Defending Everly (Mountain Mercenaries, #5)(81)

Everly wanted to tell him he was wrong, that Ball and his friends would never stop looking for her, but she kept her mouth shut.

“I really do hope my Elise is smarter than you,” Tylor said.

Then without warning, he lunged.

Everly put up an arm to block him, but he’d already stuck the stun gun into her left side.

She immediately fell over on her side. Tylor didn’t take the prongs away, just kept stunning her. Everly had been tased before, and the effects of this stun gun weren’t as severe as those of the weapon she carried for work, but it still did its job.

She was disoriented and couldn’t get her muscles to work properly. She wasn’t able to stop him when Tylor handcuffed one hand to a large ring on the side of the van, and secured her ankle with another pair of handcuffs dangling from a chain attached to the opposite wall of the vehicle.

Then he patted her on the cheek—more of a slap, really—and leaned over her.

“Pretty, but not that smart,” he said, then turned and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

Everly closed her eyes and let her head fall to the floor of the van. She ignored the pain in her side from the probes of the stun gun and did her best to get her body to cooperate with her brain. She needed to be at the top of her game.

Tylor Tuttle might’ve surprised her once, but he wasn’t going to get a second chance.

He might think she was going to be an easy kill, but he was wrong. She had a lot more to live for—namely her sister, grandparents, and now Ball. And he was coming for her. She just hoped he’d find her in time.

They’d left the main trail a while back and were bushwhacking through the scrub brush. Everly was glad she was wearing jeans, as the branches and briars were doing their best to scratch her all to hell. Her feet were also taking a beating in the flip-flops, but she didn’t feel the pain. Her hands were bound in front of her, allowing her to block some of the branches that came at her face. She did her best to break as many branches as possible as they walked, to leave a trail for Ball and the others.

Wherever Tylor had stashed Elise couldn’t be too far away, because he wouldn’t have had that much time to secure her, then get back to his van to meet Everly at the grocery store parking lot. The thought comforted her. Not that the parking area for the hiking trail was exactly civilization, but it was better than being in the middle of nowhere, like they were now.

They started going up a fairly steep hill—and Everly got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She could withstand a lot of things. Knife wounds, bad guys spitting at her, foot chases, even being shot, as long as it wasn’t in the head . . . but one thing she definitely didn’t like was heights.

Never had. The longer they hiked uphill, the more anxious she got.

Swallowing the unease, she refused to let it get the better of her. She wasn’t going to let Tylor win. No fucking way.

They trudged on, and suddenly they were in an open area on top of a bluff. It would’ve been beautiful, if Everly wasn’t so fucking petrified.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tylor asked, as if reading her mind.

Everly nodded, her mouth dry, not able to speak.

“This is where you’re going to do it.”

“It?”

“Marry me and my Elise.”

“Where is my sister?” she asked.

“This way,” Tylor said, as he turned his back on her and headed down a small hill to their left.

She was so tempted to bum-rush him right then. Take him down. Kill him. But she didn’t know where her sister was yet. Until she saw Elise, saw with her own eyes that she was all right, she wasn’t going to do anything to antagonize their captor. She had to be patient.

Tylor led her down the hill and into a copse of trees.

And there, sitting on the ground, chained to a tree, was Elise.

Everly cried out from the sheer joy of seeing Elise alive and unharmed. She ran forward and fell to her knees next to her, throwing her bound arms over her sister’s head and holding her tight.

Everly felt Elise crying against her, but because her arms were behind her back, she couldn’t touch her.

Closing her eyes for a second, Everly did her best to get her emotions under control. Then she took a deep breath. They weren’t out of danger. Not by a long shot. She knew perfectly well that Tylor was going to kill her. Or at least try. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Everly just needed to stall him long enough to give Ball and the others a chance to get to them.

Deciding to try being as submissive as possible, because that seemed to be what Tylor liked, she looked up at him. “Can I talk to her?”

Tylor eyed her for a moment before saying, “Yes, but you’ll tell her what I tell you to. Nothing else. If you try any funny business, I’ll kill you and her, got it?”

Everly nodded, even though she was pretty sure now the guy wasn’t going to kill Elise. He had plans for her. He was either extremely stupid—she was unsure about that, since he’d managed to fly under the radar for this long—or he was too cocky and thought nothing could go wrong since he held all the cards.

“I need my hands to do it.” Everly held her tied hands out to Tylor.

He came toward her and pulled out a pocketknife. “If you do anything to try to get away, I’ll kill her,” he said, nodding at her sister.