Chapter Thirty #2
A deep mechanical rumble created a vibration, forcing her to grab the edges of the access panel for balance.
Beautiful metal curved staircases on both sides of the castle tower slid into place.
No railing, but at the moment, she didn’t care about that.
Sedona took the remaining steps across the beam at a faster pace and jumped onto a blessedly solid cold stair.
Simpson and six of his men split into two groups and surged up both sets of stairs.
Sedona pressed herself as tightly against the wall as she could until the men raced beyond her position. Using her hand against the wall as a guide, she rushed down to the bottom floor and across to the doorway where she’d left her shoes.
She bent and snatched them up, hurrying to find a place to hide long enough to put her shoes on. No shoes outside this castle meant bruised or injured feet that made her vulnerable to being recaptured. That couldn’t happen.
A minute later, she found a broom closet and shut herself in.
Working by feel, Sedona yanked on her socks, then shoved her feet into her shoes, lacing them quickly.
Standing, she tried to listen for Trey or one of his buddies coming to take her prisoner again, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
Sedona opened the door a crack, praying one of the guards wasn’t standing right in front of her. She scowled. How did this work for Cam and his teammates? The right looked clear. The left, however, she couldn’t see at all from this angle.
Sedona pushed the door open a little wider. Still nothing. She couldn’t wait any longer. Someone would notice she hadn’t run up the stairs to see what happened to Mr. Lyons.
Another check revealed nothing to the right. She eased out into the darkened hallway and looked left. Empty. Thank God.
She hurried toward the kitchen, if the schematics were correct. There must be a door leading to the outside.
Sedona ran through an open doorway and into a large kitchen any chef would be envious to cook in, glanced at the knife block, and deliberately turned her back on it.
In her head, she heard Cam’s voice as he’d talked about the weaknesses of different weapons with David Montgomery last week.
Knives were for close-up defense. That left using a knife out for her.
She wasn’t trained to use weapons to defend herself, a weakness she planned to address with Cam at the first opportunity.
She ran to the door and darted outside. Bolting toward the tree line, Sedona stayed in the shadows cast by the house and the trees growing on the estate grounds. When she imagined the hot breath of Simpson’s guards on her neck, she pushed herself harder.
Who was she kidding? She had eluded the guards.
Escaping Simpson would be a different matter.
In the hunting game, the guards were amateurs.
Simpson, however, brought new meaning to the word ‘professional’.
He hunted people for a living, and according to Cam and the Montgomery brothers, Simpson was excellent at what he did.
Sedona sprinted past the tree line and continued at the same pace, putting as much distance as possible between her and Simpson.
There was no doubt in her mind that he would be the one to come after her.
The guards had already tried hunting her and failed.
Soon, the expert hunter would take his turn.
Inside the woods, every shadow was a threat, and every sound could give away her position to the enemy. She scowled. Her heart pounded so hard that’s all she heard. A herd of elephants could bear down on her, and she would never know until they squashed her like a bug.
On and on she ran until her sides ached and her lungs caught fire. When Sedona had to stop for a minute or fall down, she sucked in deep breaths, hoping to slow her heart rate to hear if Simpson’s cronies were close.
A minute later, the roaring in her ears dropped to a dull roar, low enough for her to listen for sounds around her. That’s when she realized the denizens of the woods were totally silent. She froze. Not good. They always made noise unless something frightened them.
That’s when she heard rocks shifting, limbs breaking, and muffled swearing a short distance behind her. Sedona glanced at the tree limbs, then decided against trying to hide among the branches in the trees again.
With no other choice but to keep moving, she angled to the right toward the sound of water rushing along a stream. If the water wasn’t too deep or the current strong, she could cross the stream and perhaps find a place to hide on that side of the water.
More thrashing through bushes and low-lying tree branches. The first thug said, “She’s fast. Go right, Anson.”
“She can’t outrun bullets,” a second man said.
“The boss said no guns. We’re to capture and hold.”
“Why? She’s caused nothing but trouble.”
“The boss wants her. That’s all we need to know. Believe me, you don’t want to cross him. Bad things happen when you disobey his orders. Now, shut up. You talk too much.” Twigs snapped under booted feet.
Sedona glanced over her shoulder and saw the two men shoving branches out of their path. She raced toward the sound of the stream, except with every step the babbling brook she had envisioned began to morph into a raging river. The sound of rushing water was too loud to be a brook or a stream.
How would she get across the water before Simpson’s henchmen caught up with her? She’d figure it out. She was officially out of options.
“There she is,” shouted Thug One. “Hey, lady, give it up already. You’ve got to be tired of running.”
She plunged into thicker shadows under the branches, fighting to stay on her feet when she couldn’t see where to step. If Sedona kept this up for long, she would break an ankle. Then where would she be?
Wrestling down blind panic, she increased her pace until it wasn’t possible to run faster without pitching face first onto the forest floor.
She fought her way through a dense thicket into a clearing where the sudden drop in temperature made her shiver. Although the roar of the rushing river was in her ears, she couldn’t see the water. What was wrong with this picture?
Puzzled, she kept moving forward, more cautious now despite Simpson’s cronies bearing down on her. Step after step, she walked into the misty air and searched in front of her for a glimpse of the river. The area stayed oddly black.
Closer and closer to the black hole she moved until taking one more step would put her in the pit. She froze. What had she missed? What was this blackness?
“Hey, lady, don’t move.”
She spun to face the two men who stood mere feet from her, each with a hand outstretched and panic in their expressions. “Stay away from me.”
“You know we can’t do that. You’re a nice lady,” Thug Two said. “You don’t want us to get into trouble with the boss, do you?”
The men took a step forward.
Sedona backed away.
“Lady, stop. You gotta stop,” Thug One said.
“Why should I?”
“If you take one more step, you’ll fall over the cliff!”