Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Two other men spilled out of the door behind Niko, their bulky frames barely fitting through the threshold.
A click jarred Kelsey, and then the door jerked open as Niko tugged on it. Ducking his head inside, he appraised her with a satisfied grin and then stepped back. “All right. Get her out of there.”
“No!” she yelled, scooting back to the other side of the SUV as far as she could go.
But one of the big men grabbed her ankles and wrenched her forward, and she was powerless to resist as her body slid across the leather interior.
The guy kept pulling until there was a brief second of falling and her butt made hard contact with the unforgiving concrete.
Kelsey cried out.
“Shut her up!” Niko demanded his henchmen.
One of the guys complied without saying a word. A handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket came straight for Kelsey’s face and she tried to crab-crawl backward out of his reach. Her head just thudded against the car, reinforcing that there was nowhere to go.
Opening her mouth, she tried to scream, but the now-folded cloth was brutally shoved inside.
“Look, kid. Do you want this to hurt or go fast?” the brute asked.
He had an apathetic look in his eyes that told Kelsey it didn’t much matter to him one way or the other.
Was he referring to her murder? Surely not! They wouldn’t kill her, right? Maybe use her as some kind of leverage over Marco. But not actually end her life.
That would just piss Marco off. Surely they weren’t dumb enough to do that.
Kelsey realized she couldn’t take that chance. She’d always been told not to let anyone take her to the location of their choosing. If a kidnapper did that, the victim’s odds of surviving went drastically down.
She’d heard you needed to fight and cause as much trouble as you could before they got you to wherever they wanted.
Well, she was already at the old building that looked, from the outside, to be a warehouse or some other industrial structure. But she wasn’t actually inside yet. She had to do something—anything—to get out of there.
If she could just buy herself some time and hide somewhere until Marco could get to her, then she’d be fine.
With that in mind, Kelsey started thrashing about wildly as the man took hold of her arms and roughly pulled her up.
“Stop that!” he growled.
In all the commotion, Kelsey didn’t notice much, but she was acutely aware when the second big man pulled out a gun from his inside his sport coat. It was longer than normal, and she realized there was a silencer on the end.
Crap! Those things were real? She didn’t know enough about weapons to know for sure, but she’d seen plenty in the movies and on TV.
“You want me just to plug her right here?” the man with the gun asked.
“Hold off, Evan.”
Kelsey’s mind slowed to a crawl as she contemplated the reality that someone so menacing and clearly deadly—a man who would end her life at a second’s notice without hesitation—had such a normal and mundane name as Evan.
Evans weren’t supposed to be cold-blooded killers. Evans lived in the suburbs and went home to see their mothers on the weekend.
Now wasn’t the time to fixate on the irony of that, though. She had to get away from these men as quickly as possible—and by any means necessary.
“It would be a lot easier if he did it right here,” the guy holding her said.
“Frankie, shit, think about it,” Niko said. “Do it here, leave DNA where the cops don’t even need a warrant.”
Kelsey’s heart sped up even more, where she thought it might literally end her life before a bullet could.
But she now knew two more things: first of all, they were a hundred percent going to kill her given the chance.
Secondly, the guy holding her was named Frankie. That was important. She had two names now, besides Niko: Frankie and Evan.
When she got away—and she would get away—she had more information to tell the police or Daddy.
First step, though, was getting the hell out of there.
Kelsey hadn’t ever hurt anyone before. It wasn’t something she wanted to do now. Really, she wasn’t even sure she could. Frankie was a giant and the way his strong arm was clamped tightly around her body made even the smallest movements difficult.
Throwing every ounce of strength she had into it, she twisted in his arm, waited until the grip loosen while he tried to readjust, and then raked her nails across his cheek.
She hated the way it felt to dig deep and break skin like that, but given the circumstances, she just had to set the guilt and squeamishness aside.
Living was what mattered.
