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)
She lets the threat hang.
“Well. Let’s just say fingers are easier to remove than you’d think. We’ll start with theirs and work our way to yours. How does that sound?”
My throat closes. The threat is real even if the game is rigged.
“Consider it a family outing.” She straightens, smoothing her collar. “Get ready. We leave in an hour.”
The screen goes dark.
For a long moment, none of us move.
Then Knox turns to me, and I see the same thing on his face that I’m feeling in my chest. This is it. The plan we built in whispers with our backs to the cameras. The opening we banked everything on.
“One hour,” he says.
“One hour.” I’m already running through the checklist. Knives. The ammonia rig Knox built inside the coat lining. Positioning. Signals. “We need to get everything in place before they come through that door.”
Liam is watching us. He looks like hell, bruised and hollow, but his eyes are tracking the conversation. Reading the room the way he always could.
“You planned for this,” he says.
“We planned for this,” Knox says. And there’s weight in the we that has nothing to do with tactics.
Liam nods once, slow. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
I look at him. The man who sold us out. The man who got beaten for it. The man I’m still furious with and still in love with and still need if we’re going to walk out of this alive.
“Can you still fight?”
“Try and stop me.”
“Then here’s what’s going to happen.” I pull them both close, foreheads nearly touching, voices low. The cameras can see us but they can’t hear us, and Marlena’s too busy gloating to care what three beaten captives are whispering about. “When we get to the mine, I open the safe. That’s when she stops watching us and starts watching the diamond. Knox, that’s your window. Liam, you’re on the guards closest to the exit. I’ll handle Marlena.”
Knox raises an eyebrow. “You’ll handle Marlena.”
“I’ve been handling women like Marlena since I was nineteen. She thinks she’s smarter than me. That’s the biggest advantage I’ve got. One hour,” I say again. “Let’s get ready. Whatever happens next, we face it together.”
Liam looks at me. Then at Knox. Forgiveness, not yet, but something close. An understanding.
“Together,” Liam echoes.
Knox nods once.
The clock on the wall ticks toward something new.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Knox
They zip-tie our hands in front of us, which tells me something. Behind the back would be more secure, but front ties let you sit in a helicopter without dislocating your shoulders. These guys are professionals. They’re planning for a long flight.
Front ties also mean I can reach the knife taped flat against my ribs under two layers of sweater. They didn’t pat us down thoroughly enough. Marlena’s people are disciplined but they’re overconfident, which is exactly what Hailey predicted.
Hailey stands between me and Liam as we’re marched out of the cabin for the first time in ten days. The cold is immediate and vicious, the kind that makes your nose hairs freeze on the first inhale. The wilderness stretches in every direction, white and flat and utterly devoid of anything resembling civilization.
The helicopter waits in a small clearing about fifty yards from the cabin, rotors already spinning. It’s a Bell 412, civilian model but modified. I clock the reinforced skids, the extra fuel tanks. This thing has range. Whoever Marlena is, she’s got serious money behind her operation.
Four guards flank us. I’ve been studying them since last night, cataloging details the way I used to catalog insurgent movements in Kandahar. Two Americans, one Canadian, one I can’t place. All former military based on how they move, how they hold their weapons. Disciplined. No wasted motion.
The pilot makes five.
I catch Hailey’s eye. She gives me the smallest shake of her head. Not yet. Too many guns, too tight a space. We wait for the mine.
She’s right. We stick to the plan.
Bad odds. But we knew they’d be bad. The whole point was never to out-fight them head-on. The point is the moment Marlena opens that safe and forgets we exist.
Marlena is already inside when we climb aboard, settled into a leather seat that has no business being in a helicopter. She’s wearing a cream-colored parka trimmed with silver fox fur, sunglasses pushed up on her head, gloved fingers wrapped around a travel mug of coffee. Steam curls from the lid.
She sips it as we’re strapped in across from her. Takes her time with it.
“Good morning, kiddos!” She beams at us like a summer camp counselor about to announce the day’s activities. “I hope everyone’s ready for an adventure. I brought snacks.” She gestures to a small cooler at her feet. “Trail mix, protein bars, those little cheese wheels with the red wax. Road trip essentials.”
Nobody responds.
“Tough crowd.” She shrugs and takes another sip of coffee. “Your loss. The cheese wheels are imported.”