Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
I should call him. It’s not too late to tell him the truth, to give him some version of what’s happening. At least then he’d know. At least then if something goes wrong—
But I don’t call. I just lie there, trapped between the life I want and the past I can’t escape, waiting for morning to come.
Around 2 a.m., I hear footsteps in the hallway.
At first I think it’s nothing. Other guests heading to their rooms, maybe, or staff making late-night rounds. But the footsteps don’t pass. They stop. Regroup. There are more of them now, moving together, too coordinated to be accidental.
I’m out of bed before I’ve fully processed what I’m hearing.
Bare feet on cold floor. I cross to the door and press my ear against it, pulse loud in my ears. Voices now, low and clipped. The creak of gear shifting, bodies adjusting positions.
I know that sound. I’ve heard it before, in a hotel in Monaco when everything went wrong. The sound of a team getting ready to move.
I crack the door open, just a sliver, just enough to see.
Men in tactical gear. Black from head to toe, faces covered, moving down the hallway in formation. Six of them, maybe more. They’re heading for my room.
For a moment I’m frozen. Ice in my veins, static in my brain, every survival instinct I have screaming at me to run, hide, fight, do something—
I try to close the door.
A hand catches it before I can. Gloved fingers, impossibly strong, wrenching it open as I stumble backward. I open my mouth to scream and another hand clamps over it, leather and sweat and something chemical I can recognize even as my mind rejects what’s happening.
Then I feel it. A sting in my neck. Small and quick, like a bee, like nothing at all.
The world tilts sideways.
My legs stop working. I’m falling, or maybe I’m being lowered—I can’t tell anymore, can’t feel the difference between up and down, can’t do anything except watch as the room blurs and stretches around me.
Somewhere down the hall, a door crashes open. Shouting. The sound of a struggle, bodies hitting walls. I turn my head—it takes forever, my neck a column of wet sand—and see them dragging Liam out of his room.
He’s fighting. Of course he’s fighting. Liam never goes down easy. But there are two of them on him, three, and even he can’t beat those odds.
His eyes find mine across the hallway.
Shock. Confusion.
He didn’t know, I think, the realization floating through my dissolving mind. He didn’t know this was coming. This wasn’t his play.
Which means we were both set up.
Which means we’re both fucked.
The drug pulls me under before I can finish the thought. The last thing I see is Liam’s face, blood on his lip, still fighting as they drag him away.
Then nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Hailey
My head is splitting.
That’s the first thing I notice. Not where I am or how I got here, just this vicious, throbbing pain behind my eyes that makes even blinking feel like punishment. I’m lying on something soft, which is wrong. The last thing I remember is the lodge, footsteps in the hallway, the door splintering open.
I force my eyes to focus.
Not the resort. Not anywhere I recognize.
I’m in a cabin. Wood and stone construction, high ceilings, massive windows showing nothing but snow-covered pines and white sky. A fire crackles in a stone fireplace that takes up most of one wall, and in front of it—
Liam.
He’s on a leather couch facing the fireplace, slumped sideways with one arm dangling toward the floor. Not moving.
I’m off the bed before I’ve fully processed what I’m seeing, crossing the room on unsteady legs, the drug still making everything tilt. I drop to my knees beside him and press two fingers to his throat.
Pulse. Steady and strong. Okay. Okay, he’s alive. Just out cold, the same way I must have been. His face is pale under the stubble, his breathing slow and even. Whatever they gave us, it hit him hard.
“Liam.” I shake his shoulder. Nothing. “Liam, wake up.”
He doesn’t stir.
I can’t do anything for him except wait. In the meantime, I need to figure out where we are and how we’re getting out.
My heart is pounding harder than it should be. I make myself breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Panic won’t help. Panic has never helped, not once in my entire life, and I’m not about to start letting it run the show now.
I stand up and really look at this place.
One large open room. The bed where I woke up, king-size, positioned against the far wall with a view of those floor-to-ceiling windows. The sitting area where Liam is still unconscious—two leather chairs and the couch, arranged around the fireplace. Beside the fireplace, an entire wall of firewood. Large pieces on the bottom, medium in the middle, kindling arranged by size on top. Someone spent way too much time on that.