26. Kyle
26
KYLE
Nick moves too quickly through the woods as if he knows the layout of the land and can navigate the trees with his eyes closed. There’s something about the way he slithers into the overgrown foliage like a snake chasing food, that makes me send Patrick into the building to check out the basement. It’s more than just a coward saving his own skin. His movements are predatory.
He is following someone.
Sienna.
I thought I’d glimpsed someone escaping the house when we first arrived, but the rain distorted my vision, and then they were gone. I should’ve trusted my gut. I should’ve gone after her myself, and now my hesitation may have cost Sienna her life.
She and Nick are standing on the edge of the cliff when I emerge from the shelter of the trees, the gale pummeling them, whipping their hair around their faces and trying to undress them. The brooding night sky provides a fitting backdrop. Because Nick’s arm is around Sienna’s neck, and his gun is pressed against her temple.
I can see the fear in her eyes as she watches me. I promised that I would never let anyone hurt her. I’m keeping that promise.
“Let her go, Nick!” I have to yell to be heard above the shrieking wind blowing in from the sea. “This has nothing to do with Sienna.”
I lower my gun, crouching slowly, and place it on the wet ground at my feet. No sudden movements. I straighten again.
“Touching.” Nick blinks the rain from his eyes and grins. “Kick the gun out of reach. Carefully. One wrong move, and I pull this trigger.”
I kick the weapon sideways, just far enough that I can still lunge for it if necessary. I have a pistol tucked inside the waistband of my pants, but I have no intention of using it while he has her. I’ll find another way to free her before I kill him.
I spread my hands wide, palms facing outward. “No weapons. Let Sienna go.”
“Still think you can call the shots.”
A gust catches hold of them, and they stumble forwards, locked together. Nick quickly regains his balance, but my heart has already lurched into my mouth. One more strong gust is all it’s going to take to suck them both over the side of the cliff.
“I’m not calling the shots. I’m begging you to let her go. Sienna doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve any of it.”
His eyes are dark, sunken into their sockets; he’s playing a dangerous game, and he knows that if she goes over the side, he’s going with her. He’s dragging it out because this isn’t about Sienna. This is about him wanting to be in control, about him finally having the power that his half-brothers have gained through hard work, loyalty, and respect.
The difference is, he expects to gain the same level of power by murdering an innocent woman.
My woman
My soulmate.
“Did you know that she’s having your baby?”
His words punch a hole in my gut and stun me into silence. I feel the wind howling straight through me as if I’m nothing. A feather caught on a summer breeze.
My baby?
He’s toying with me. Twisting the knife before he pulls it out and tosses me aside.
But when my eyes meet Sienna’s, I know that it’s true. Her eyes are pleading with me to save her, to save them both: her and our baby.
“Shame that it won’t save them,” Nick yells over the wind as if reading my mind.
“I’ll give you the Titan,” I yell back, my throat hoarse.
“No!” Sienna screams. “No, Kyle! Don’t?—”
Nick jabs the end of the pistol against her skull to shut her up. “Too late! We already have the Titan.”
He’s bluffing. He must be. There’s no way Caleb would ever hand over any part of the Murray empire without fighting for it, and the fight has only just begun.
Well, two can play this game. “Name your price, Nick. Whatever you want. Whatever it will take to save Sienna.”
Sienna’s shoulders heave with sobs, her tears mingling with the rain streaking her pale face. But she’s still standing tall, chin jutting, defiant as always. If only she believed in her own strength.
He flicks wet hair out of his eyes. “We have the Titan. It’s only a matter of time before we take everything else the Murrays own. So, you see, we don’t need her now. She’s superfluous to requirements. Baggage that we can do without when we go back to New York and claim our prize.”
I need to keep him talking. He hasn’t loosened his hold on Sienna, and I need to get her away from him before I shoot the fucker. A bullet through the head will be too easy. I want to see the fear in his eyes. I want to watch him fly over the edge of that cliff, knowing that his death will be anything but quick and painless.
“Why?” I call out. “What’s this all about?”
The demonic grin is back. “I thought you’d have figured it out. We’re half-brothers. What’s yours is mine, etc. Why should you get to live a life of luxury while I spend the rest of my life turning mutton into lamb. Do you have any idea how soul-destroying it is to watch you and your brothers parading your wealth around the city while I get nothing?”
We were right about Nick Morris, but it’s no consolation hearing it from his own mouth. I remain silent and keep my hands by my sides. I’m hoping that his bitterness will keep him talking so that I can convey a message to Sienna with my eyes. If she raises her feet off the ground when I give the signal, he’ll lose his balance, and it will give me a fraction of a second to fire a bullet into his leg.
“It’s sickening,” he continues. His mouth twists into an ugly sneer. “What have you ever done to deserve that life, huh?”
I can think of plenty, but I’m not about to share my life experience with him, not while he has a gun pressed to my woman’s head. Instead, I switch my attention to Sienna. She’s struggling. Her chest is heaving, trying to fill her lungs.
