Broken Wings (Dark Legacy #1)(88)

I snorted, love for her swelling in my chest. I hadn’t had a real girlfriend for years, and I’d forgotten how much I dug hanging out with an awesome chick. There were just some things that dudes sucked at, and girl talk was one of them.

“I almost wasn’t sure I’d win,” I admitted. “A flashback hit me at one point; my tires screeched the same way my dad’s did when we crashed.” I swallowed hard, trying to push the melancholy down again. “But I held my focus this time.”

Eddy reached out and wrapped her hand around mine, holding it tightly, tears filling her eyes. She was drunk girl emotional. “I wish I could take that back for you,” she half sobbed. “I hate that you’ve lost so much, and all for a stupid company that has more money than soul.”

I blinked at her, wondering if she’d meant that the way it came out. “You think Delta orchestrated my parents’ deaths?”

She stilled, some of the haziness in her eyes clearing. “You don’t think it? I mean, timing alone…”

“I was in the car though,” I reminded Eddy. “It’s the biggest flaw I can see in the theory.”

Eddy just shook her head, an angry sort of smile on her face. “You’re thinking like a chick raised in the ghetto. There’s a fuckload that can be done to ensure you survived and your parents didn’t.”

Eddy was the first person to put it so bluntly, and as the horror of her words registered, my stomach swirled with force. I lurched to my feet, ready to chuck up everything in my gut. “Be right back,” I murmured, stumbling off the patio and hurrying to a nearby bushy plant.

“Riles!” Eddy yelled, almost falling down the stairs as she followed me. “You can’t be out here—”

She was cut off then, and I lifted my head, my stomach heaving as I wondered what had happened to her. Stepping out from where I was partly hidden in the shadows, I saw her crumpled form on the ground. My first thought was that she’d passed out, but then a tall, broad shadow stepped out from the side of the house.

“Hello, successor of Delta,” he said.

I couldn’t see his face clearly, but it was not a voice I knew. My instincts told me to run, but I couldn’t leave Eddy here at his mercy. Who knew what he’d do to her to get to me?

“If you come with me now,” he said in a slow drawling accent, “I won’t kill your friend.”

Okay, that was apparently what he would do.

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, not moving an inch.

He shook his head. “I’m no one. Just a guy doing a job.”

Huntley goon. Had to be.

“Where are you taking me?” I was stalling for time because my guys would be back soon; I only had to keep Eddy and me alive until that happened.

He took a step closer, and as lights from the porch finally washed across his features, I recognized him. “You were filming us at the mall and race!” I accused.

He shrugged. “Had to make sure I had the right person. Delta hasn’t had a female heir before, it’s been quite the revelation.”

I opened my mouth but he cut me off... “Enough fucking talking,” he said irately. “You have two seconds to walk over here, or I’m going to stab your friend in the throat.”

I took a hesitant step closer, wondering how long I could drag this out for. When I was within a few feet of him, he surprised me by lunging forward and wrapping a hand around my unbroken wrist. Dylan had grabbed me this way fifty times during our defense training while he was drilling a response out of me. He said that repetition was the best way to make something instinctive. Looked like he was right. Instinctively I pushed into my would-be kidnapper, breaking his hold, and then using my palms and knees, struck as hard and fast repeatedly until he was thrown completely off.

I hadn’t forgotten the blade in my pocket, but right now I was focused on saving Eddy.

This guy was well trained though, and even though I’d taken him by surprise, I barely even got my hands under Eddy’s body before he was dragging me away and across the rough ground. I fought and struggled, making it as difficult as possible for him, and deciding it was time, reached into my pocket to pull the switchblade out. It flipped open, and I swung my free arm, trying to reach any part of him.

I lucked out when I scraped over the hand that was clamped across my biceps. He cursed and loosened his hold enough for me to flip myself around. Holding the blade in front of me I had an immediate flash back to the plane, to the man I’d fought there with a knife. I hadn’t done any training with this weapon yet, and I wished for my pretty gun. Why the fuck did I keep leaving it at Beck’s?

“They’re going to kill you,” I warned him, backing up a little as I waved the knife in front of me. “They’re already on their way back.”

I’d been so busy taunting him, that I hadn’t noticed just how close he was. Close enough to lunge forward and punch me right in the face. It hit with the sort of solid thud that bruised, if not fractured bone. I screamed, going down hard, black dots dancing across my vision as I fought against unconsciousness. If I passed out, I was dead. Or I’d wish I was dead when I woke up in the Huntley torture dungeon.

He loomed over me, and in my half dazed state I scrambled to find the knife that had been lost when I’d fallen. There was nothing around my hand, and I could have cried as darkness pressed in on either side of my eyes. Hands ran across me quickly, but I was so out of it, that it barely registered.