Disappointment rose. Before, I might have been willing to risk death. Now I knew I wasn’t ready for the end.
“This will require further study and thought,” he said.
“Uh, sir. I hate to break up the party,” the driver interjected, “but we’ve got a tail.”
Dr. Bendari stiffened, looked back. “Can you lose it?”
“We’re on a deserted road. There’s nowhere—”
Crunch!
Metal slammed against metal. Our car swerved and then flipped. I screamed, mentally returning to the night my family died. Tires squealed as we hit the ground; metal crumpled as we flipped again, and glass shattered. I was jostled forward and back, forward and back, my brain banging against my skull.
Then everything stopped. Everything but me. Dizzy...
“Dr. Bendari.” We were hanging upside down. Blood was rushing to my head. “Are you okay?”
He moaned.
I struggled to unlatch my belt. The moment it was free, I dropped, hitting the roof of the car—now the floor—my backpack slapping me in the face. I grunted as a lance of pain tore through me. No time to check for injuries.
“Help,” he gurgled. His chest was covered in blood—blood dripping onto his face, filling his mouth. His shirt was ripped, and a jagged edge of his collarbone peeked past his skin.
Can’t panic. “I can’t release you. You’ll drop.” As wounded as he was, he might not survive the landing.
As I anchored my backpack in place, trying to decide what to do with the doctor, a pair of leather boots appeared. A shadow moved, and then a man was crouched in front of the shattered window. I was too disoriented to make out his features. “Help us,” I pleaded.
“Dr. Bendari,” he said, and a sense of self-preservation sent me scrambling as far from him as possible. “I was told to bring you back to Anima—unless you were sharing our secrets with the very people seeking to destroy us. Guess what you were doing?” He pointed a gun, fired a shot.
Pop.
Something warm and wet splattered over me, and Dr. Bendari went lax. His blood...everywhere, all around, all over me. I screamed, too shocked to react any other way.
The shooter grabbed the scattered files, then me, and dragged me out of the vehicle.
Chapter 20
Blood Is the New Black
Dr. Bendari was dead. Shot and killed in front of me.
Pain and panic threatened to overwhelm me as I scanned my surroundings. We were on an abandoned road, just as the doctor’s driver had said, thick patches of trees on either side. There was another car behind ours—and the shooter was dragging me toward it.
If I could get to the trees, I could hide.
I was as good as dead if Shooter managed to stuff me inside that car.
Time for a new to-do list: Get the guy to release me, race to the trees, hide. Use my phone to call Cole.
I jerked against his hold, adrenaline giving me strength—just not enough to be effective. “Let go!”
“You want to die, sweetness?” he asked casually, making his words that much more frightening. “They’ve got plans for you, but if you continue to give me problems, you won’t arrive in one piece.”
They, he’d said. The people at Anima.
I fought that much harder, kicking out my leg, tripping the guy. Down he went, crashing into the gravel road. His hold on me loosened, and the photos he held scattered in the wind.
Shooter reached out to catch one, leaving himself wide open; I sucker punched him in the kidney, a very sensitive area. Grunting, he curled into himself. I grabbed as many files and pictures as I could before jolting to my feet.
I meant to run, I did, but a door slammed, and the driver of Shooter’s car raced around the area, trying to gather up the rest of the photos while keeping a gun trained on me.
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. He had bright red hair, a shade I’d never before seen. “I’ll shoot you in the back without a moment’s pause.”
He’d shoot me anyway.
I spun and ran, moving in a zigzag to make myself less of a target, my backpack slamming against me again and again. Soon I was huffing and puffing, my lungs burning.