I hold her gaze and lower my eyes to the ground. She tracks my movement to my feet. I don’t know if she understands what I’m trying to convey, but her captor is still speaking, and I need to keep him distracted now that he has begun his sour rant.
“My life!” I’m certain that if he had a free hand right now, he’d be thumping his chest dramatically like a deposed monarch of ancient times facing his executioner. “You stole my life from me! My mom died because of him, because of our father. You… You still get to speak to your mom every day of your life. What do I get?”
Through the squally lashing rain, I can see him withdrawing. His body is present, but his mind is elsewhere, reliving the traumatic childhood experiences that led him to this moment. This is dangerous.
We’re running out of time.
“I get nothing!” The wind snatches his shrill voice and carries it over the cliff-edge and out to sea.
I widen my eyes at Sienna and drop them to the ground. I do this on repeat, until she mimics my movements. The timing has to be impeccable. I’ll wait for Sienna to knock him off-balance, pull my gun from my waistband, and fire during that one-or-two-second window while he’s figuring out what’s wrong with her. I can’t afford to miss my target.
This is the part that worries me the most.
I’m a lawyer, I’m not a violent man.
Pulling this trigger will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but Sienna’s life is at stake here, and I’m trusting my heart to ensure that my aim is true.
“Well,” he’s still yelling, “that’s all about to change. Right now!”
The world seems to freeze. The slanting rain is like a sheet of beveled glass separating me from Sienna and Nick as I watch her raise her legs and land on her knees in slow motion.
As predicted, Nick is caught off-balance as she slips from his grasp. The gun hovers somewhere above Sienna’s head.
Moving on autopilot, I reach for the pistol tucked inside my pants. My fingers find the handle, but before I can pull it out, take aim, and press the trigger, a shot rings out and my entire body prickles. The sound reverberates inside my skull.
But my eyes are locked onto Sienna.
Realizing that he has relinquished control of the situation, Nick tries to grab her, and she rolls away from him. Then she disappears over the edge of the cliff.
“Noooooooo!” My hoarse scream is drowned out by the storm.
I’m running towards the edge.
Nick is lying spreadeagled on his back on the ground, blood seeping from the bullet wound in his chest. A guttural sound escapes his lips as I approach him. It almost sounds like he’s calling for help, but I don’t look at him.
Footsteps behind me.
A familiar voice screams, “Kyle! Come back.”
My mom.
I don’t know where she came from, or how she found us. I don’t even know if she fired the bullet that will end Nick Morris’s life. All I can think about is Sienna.
The edge is closer than I realized. My feet skid across the waterlogged grass when I try to stop myself from hurtling over the side, and I land on my back with a dull thud, pain shooting from my coccyx to the top of my spine. I roll over and claw at the soil, dragging myself away from the edge, soggy clumps of stringy mud coming away in my hands.
Great heaving sobs lodge inside my chest making it difficult to breathe.
“Sienna…” I murmur her name over and over, as I crawl closer to the edge on hands and knees, petrified of what I’m going to find.
I swipe rain from my eyes with muddy hands. The wind batters my face, forcing me away from the edge as if trying to protect me from the unimaginable horror below.
I sit back on my haunches, tilt my face towards the cloud-heavy sky, and yell, “Why? Why did you have to take her?”
“Kyle.” My mom’s eyes are dark, and her voice is firm as she crawls over to me. “Don’t move.”
She watches me closely, the wind whipping her hair around her face, until she is convinced that I heard her. Then, she flattens to her stomach on the ground and drags herself towards the edge, burying her hands in the soil as she peers down below.
My mom is lying there, motionless, for so long that my mind and my chest feel empty. Numb. Hollowed out. It feels as though someone slit me open and scraped my internal organs out with a spoon leaving behind an empty husk.
I already know what she has seen.
Sienna’s bloody broken body on the rocks below.
My tears force their way out, hot and stinging, mingling with the torrential rain.
I drag myself onto my feet slowly. I find the gun that I dropped when Sienna disappeared and pick it up, surprised when the cold metal sends a shiver through me. I can still feel then. How is it possible when there’s nothing left inside me?
Taking careful measured steps, I walk over to Nick Morris.
His breathing is labored. Blood trickles from the corner of his lips which are turning blue. His chest is concaved. But he’s still alive.
Nick’s eyes are like black holes in his ashen face. “I… What are you… Help me…”
I raise the gun and press the barrel against his temple the way he did to Sienna. There’s so much that I want to say to him, but he doesn’t deserve my words. He doesn’t deserve a quick and painless death. But I’m not doing this for him.
I’m doing it for me.
I pull the trigger.
I barely notice the blood and gore that splatters my face to be washed away by the torrential rain.
“Kyle.” I didn’t even see my mom crawl away from the edge. But she’s here now, and her hand is on my arm, and she’s trying to tell me something. “She’s alive. Sienna is alive, Kyle. She’s alive.”