Page 3

For one impossible second, I was weightless.

The car vanished from beneath me and the road hit my shoulder hard.

I heard a crack.

My head struck the road next. Light burst behind my eyes as my body rolled across the asphalt. Skin tore from my palms. My hip slammed down. My knee twisted. The world became road, sky, road again.

I hit the gravel at the edge and kept rolling.

The embankment dropped away beneath me. Branches tore at my face. Thorned scrub caught my clothes and ripped free. I tried to protect my head, but my bound hands would not move quickly enough.

I struck a tree trunk hard enough that my lungs emptied of all their air. For a moment, there was nothing. No air. No sound. No pain.

Then everything returned at once.

My shoulder burned. My knee throbbed. Blood filled my mouth where my teeth had cut through my lip.

Above me, tyres screamed. The car stopped. A door slammed.

“Find her!”

I dragged in a breath.

Move.

My body refused to answer.

Headlights blazed across the road above the embankment. Two dark figures ran through the beams.

“She went down there.”

“Then get down there. I’ll call Carlo - he’s not far behind.”

Move.

I rolled onto my stomach.

Pain shot from my shoulder into my neck. My left arm collapsed beneath me, and my face struck the dirt.

A gunshot split the night.

The bullet struck a tree somewhere to my right. Bark sprayed across my cheek.

I screamed. The sound tore out of me before I could stop it.

“There!”

I pushed myself up with one elbow and ran.

The slope was steep. I half fell, half stumbled through the trees, unable to see where I placed my feet. Roots caught my boots. Branches whipped my face. My injured arm hung uselessly at my side while the other remained trapped against it by the binding.

Behind me, men crashed through the undergrowth. They were faster, and they weren’t injured.

I forced my legs to move.

Another gunshot cracked through the trees. The force hissed past my head. I ducked and stumbled sideways, striking my shoulder against another trunk.

White pain blinded me.