Gallo felt the blood leave her face. A rushing sound filled her ears and she staggered back a step.
Kenner continued. “You must know that Mr. Tyndareus intended to kill you both as soon as you had told him what he needed to know. It’s nothing short of miraculous that I was able to convince him to spare you.”
Some primitive part of Gallo’s brain took control of her body. She launched herself at Kenner, arms extended to shove him off the precipice or perhaps carry him along in a suicidal plunge. Neither actually happened. Instead, he side-stepped, as if anticipating this reaction, and he swept her into a bear hug from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off the ground. She squirmed, trying to wrench free. She kicked back at his shins, but he did not relent.
His voice hissed in her ear. “Your mistake was thinking that you still had anything left to bargain with. I don’t need your help anymore. I’m keeping you alive as a favor. Old times sake. You really ought to get down on your knees and thank me.”
He took her wrist in his hand and tugged up her sleeve, revealing the Herculean tattoo. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed this. Your allegiance is...regrettable. I might be able to overlook it, but others might not be so willing. Now, if you want to run, be my guest.” He twisted around, away from the edge, and then set her down, expelling her from his embrace with a shove that sent her lurching forward.
“I won’t stop you,” he continued, once more affecting a tone of commiseration. “Of course, there’s really nowhere to go. And I can’t promise that Vigor won’t hunt you down for sport. That’s rather his style, you know.”
Gallo propped herself up on hands and knees. The reptile brain was still in control, weighing the primal options: fight or flight? Both were equally futile, but the third choice—surrender—never entered into the equation. If Fiona was truly dead, then no matter what Kenner promised, that would be her fate as well.
As much as she wanted to tear the bastard’s face off, she did not want to meet her end on his terms.
Instead, she ran.
Kenner let out a dismayed shout, surprised that she had chosen to brave the treacherous landscape in the dark, but Gallo did not slow.
Although she had stood in the glow of the electrical lights for only a few minutes, her night vision was badly compromised. In her peripheral vision, she could see the distant horizon’s faint outline silhouetted against the starry sky, but the ground right in front of her was uniformly black. Millions of years of wind and weather had sculpted the summit into a bizarre landscape, with natural pillars and arches that looked like melting wax. There were craters and pools of rainwater that were incredibly pure and deceptively deep. It was a deadly obstacle course, made all the more perilous by the scrubby vegetation that clung to every crevice. Gallo stumbled and crashed through the maze, ignoring the branches and rocky protrusions that caught and tore at both the fabric of her jeans and at her skin.
A root snagged one foot, and she went sprawling again, smashing into a tangle of thin branches that scratched her face and snagged her hair. In the stunned instant that followed, she heard more shouts and the sound of footsteps, and she realized that Kenner did not intend to let her run away after all. Despite everything else, she felt a rush of satisfaction at having disappointed him, spoiling his twisted fantasy of her groveling. She knew it would be a short-lived satisfaction if she did not get moving again, so she scrambled up, half-crawling for the first few steps, and then she resumed running blindly.
With the exception of the two crewmen unloading the helicopter, all of the Cerberus men were on the ropes already, too far away to help Kenner run her down. But he had been right about the lack of escape routes. The tepui rose from the surrounding landscape like a five-hundred-foot-tall pillar. A world class rock climber might have been able to scale the nearly sheer vertical cliffs, but climbing down them, in the dark, without any kind of ropes or equipment, was unthinkable, and that was if she was able to find the cliff without falling over.
If Kenner goes, too, it might be worth it.
The thought was yanked from her head when Kenner’s outstretched hand caught hold of her long black hair. Her feet flew out from under her, but this time she did not fall. Instead, she was pulled back, enfolded once more in his embrace.
“Bitch! I’m trying to—”
There was a loud thump and then another, as Gallo felt something smack the back of her head. Her vision flashed blue for a moment, but in that instant, Kenner’s arms fell away, and she was free again. She stumbled forward and would have done another face-plant, but a firm grip closed on her wrist, steadying her. A familiar voice reached out from the darkness. “Come with me.”