Echo(94)

“Hands under your ass,” he tells me, and I lift my hips to place them beneath me. “Time to even the score.”

This man’s pride is f*cked up, to be concerned about getting even with his wife in this moment. My body slacks when he slams inside of me. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of tensing up. I keep my eyes focused on the pistol in my mouth as the metal rattles against my teeth while he violently pounds into me. He braces all his weight on his one bent elbow, grunting with each thrust. My tits hang out of my ripped clothes, jiggling while he f*cks me with barbaric force.

This is my life.

This is all it’s ever been.

Light turns dark as my eyes close, silently begging for him to release me to my paradise.

From across the room, I hear my cell ring, and my heart jolts alive.

He’s calling.

My eyes pop open when the thought flashes quickly that maybe Richard was lying about Declan. My body jerks the moment the phone goes off, startling Richard in that exact moment, and everything happens in a lightning fast haze when he falters, losing his balance.

The instant the gun slips from my mouth, Pike shouts urgently, “Elizabeth, FIGHT!” and without thinking how or why, I automatically react.

Willing my strength, I drive my elbow into his arm, knocking the gun out of his grip. Adrenaline pumps through my system when the gun goes off, firing a bullet into the concrete wall as it skitters across the ground. The blast is deafening, but somehow I’m able to flip onto my stomach, scrambling as fast as I can. I sling my arm out to grab the gun when he locks his hand around my ankle and yanks me back.

My fingertips skim the pistol as I’m being pulled away, and the commotion is a total blur. Ripping out an excruciatingly demented scream, I fight with everything I have in me when I twist around and lurch my shoulders off the ground. With his pants still down, I dig my hands into his thighs, and with all the force in me, bite the ever-living-shit out of his dick, snarling like a wild beast as I do, and his voice erupts in pure acid.

“FUUUUUCK!”

Flesh pops in my mouth as my teeth cut straight through the elasticity of skin and sink into tissue, spurting blood everywhere. I feel the thick heat of it splattering on my face and coating my lips and chin. His screams are deadly as his body falls to the ground, and I jump to my feet, charging for the gun. The moment my hand wraps around the pistol, I turn, aiming it at his head, and scream like a maniac as my body detonates every emotion imaginable, but none of them make sense as they shake me to the bone.





LACHLAN AND I located the rental car a while ago with no traces of where they could be. We’re wasting delicate time wandering around the usually busy streets of downtown, but it’s the middle of the night, and Lachlan and I are the only ones lurking around.

“This is f*cking useless,” I gripe in frustration. “Every business is closed and locked up. They could be anywhere.”

“What do you want to do?”

Huffing out an angry breath, I let my head fall back as I look up into the dark of night. We’ve been scouring these streets for hours, and nothing. For all I know, this car could’ve been ditched for another and they could already be in another country.

Lifting my head, I turn to look down the narrow close that’s to my right. There are so many of these alleyways in the city, and we’ve been walking through them all night it seems.

I’m plagued with an unsettling sense of doom that I’ll never find her. The thought grabs ahold of me, twisting my gut as I think about not being able to see her face again or hear her say my name in her sweet American accent. I can’t stand the thought of her never knowing the truth of my heart. She deserves to have the peace of knowing that I still care about her. After everything she’s been through, and even after all the corruption within her, she still deserves to know.

Pulling out my cell, I begin to walk again and decide to call her phone once more. I dial the number, and after the first ring, I startle when I hear a loud crack that splits the night.

“You hear that?” I ask Lachlan, the words flying out of my mouth.

His eyes are wide, alarmed, saying, “That was a gunshot.”

Grabbing my gun from its holster, I fly down the steps of the alley, because that sounded like it came from beneath me. My body surges in a rush of power as I go into overdrive.

“McKinnon!”

Darting down the stairs, I don’t stop as I shout over my shoulder, “Keep a lookout!”

A man’s torturous screaming fuels me, and I follow the echoes into the underground vaults. My heart has never raced so fast when a woman’s screams filter in through the man’s. With my gun in my hand, I run as fast as my legs will move through the narrow passageways. In an instant, I kick through a door to find a scene so disturbing, my gun immediately finds it target.