I scream. “The truck.”
I brace for impact, my hands white-knuckling the seat. But it’s not enough to stop the force slamming through me.
My airbag deploys, knocking the oxygen from my lungs, belting me in the face.
Darkness steals my vision. I gasp for breath and blink rapidly, attempting to dislodge the inky black as my ears ring.
“Sarah?” I blindly reach for her. “Are you okay?”
She groans as my sight shifts from dark, to grey, to an almost decipherable blur.
I hear things. A rapid mass of noise. The hiss of something mechanical. A car door slams in the distance. Screams. Then gunfire—rapid, bone-chilling gunfire.
I scramble to undo my belt around the inflated airbag. “Sarah, wake up. You need to wake up.”
The shots ring louder. From different directions, the closest approaching.
My hands shake in my search for the goddamn buckle, my fingers trembling as I finally release the clasp.
“Sarah.” I reach for her again, this time seeing the crimson blood staining the airbag beside where her forehead rests. “Sarah.”
Everything quietens. The outside world becomes still as my heartbeat intensifies.
She’s hurt. Bad. The color once brightening her face is gone.
“Please, Sarah.”
She groans again, filling me with rampant hope.
The familiar tap against my window that steals it away.
I stop breathing.
Swallow.
Tap, tap, tap.
I remain frozen, caught between the need to scream and hide. Fight and surrender.
I know who’s at my door. I know without doubt before I turn and come eye-to-eye with Robert, his face now clean-shaven, his hair in a buzz cut as his gleaming smile bears down on me.
The instinct to flee is overwhelming; the necessity wails inside my skull. It takes all my will to shut it down.
What takes its place is a maniacal huff of laughter. I knew I’d never escape. Not from him. Not from the nightmares in Greece.
I could scramble into the back of the car and run from the other side, but he’d catch me.
I could yell for help, yet all I’d achieve is a bigger tally to the dead bodies lying on the ground outside.
The bad guys always win. Always.
He quirks a brow in question and shifts the aim of his gun from me to Sarah.
“No.” I push open my door. “Stop.”
He smirks and lunges for me, pulling me from the Suburban by my hair. I struggle not to cry out from the pain and scramble to find my footing while he pats me down with an aggressive hand, his gun still trained on Sarah.
“She’s dead,” I lie.
“Then shooting her isn’t going to matter, is it?”
“No, Robert, please.” I clasp my palms in prayer. “I’ll go with you. I’ll go willingly. Just leave her alone.”
He smiles, a true, genuine smile that may have had the potential to be handsome if he wasn’t a monster. “You missed me, didn’t you?”
I press my lips tight against the need to defy him, to spit in his face and wipe the smug satisfaction from his expression.
“Don’t worry.” He winks. “It’ll be just you and me before you know it.”
“Let her go,” a man yells in the distance.
Oh, God.
“No,” I scream as Robert swings me around, not pausing a beat before he shoots in the direction of the demand, hitting a man in the chest.
The shock on the stranger’s face, along with the sickening jolt of his body, shoves me straight into the horror of my past. All of it comes rushing back—the helplessness, the torture. It suffocates me. It’s impossible to breathe.
“You piece of shit.” I lash out, smacking and punching as his grip tightens in my hair. “You fucking monster.”
“There’s my pretty Penny,” he taunts. “It’s good to see you’ve still got fight left in you, because all Abi did was cry like a little bitch.”
I scream, pummeling his chest, scratching at his face until he reefs me along beside him, storming for the silver sedan behind us, the hood and windshield peppered with bullets.
People scramble to safety in the distance. Some frantically talk on their cells. Others flee the scene.
There are so many witnesses. So many potential casualties to my demise.
“Quit fighting.” Robert tugs me harder, making me stumble. “It’s time to get out of here.”
I don’t stop punching at him as he drags me toward the car and over the driver’s dead body lying on the asphalt, a gaping head wound sending bile rocketing up my throat.
I gag. Choke.
Robert doesn’t care. He continues to yank me along at his side before reaching into the driver’s side of the vehicle to pop the trunk.
Oh, God, no.
I increase my struggle, clawing