Page 11

The driver twists back towards me. “Shit. She still alive?”

I keep my eyes closed, regulating my breathing, letting my body go slack in the awkward position it’s landed in on the floor. A hand reaches down, fingers pressing against my neck, and I fight the urge to recoil.

“She’s fine.”

“She’s fine, boss,” the driver repeats into the phone.

The car moves again, gravel spraying beneath the tires as we leave the wreck behind. Asher. Is he okay?

We keep going farther and farther away from him. I refuse to let that be the end. I can’t lie still and let them win, not without trying to help myself.

Slowly, I brace my feet against the floor and push myself backwards up onto the seat. My wrists burn as I shift, angling my feet behind the driver’s seat.

It only takes one second of courage. One fragile, reckless moment.

I drive my heel into the back of his skull. His head snaps forward and I do it again, and again, each strike fueled by anger I’ve never let myself feel before. The car jerks beneath us and chaos takes hold.

The gunman tries to grab my legs, but I scream, a raw, piercing sound that scrapes out as if I’ve ripped open my own throat.

Then the car veers, and the world swings sideways. We hit the ditch, metal crumpling and glass shattering around us.

When we settle, I don’t wait to see if they’re still breathing. The gunman’s head punched a bloody hole in the windshield. He isn’t moving.

I push my back against the door, fumbling with the handle until it gives. Then I stumble from the car and run into the corn for cover, following the road back to Asher’s wreck.

Long leaves whip across my face and catch in my hair as I push through the stalks. Their sharp edges scratch at my bare arms, but the sting hardly registers.

My head is still swimming from the drug they put in me. My hands behind my back offer no sense of balance, and I stagger in the dirt, falling to my knees. I want to stay there and let the world forget me. Tears well in my eyes, blurring everything. I don’t understand why this is happening.

I wobble to my feet and keep moving. The car appears in the distance, its front smashed up, steam rising from the engine in the bright headlights.

“Asher!” His name rips out of me.

He’s there, slumped over the steering wheel, the deflated airbag sagging beneath him. I hurry over to him, filled with more dread than hope. But he’s alive, bleeding from his head with a knife clutched in his hand.

He looks up at me and smiles faintly, unbothered. “You got away.”

That’s all he cares about.

My shoulders are too heavy to shrug. “I kicked him in the head.”

I don’t know how he’s still smiling. His head hangs like it hurts to lift it. But he does, with a broken little chuckle.

“Bullseye.”

Using the door to hold himself up, he forces his way out of the car, but winces when he puts weight on his right foot. As he leans there, I catch sight of the scar on the inside of his wrist again. It resembles the hourglass emblem that’s on the medallion around my neck and sends a flicker of confusion through me. I push it aside. There will be time for questions later.

His phone is on the passenger side floor, a map pulled up with a blue dot marking where we are. The road name disappears before I can read it as he reaches for the zip tie behind my back.

My knees almost give when he turns me around. I take deep breaths, trying to regulate my pulse as I gaze up at the vast stretch of stars scattered across the sky. It’s disturbingly quiet here. We’re nowhere near the city.

Asher cuts through the restraint around my wrists. I turn to him for direction, but his attention is fixed down the road.

The man who took me from my bed staggers towards us, limping into the light. His face is half-shadowed, one hand shielding his eyes, the other gripping a gun.

“You need to run.” Asher points me to the corn. “Get to Shadow Bluff.”

None of this makes sense. I’m not worth all this trouble.