No Place to Run (KGI #2)(75)

“You’re trying my patience,” he snarled. “Get moving or I’ll shoot you and leave you here.”

Like a flame to a dry fuse, fury caught fire and burned hot and wild through her veins. “Why don’t you then? You’re a coward who preys on women and those weaker than you. You shot my mother at the dinner table. What kind of sick f**k does that?”

He actually paused, his fingers still on her arm. She felt a betraying tremble surge through his body. The cold bastard had reacted? To the mention of her mother?

“You think I shot her for some random point?”

He chuckled, but it sounded more like a pissed-off hiss than amusement.

“Your mother was a whore with no loyalty. Just like you. She betrayed me just like you betrayed me.”

“What kind of shit have you been smoking? What could she possibly have done to deserve being shot in the head over dinner for God’s sake?”

“Shut up,” he barked. “Shut the hell up and keep walking.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, but he twisted her arm until she cried out in true pain. She fell silent and battled the waves of nausea coursing through her gut.

The tunnel led on forever, but her sense of time had been irrevocably altered by the chain of events leading to now.

She nearly tripped and went down when her foot clipped a divot in the floor. She registered the sound of a hand sliding over the wall and then light flooded her eyes. She blinked, not wanting to be weak and miss an opportunity—any opportunity—to fight, to escape. To live.

Her heart sank when she saw two Hummers parked a few feet away and the long tunnel leading out in front of them.

His hand still wrapped around her arm, he held up his gun with the other hand and pointed it square in her face.

“Get in.”

Oh God, she couldn’t get in that truck. She couldn’t allow him to take her.

A shot roared in her ears. Reflexively she jumped back just as her father hit the truck. His head smacked sickeningly against the passenger window, and for a moment he stood, eyes yawning. Then like a puppet whose strings had been let go of, he sagged and slid down the side of the truck. Blood smeared and streaked a path downward and then pooled beneath him when he finally collapsed to the ground.

She whirled, expecting to see Sam or one of his brothers standing behind her. She prepared to launch herself toward him, her heart pounding in relief. She stopped short, her feet tangling and catching when she saw Tomas standing a short distance away, gun still raised in the direction he’d shot.

Her stomach lurched and she fought the urge to throw up.

She stared numbly at him, not knowing what she was supposed to do.

“He deserved a more painful death,” Tomas said in a detached voice. “For what he did to Maria.”

Sophie shook her head. “Why do you care what he did to my mother?”

Tomas turned his gaze on her, and she shivered at the coldness she found there. All traces of fear had been wiped from his eyes. No tension, no nervousness. It was as if he’d been freed from the one man he feared above all else.

Wildness blazed and his expression turned triumphant, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

“He killed her because she loved me,” Tomas said. “He found out. I don’t know how he found out. Maybe one of the servants betrayed her. But it’s no coincidence that the day after she gave herself to me, he killed her.”

Sophie shook her head. The world was crazy. She’d sprung from insanity. Her entire gene pool was one big tainted mess. How could she have ever deceived herself into believing she could lead a normal life when she had lived her earlier life surrounded by crazy?

Completely and utterly overwhelmed, she sank to her knees and finally all the way down, until her butt hit her heels. She buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth.

“Get up and get in the truck,” Tomas ground out.

Her head flew up and she stared at him in disbelief. “You’re crazy. You’re as crazy as my father. I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t have the key, Tomas. You go. They’ll come for you. They’ll be here any moment. If you want to survive, you better get out now.”

He turned the gun on her, and where before he’d seemed a nervous wreck, now he seemed frighteningly confident and at ease.

“Get up now. Get in the truck.”

Slowly she pushed herself upward, her knees knocking together like rocks. The world tilted and swayed, and she nearly fell over again.

She stumbled to the next Hummer, fumbled with the handle and managed to open it. Tomas stalked forward, shoved her inside, then slammed the door behind her. He walked around the front, pointing the gun at her through the windshield all the while. Grim determination was etched on his face. Oddly she was suddenly more afraid of him than she’d been of her father. At least she’d known what to expect before.

Tomas got behind the wheel, transferred the gun to his left hand and cranked the engine.

With a roar, he accelerated down the wide tunnel, the headlights bouncing along the walls. After a few moments, the tunnel lightened as sun poured down the passageway. They burst from the enclosure, and dust rose as he wheeled the truck onto the narrow roadway.

She turned frantically in her seat, searching for direction. Her gaze locked onto the house they’d come from. It grew smaller and smaller as the Hummer streaked through the rocky, arid landscape. Into nothingness. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but rock and jagged hills.