My hands shook so badly, it took me three attempts to get the seatbelt clip into the slot. By the time I was done, Blaine had shoved the vehicle into reverse, bounced down the busted steps, and was speeding out of the compound.
Roaring bikes flashed past the window, and bullets tore into the driver’s side in a series of dull pops that set my frayed nerves on edge. “It’s bulletproof,” he said. “They won’t get through.”
It didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.
Darkness swallowed us as we bounced over ruts so deep they nearly flung me from the seat. Blaine’s face was tight and voice terse as he issued commands through the communicator hooked around his right ear. The bikes were gaining on us again, deep, growly engines bringing the promise of revenge.
An explosion rocked the vehicle, and I glanced over my shoulder to see a bike go spinning in the air.
Another explosion, and another.
“We’re clear,” Blaine said. “You okay?” His focus was on the rutted tarmac road, but he cut a glance in my direction when I didn’t answer. We were driving at such a terrifying speed that my eyes had trouble keeping pace, and my stomach felt like I was perpetually tumbling.
“Yes, I think so.” That was a lie. I was sure I would never be okay again. Since leaving Guilder City yesterday I’d existed on an adrenaline high of terror. My system was now so wound up it would probably take a week to bring me down.
“That’s good because I am going to beat your fucking ass so hard, you won’t sit for a week when I get you home.”
My heart gave an alarming blip, pushing me straight back to that heightened state of awareness, only this time it wasn’t only fear.
The reason I’d fled came crashing back.
“I can’t go back,” I said, my voice quiet against the steady thrum of the engine.
“You’ll go wherever the fuck I say.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised by this statement. Everything he’d done and said since the day he picked me up from that rooftop had made it clear he would never let me go. I should be horrified by his highhandedness. Instead, it comforted me and made me sad that my reasons for leaving remained valid.
I cared about him—I could admit that it was love. It would destroy me if he were hurt trying to protect me from Martin.
The stomach-churning cries that had filled the farmhouse were still fresh in my mind. The world held good people, bad people, and everything between. Then the collapse came in like an amplifier it exaggerated their personality traits to the extreme. The men who’d taken me as a prisoner were the bad kind and their last moments had been brutal.
I swallowed against the rising sickness in the pit of my stomach. Blaine could be a stone-cold killer, merciless for those who got in his way, but he had a moral compass of sorts. He was also insanely possessive, and I believed him when he said he’d never let me go.
“Good job we managed to hack back into your hacked tracker,” he said.
So that was how they found me.
A dead space opened up in my chest, a sense of desolation that he wasn’t going to let me go and that I would be forced to watch him die.
He wasn’t like Jodi. Jodi could do some foolish things, but she would never go after Martin. Blaine would absolutely go after him.
I couldn’t go back, even after all of this.
“I didn’t ask you to save me,” I said, voice brittle.
His fist slammed into the dashboard. The sudden violence of the action and the dull smack of the impact ripped a short scream from my lips. My abused nerves sent a rapid shot of adrenaline careening through my body that coiled me up like a spring and then cut me as loose as a noodle when my brain recognized the lack of genuine threat.
He made a pinching motion with the thumb and finger of one hand. “Ava, I’m this close to losing it. You think I don’t know what your little stunt was about? You think I can’t handle that bastard you call an uncle?” He shook his head. “You don’t know me very well.”
He was right; I didn’t know him very well. All we did was fall on one another like a pair of horny teenagers. We were both well past that age and well past those excuses. The man sharing the car with me was a stranger, wild, and capable of great violence. I’d never seen anyone kill that efficiently before. The way he’d taken down the men in the room was cold and precise. Perhaps he could handle Martin? Maybe I should have let him in?
My mind began scrambling to work out why Jodi hadn’t mentioned Martin. Did she know Martin was schmoozing up with Taylor? I’d been caught up in happy land just after they stormed the farmhouse, but now everything came crashing back. “It isn’t your problem,” I said quietly.
Blaine’s laugh was humorless. “Not my problem? I own you, in case you’ve forgotten, which makes everything you do my fucking problem until I say otherwise or one of us is dead.”
Despite everything that had happened, the thought of him passing me off still hurt worse than anything I’d endured. When I fell, I went all in. “You go after Martin, and you’ll be the one who’s dead. I can’t let you do that.” I felt cold and sick as I realized he was going to do precisely that.
“Your faith in me is truly amazing,” he growled.
“You don’t know him like I do.” Anything to do with Martin tied my stomach in knots. The things he’d done… such pain would never go away. I couldn’t be at his mercy again. I couldn’t endure that. “He killed my father,” I whispered. “Then he abused, tormented, and killed my mother.”
A sob erupted from my chest. Not once had I told anyone. Jodi was the only person who knew. The raw edge of my emotions, even after all this time, unhinged my self-control. I wanted out of the car, and I fumbled at the seatbelt release before I’d worked out what I’d do after.
“Hey!” Fingers bit into the bones of my wrist, and tears pooled in my eyes. But a mad need for freedom consumed me, and I fought wildly.
The pressure only increased until I was sure my bones were about to snap.
“He’s dead,” Blaine said. “I killed him.”
I couldn’t see past the dull, agonizing ache in my wrist. He retained a hold, but the pressure was no longer absolute.
“He’s dead?” My voice came from a long way away, and my ears started to ring.
“Yes, he’s dead. Damn it!” His fingers crushing my wrist again snapped me back from the edge. “I can’t stop, Ava. Keep it together, baby.”
I started to shake; it seemed to well up from deep within until it consumed my whole body. The events at the farmhouse battered at my mind: the sickening shrieks, the hideous cracks of bones breaking, of things being ripped and torn, the barrage of tiny explosions as each bullet was released were like a thousand hammers in my head. Blood… there had been so much blood.
Was my uncle really gone?
“Hey!” My eyes found his briefly before his attention returned to the road. “It’s over now,” he said softly.
The debilitating tension eased a notch, enough for me to draw deep, steadying breaths into my lungs.
“I need to put my hand back on the wheel,” he said.
I nodded.
“You’re in shock, baby.”
His acknowledgment of my reactions as normal further aided to bring calm. His fingers squeezed over mine gently before he returned them to the wheel.