

Silence. Just the line humming.

"Carter. Send me the fucking link."

"I'm ten minutes out." His voice drops, careful, the tone you'd use on a man standing on a ledge. "Let me get to you first. You shouldn't watch this on your own."

And that's the thing that tells me. The hesitation. The handling. Carter doesn't flinch and Carter doesn't soften—he's stood beside me over things that would bury most men, and not once has he tried to stop me looking at something.

Which means it's bad.

"Send it. Now."

“Boss—” I disconnect the call.

A long breath. Then the phone buzzes against my ear—a message, a link sitting under it like a live wire.

I pull it up.

The screen resolves into gray and shadow. A room. A bed.

Her.

Summer.

And for one second everything in me lifts—because she isn't curled in a corner and she isn't broken. She's on top of Jackson Moore with something looped around his throat, hauling back on it with everything she has, and his fucking hands are tearing at his own neck and his face is going dark.