Chapter 50 Taran
To my relief, there was no one else parked at the lighthouse as we pulled up to it.
“Is it in there?” Pollock demanded, eyes narrowed with suspicion as he pointed at the abandoned keeper’s cottage.
“Nope. It’s that way.” I gestured to the lighthouse, trying to buy time.
“What the fuck do you mean it’s in there?”
“I mean my family owns the lighthouse, and I use it as storage.” The lie tripped easily off my tongue. A strange calm had come over me. Perhaps it was shock.
The surrealism of what was happening to me right now hadn’t quite sunk in.
“If you’re lying … och, get out of the fucking car.”
I did as he demanded and followed him around the vehicle. That’s when I noted it had a European plate, not a UK license plate. It was just a guess, but I was pretty sure if the police ran those plates, the car would be registered to some random person from mainland Europe.
He jerked the gun toward the lighthouse. “Lead the way.”
The problem was that I knew as soon as we reached the building, we would be greeted by a locked gate and a sign that read Property of the Northern Lighthouse Board. No Trespassing.
I pretended to stumble on the peninsula, trying to slow us down.
But eventually we reached the gate.
Pollock immediately clocked the big padlock and the sign. He spun on me, his gun hand shaking as he pointed it in my face. “You fucking bitch!”
I laughed hollowly. “It’s amazing to me that I’m the bitch when you just shot a man in my living room and are holding me at gunpoint all to steal something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“The watch is mine. White owes me!” he spat.
“Except he doesn’t own the watch. I do. And I owe you shit.” I sneered hatefully at him.
“Do you want me to mess up that pretty face by putting a bullet in it?” He jabbed the gun at me. “Stop messing around and take me to the fucking storage facility, you cunt!”
Even as my knees shook with fear, I tipped my chin up in defiance. A kindle of brittle acceptance fought with my terror. “There’s something you should know about me … I really despise that word.”
“And I’ll really fucking shoot you if you don’t tell me where the watch is.”
“I know.” I shrugged, tears burning my nose.
“But I can’t take you to the watch.” Because Laird had it at his house for safekeeping with a few of the smaller items I thought might get damaged in storage.
And I couldn’t bring this piece of shit anywhere near my brother and his family.
“So …” A sob rattled through my chest as I thought of Quinn and how this would devastate him. “This is it, I suppose.”
Pollock was in utter disbelief. “You’d fucking die over a watch?”
Let him believe that.
“I guess so.”
“Tell me where the fucking watch is!” He cracked the gun over my head, and a flash of light exploded behind my eyes as pain ricocheted across my skull. Then it flared up my knee and across my right hip and elbow. As my vision cleared, I realized I’d hit the ground with the impact to my head.
Something wet trickled down my temple.
Blood?
The gun barrel came into focus as stinging pain pulled on my scalp.
It was Pollock gripping me by the hair as he shoved the gun in my face.
“Take me to the watch, or I won’t just kill you with the gun.
” His spittle flecked on my face. “I’ll fucking rape you with it and then I’ll blow that pretty head off. ”
My stomach revolted, but his threat couldn’t change anything.
All I had left was savage satisfaction that this piece of excrement masquerading as a human being would end up behind bars.
I laughed a bit hysterically. “You won’t get away with this.
You’re on an island, you moronic pile of bird shit.
There’s no way off without getting caught.
You literally drove yourself into a corner. ”
Pollock let out a growl of outrage, raising his arm as if to hit me, but his expression slackened instead. His head whipped toward the road and that’s when I heard the engine.
Relief tore through me as I looked up and saw my car.
That relief was short-lived as Pollock hauled me to my feet with one hand and started shooting at the approaching vehicle.
A bullet shattered my car windscreen and the car suddenly spun to the side as he fired more bullets that dented my doors and blew off a wing mirror. Then the gun clicked.
He was out of ammunition.
I made a gurgled sound of triumph as the car doors flew open and Quinn and Ramsay jumped out. My heart leapt into my throat as my eyes connected with Quinn’s.
“Taran!” he roared, running toward me, his face a mask of fury.
Pollock threw the gun away but yanked me against him. I struggled as he wrapped his arm around my neck.
“Stop!” Silver flashed before my eyes.
A knife.
He had what looked like a small dagger in his hand. He pressed it to my throat, the blade a biting scratch against my skin. “Come any closer and I’ll slit her throat.”
Quinn and Ramsay abruptly halted. I met Quinn’s gaze and saw a million emotions. His eyes moved to my head, and wrath darkened his features at finding what I assumed was a bloody wound if the intense throbbing was any clue.
“If you touch her again, I am going to tear you limb from limb,” Quinn warned just loud enough to be heard over the water lapping the shoreline.
“Give me the watch, and I’ll let her go.”
I met Ramsay’s gaze as Quinn seethed with rage, looking seconds from exploding at Pollock.
I tried not to tense when I realized Ramsay was moving his eyes in a very deliberate way from mine to somewhere lower on Pollock’s body.
It took me a second to figure out what he was trying to communicate.
But then I realized how we were positioned.
Pollock wasn’t directly behind me. He was slightly off to the side.
Just enough that if I hit my target correctly, I could get away from him.
I’d have to hit the target the first time.
I started to shake with hope and despair as Pollock argued back and forth with Quinn about the watch.
We were running out of time.
Sweat gathered under my arms as the blood pulsed so loudly in my ears, I lost track of the confrontation.
I tentatively tried to sense his position behind me, moving my hand ever so slightly.
One, two, three—I flung my hand back and grappled for his crotch, fury fueling me as I found the appendage and crushed it with all the strength I had in me through the fabric of his navy joggers.
The shriek that escaped him would have been deafening if I hadn’t lunged from him as soon as he dropped his knife hand.
Ramsay, having anticipated my move, reached forward and hauled me toward him and out of the way.
“Quinn, no!” Ramsay yelled.
I whirled around, the world spinning as I watched Quinn run at Pollock like a bull. The two men fell together in a grapple, and the flash of a knife sent my knees out from under me. “No!”