Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(56)

I try to lift one leaden arm, to reach out toward him even though some part of my mind knows he isn’t there, but I can’t. It weighs too much. Just like it did that day long ago when Jeremy drifted away. Away from shore, away from me, away from life. I couldn’t move, couldn’t go back in and drag him out again. I just . . . couldn’t. Just like I can’t now.

My feet are surely cemented to the dock, my legs made of iron. The only things that are working are my vital organs and my thoughts. And damn those thoughts!

I close the eyes that play tricks on me, but what I see is no different. Still, hanging there in the water, is my brother. The vision is seared into my mind. It’s inescapable. My past, my life, who I am is inescapable. And if I can’t overcome it, there will always be more casualties of it. Of me. Of the monster.

Casualties.

Muse.

I open my eyes to the small boat bobbing in the cove. I can barely make out Muse’s face, but I can see enough of it to know something is wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. And not just because her life is in danger. It’s something else.

I see the flash of moonlight on a muzzle as her captor, a guy who looks a lot like the picture I saw of her ex, presses a pistol to her temple. Muse’s eyes widen, but she shows no other reaction. She just looks . . . shocked.

But she’ll soon look dead if I don’t get to her. If I can’t get to her.

My heart rate speeds. My breathing becomes labored. A twitch starts in the fingers of my left hand, the hand that held so tight to my brother’s arm as I dragged him along behind me.

I have a choice to make, a choice with dire consequences one way or the other. I could drown trying to get to Muse. My muscles could seize, fall victim to the power of my mind. Or I could stand here and watch someone take her life. Take the life of the only person who’s been able to penetrate the thick scar tissue that surrounds my cold heart.

Or I could swim out and get her. I could save her. Like she’s been saving me, little by little, day by day.

“You’re a coward, King. I had hoped for better,” the guy calls across the lake to me. Then, before my sleeping limbs can wake, he turns his gun toward me and fires.





TWENTY-NINE


Muse

The gunshot is not what makes me scream. It’s the violent jerk of Jasper’s left shoulder followed by his headfirst tumble into the lake that rips the sound from my throat.

“Noooo!” I cry, standing up so quickly that the boat tips precariously toward the black water. “Jasperrrr!”

“Sit down!” Matt spits, yanking my arm and pulling me backward into the boat. “I’m not fishing your ass out of this lake in the middle of the night. I’d sooner leave you out here to drown, too.”

Matt picks up the oars and starts to row toward shore. I stare at him for a few seconds, my mind spinning and my heart breaking, before a desperate rage overwhelms me.

With a growl that I don’t even recognize as coming from me, I launch myself at him, fingers bent into claws that I plan to use to remove his eyes from their sockets.

“You bastard!”

I feel my nails sink deeply, satisfyingly into flesh when my fingers meet his face. I’m gratified by his yowl of pain, which acts as fuel to the wildfire burning in my gut. I lash and tear, scrape and scratch, kick and punch at every surface I can reach. Skin, clothing, hair. I’m a flurry of uncoordinated arms and legs, but all with the same goal—hurt, maim, cripple. Destroy Matt.

But all my adrenaline and fury is no match for Matt’s superior size and strength. I hear the clatter of the gun on the bottom of the boat just before Matt uses his bulky arms and one leg to subdue me.

“You bitch!” he says, wiping at his left cheek. Streaks of blood mar his pale skin and bring a smile to my face.

“There’s more where that came from, motherfu—”

Matt’s long fingers wrap around my throat and squeeze, cutting off my rant. “Do you think I won’t kill you and throw your whore’s body into the lake?” he hisses.

I sputter ineffectively, trying to spit acid around his tight hold.

“But I can do worse. If you don’t sit quietly while I row this shitty little boat to shore, I’ll shoot you in both arms and both legs and then drag your ass down the road. You get me? I need you for a little while longer, to help me get your father out of the way, but I can make do without if you prove to be more trouble than you’re worth.”

A sob builds in my chest. Not because of his threat, but because I can’t bear the thought of leaving the lake. Jasper’s body is in the water. I can’t leave him here. I can’t leave him here all alone, to die with his brother in the water.

I nod since I can’t speak and after another twenty seconds or so, Matt releases me. I pull in huge gulps of air, raising my hand to massage my neck. My head spins lightly as blood begins to flow to and from my brain again.

“Here,” Matt says, pitching first one oar and then the other at me, the handle of the second hitting me just above my right eye. “You can row, little girl.”

My eye tears and I blink rapidly so that I can see. As I’m winding my fingers around the oars, I imagine swinging one of the long pieces of wood and hitting Matt in the side of the head, as hard as I can. My grip tightens and loosens, tightens and loosens as I think, as I plan.

Just a few strokes to put him at ease and then I can stand and swing at the same time, catching him off guard. Maybe before he can get off a shot.