Chapter 25 #3
“Right. Start over.” I tried my hardest not to flinch at his touch on my skin.
His voice cracked. “I did all of this for you, Eleanor.” In that crack, I heard something worse than anger. I heard a man who believed every word he was saying. He had dismantled my livelihood, bought my debt, stalked my property, and he was sitting in this car, waiting for me to be grateful.
I slid back, glancing toward the door. I needed to be able to hit the lock button and run. I knew this property better than him. If I could just get enough of a head start, I could hide.
“This is your fault, Eleanor. If you’d just come home when I asked, none of this would have been necessary.”
Well, that tune was still the same. “Right.”
“Come with me,” he said. “Right now. Walk away from this place, and everything stops. I’ll dissolve Pinnacle. I’ll make the calls. All of it goes away. I saw you get my rose. I saw how much it meant to you. I know you want this as much as I do deep inside.”
He’d put the rose in my truck? I was going to vomit.
He was waiting for me to say yes. I could see it in the certainty on his face, the absolute conviction that any reasonable person would see what he was offering and take it.
Now something inside me snapped.
I couldn’t do it. I could not sit here and pretend like I was going to go back to him. Not even to get out of this car.
“You are out of your mind.” My voice came out level and cold. “I am not leaving this property. I am never going anywhere with you. Ever.”
Everything behind his expression shifted. The performance fell away. What surfaced underneath was the thing I’d seen once, years ago, in the instant before a glass flew in my direction and my entire world had shifted.
“I was afraid you might say that, although I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out some sort of cheap prepaid phone that you got at a gas station. He opened an app on the screen, something simple with a single button, and pressed it.
He pointed at the barn.
I looked. For a second, nothing. Then there was a flicker in the lower windows, small and orange.
What the hell? Had he placed lights in the windows?
“I told you I’ve been on the property,” Carter said. His voice was calm. “I placed the incendiary devices around the barn. They don’t do much, just a little fireball that could be triggered remotely. But with all that dry hay…”
The orange light grew. No, not light at all.
Fire.
Oh my God.
My animals were locked inside that barn, settled in for the night. The horses in their stalls, the dogs in their kennels. Even Clarence in his cage. None of them could escape.
I had to get to them.
I ripped myself away from Carter’s hand and slammed my fist on the unlock button. I yanked the door handle with both bound hands, threw myself out, hit the dirt, and ran. My wrists were tied and the ground was uneven, and it did not matter.
The barn was ahead of me and it was on fire, and I was going to reach it.
Carter caught me before I made the fence line. His arms closed around my waist from behind, and he lifted me off the ground.
I screamed. I didn’t recognize the sound. It came from a place so deep I’d never so much as known it was there.
My babies were going to burn if I didn’t get to them.
I drove my elbow into his ribs and swung my bound hands backward and connected with his jaw. I bit down on his forearm when it crossed my chest and held on until he wrenched free. I kicked at anything I could reach.
Nothing trained, nothing planned. Just a body trying to get free.
He dragged me back to the car. I clawed at the dirt, at his jacket, at the doorframe. He threw me into the passenger seat and hit me across the face. My head snapped sideways, and the edges of my vision went white.
I dove for the door again, but he grabbed me by the shirt and punched me again. I fell forward, trying to remain conscious.
He got behind the wheel and started the engine.
The access road was narrow and dark, trees pressing in on both sides. I swung my bound hands into his jaw. He shoved my arms down and accelerated. I swung again. He grabbed my wrists and pushed them into my lap.
“Stop it, Eleanor.”
I didn’t stop. Every second he drove was another second they were trapped inside.
Carter hit me again. My lip split, and I knew my nose might be broken. My vision doubled and my ears filled with a high, thin sound and every muscle in my body wanted to quit.
I was not going to quit.
I lunged across the console and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and pulled.
The car swerved. Carter overcorrected. The tires left the road and the world tilted, trees and sky trading places, and the sound of metal folding came from every direction at once.
The car rolled. My head hit something. I was weightless and pinned at the same time, and the noise was everywhere and then it was gone.
The last thing I saw before the dark closed in was the glow through the shattered windshield. Orange light on the underside of the trees, filling the sky above the place where my animals were.