My stalker gave a small shrug. "See, here's the thing, Madison Kate. I planned to kill these three regardless of how tonight worked out. They failed to protect you, and they need to be eliminated. So, you can stay there and watch as I kill them in front of you, one by one." There was an implied second option, and I was too weak to resist the bait.
"Or?"
"Or you can open the door, Madison Kate."
I wet my lips and swallowed past the hard lump in my throat. He didn't have Steele and Kody... not yet, anyway. But if I didn't act fast, Archer would die.
"You'll kill them anyway," I replied, feeling my heart shatter into a million pieces with those words. I wanted nothing more than to trade myself for Archer, but like my stalker had just said... he was going to kill them regardless. What good would it do to hand myself over, only to have them shot anyway?
"Maybe I won't," my stalker replied. "Maybe I will. The only certainty here, Madison Kate, is that if you don't open the door in the next five seconds, Archer will die." He paused, tilting his mask-covered face to the side as he faced the camera. "Is that shred of uncertainty enough, my love?" I shuddered at the endearment. "Let's find out. One... Two... Three..." He wasn't even pausing a full second between. I had no doubt he would follow through on his threat when he reached five. "Four..."
I slammed my hand down on the door release.
The sharp chemical smell of gas hit my nose the second the door slid open, and I swallowed heavily.
"Good girl," my stalker purred. He offered his hand for me to take, and I looked down at it with horror, like he'd just presented me with a live snake. "Don't keep me waiting, Madison Kate." His other hand still held a gun aimed at Archer's head, and the threat was clear. Crystal fucking clear.
I swallowed heavily and placed my hand in his.
"Such obedience," my stalker murmured, "so unlike your mother. She made things so difficult for herself toward the end there."
Revulsion burned in my throat, and I gagged. But then maybe that was the gas getting to me. In the time I'd spent in the panic room, the gas had thickened through the house, and I was already lightheaded and dizzy. It was no wonder Archer had been losing his fight. In fact, I was amazed he'd even still been conscious at all.
"You have me now," I announced in a strangled voice. "Leave everyone else alone."
My stalker’s gloved fingers tightened around my hand as he dragged me along the corridor away from Archer. Away from his buddy, who remained standing over my fallen love.
I stupidly let myself hope. I let myself have a spark of relief that he must have decided on mercy now that he had me. But as he dragged me up the narrow staircase to the garage entrance, the deafening crack of a gunshot echoed through the small space.
An agonized scream tore from my throat, and I tried desperately to wrench my hand free. But the gas was doing its work. I was weaker than wet tissue paper and just sagged to the ground instead.
My stalker barely even skipped a beat, stooping then throwing me over his shoulder as he made his way through the garage. Several cars were peppered with bullet holes, but I was too broken to care.
Consciousness swam, my vision blacking in and out, and my stomach lurched. The gas was nauseating me as well as knocking me out, but the way my captor strode through the house—confident, like he knew the layout intimately—told me we weren't hanging around. He had his prize, now he was getting the fuck out.
He carried me through the pool area to a door beside the steam room. It led out to some of the meticulously maintained gardens, and a few gulps of fresh air helped to clear my head enough that I recognized the whirling sound of helicopter blades.
Fuck. I'd halfway counted on Steele or Kody catching up to us on the road, but how the hell would they follow a helicopter? Wait. My necklace. I still had my tracker necklace on... Maybe they would find me eventually, after all.
A gunshot rang out through the night, and my captor jerked to a stop, then dropped me behind some low hedges. He aimed his gun at someone, squeezing out a couple of shots.
He must have missed whoever he was aiming at, though, because he ducked behind the hedge with me and muttered a string of curses.
I couldn't stop the bitter, mocking laugh bubbling out of me as the gas faded away. "I thought you never missed. Looks like that was just wishful thinking, huh?"
He didn't dignify that jab with a response, but I didn't fucking care. I just wanted to take a swipe at him and distract him so that whoever was shooting could change their position. I was also working my jellylike arm into the pocket of my sweatpants and praying to all things holy that my butterfly knife hadn't fallen out.
My fingers touched metal, and I grinned.
That caught his attention, though. "What are you smiling at?" he demanded, and I knew it'd be a matter of seconds before he found my weapon.
Now or never.
"This," I replied, whipping the blade out of my pocket and slamming it into his side.
He cried out, falling backward, and I didn't waste my opportunity. I left my knife in his flesh and fucking ran.
My bare feet pounded the damp grass as I raced towards Steinwick and Anna's cottage, but I only made it halfway there before my attacker tackled me to the grass.
I went down hard, but rolled immediately and kicked out furiously, fighting him off as he tried to get his hands around my throat. All my bruises and injuries from just three nights ago were screaming, my entire body a mass of pain, but it was incredible what could be achieved when there was nothing to lose.
My stalker cursed at me, something about not fighting him, but I was lost to an almost total panic state. Fight or flight had well and truly set in, and seeing as I couldn't flee, I was damn well going to fight with everything I had.
My legs bunched under me, and I kicked out, trying to push him away, but he was heavier than I expected. Not to mention my legs were still so weak with the lingering gas in my system. Seeing it wasn't working, I swung a fist, trying to break his mask or knock it loose, but he caught my wrist in a crushing grip. It was my sprained one, and I let out a scream of pain.
"Stop fighting me!" he roared, his grip tightening even more. Tears stream from my eyes at the crushing pain. His face was so close to mine that I could see his eyes through the mask, and there was something eerily familiar about them. They were an unusual violet-blue... just like mine. Just like my mom’s.
Panicked and desperate to free myself, I just struggled harder. This time I swung my other fist, aiming for the spot where I'd stabbed him. He cried out, and something snapped. White hot pain lanced through my arm, and my vision blacked for a second. He'd broken my wrist.
He reared back, releasing my wrist to reach for my knife, where it was still buried in his side. That was my opportunity. I pulled my knees up to my chest and kicked like a donkey. My heel caught him in the chin, snapping his head back. His gasmask skittered away across the grass, and I gasped in shock.
"Dave?" I exclaimed in disbelief. But... that didn't make sense. The eyes didn't match. I would have noticed something like that, as many times as I'd spoken to the man in the past months. He had brown eyes, I was sure of it.
Unless, of course, he wore color contacts.
Fuck.
My shock held me frozen, but it no longer mattered. A split second later a bullet ripped through our two-faced security guard’s chest splattering hot blood all over me.