“Yeow!” Frankie let go of her and instinctively grabbed his cheek. Kelsey saw enough to know two crimson streams were now cascading down below where his hand was pressed.
“That bitch!” Frankie snarled.
“Get her!” Niko called.
But as Evan tried to reach out for her, Kelsey ducked low, hearing his arm swoosh overhead as she dropped to her knees. She didn’t slow down one bit, ramming her fist into his balls three times in rapid succession.
“Oh…shit…” He sank to his knees, retched, and then fell over.
Kelsey was on her feet again, stepping on Evan’s crumpled form as she darted toward the mouth of the alley. The dim lightbulb was enough to gleam off something on the ground and she stopped suddenly.
The gun! Evan must have dropped it when he’d fallen.
Scooping it up quickly, she pivoted on her heels and leveled it at the three men.
Frankie was still holding his bleeding face.
Evan was groaning and writhing on the dirty alley floor and not much of a threat.
But Niko was walking steadily toward her as if he had no doubt how this would end.
Some of that arrogance seemed to dissipate, however, when his eyes fell to what she held.
“Hey, don’t do anything stupid here, sweetheart. We just wanted to keep you safe until Marco was back. We’re actually under his orders. Isn’t that right, guys?”
Evan answered by gagging.
Frankie lowered his hand, inspected the blood streaked on it, then said angrily through clinched teeth, “Yeah. You didn’t have to turn into a bitch about it.”
Could there be any truth to what they were saying? Had she overreacted in her fear?
No. They were gaslighting her. She’d heard what they’d said. There was no way Marco was any part of this.
“You’re lying,” she said meekly.
Gosh, she hated that they heard her voice quiver like that. Niko’s sick smiled widened, and she knew he loved making her afraid.
It didn’t matter. She still held the gun.
But for how long?
It felt so dirty in her hands. She truly hated violence of any sort, but especially gun violence!
“Why don’t you just put that down?” Niko said.
The sound of a car door thudding closed reached her ears a split second before she saw the driver walk around from the front of the SUV.
Okay, so there were four men now—though Evan still wasn’t really part of it. He’d eventually recover. Even with the gun, those odds weren’t in her favor.
The driver was staring at her stone-faced. His hand twitched and she figured he was about to reach for a gun that was hidden somewhere on him.
It was time to move.
“Everyone stay where you’re at,” she told them.
It seemed cheesy and forced, sort of like she was just reciting dialogue she’d heard on a police show.
How was she supposed to know what to say? She’d never dreamed she’d be pointing a gun at anyone.
She prayed she’d never have to do it again.
It was obvious Niko was sizing her up, as if trying to measure her mettle. Finally, he gave a slight shake of his head. “Get her.”
He doesn’t think I’ll do it, she realized. Time to prove him wrong.
Bracing herself, she pulled the trigger hard, expecting a lot of blowback or recoil or whatever shooters called it.
Surprisingly, there was hardly any. And that silencer ensured it was quiet.
She heard the bullet smash into the metal of the SUV, though. Thankfulness washed through her. The shot had been purposely aimed at the vehicle rather than a human. But having never shot before, she didn’t know how her aim was. It was a relief to know she didn’t hit anybody.
It seemed to be enough to scare the guys because they stopped their slow approach.
Kelsey thought about firing another shot, but eventually they’d realize she was aiming away from them and that would just embolden them. So she spun around and took off down the alley.
Heavy, swift footsteps clacked against the pavement. She wasn’t about to look back and see how close they were. If she had one advantage—besides the gun—it was that she was lighter and probably faster.
Tensing up, she expected to feel a bullet slam into her back at any moment.
Thankfully, it never came.
Maybe they didn’t have a gun. Or maybe they did but they didn’t have silencers, so they couldn’t risk the shot being heard. Either way, they simply chased her rather than shooting at her.
The sounds of their feet hitting the street faded behind her as her advantage proved to be true.
Kelsey was outrunning them.
And she wasn’t about to let up until she was far, far away.