Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
I open them in time to spot Otto aiming at my face again. I act on pure instinct. My head whips to the side, and I grab his hand even though he’s already firing. My ears ring from the booming noise, but I can worry about my poor eardrums later.
We wrestle awkwardly, with the warm body between us.
“You’re not getting me!” Otto yells, but he’s lost his breath for nothing. As he tries to roll from under his buddy, I punch his hand, and the impact makes him let go of the gun, which flies out through the broken window.
Well, fuck.
I’ll have to kill him with my bare hands then, but the now-dead goon comes in handy, since he and I weigh more than enough to keep Otto still. He’s desperately pawing at the floor as I punch his ugly fucking face and close my hand on his throat before pulling myself up so I can use the other to—
A sharp, hot cloud kills my vision as he sprays something from a can, and my eyes burn as if he just poked them out. I twitch away from the fiery mist, wary of breathing it in.
I can’t see, since every time I attempt to open my swollen eyes, pain is unbearable, but I refuse to die and take a blind swing at Otto. He smacks the can into the side of my head and shoves me off. I fall over to my knees, disoriented and breathless from the burn in my throat, but as I attempt to get up, a brutal kick in the side rolls me over.
My heart stops when I hear the click of a gun’s safety being taken off. So this is how I die. At least in my final moments, I attempted something good, and maybe Rowan will still be able to get away somehow. Desperate to give him that chance, I snarl at Otto, ready to lunge at him, but Rowan’s voice comes loud and clear from behind the acid fog in my stinging eyes.
“Get the fuck off him!”
That click. Was it… Rowan's gun? One of the other goons might have dropped a weapon.
Otto snarls. “You don’t have the balls—”
The deafening bang of a gunshot makes me drop low to the floor and cover my head. Otto lets out a choked cry, and then the wooden floor creaks under someone’s weight before he stampedes down the stairs. In the distance, I can almost hear a siren, but for all I know it might be a hallucination caused by whatever’s making my eyes burn and my windpipe swell.
“Rowan?” I utter, attempting to get up and open my eyes, but it’s no use. They hurt way too much.
“Fuck! I barely grazed him,” Rowan says. “He ran away—Saint. You came. Are you okay?”
When I squint, I can just about see a blurry shape in front of me. With my vision gone, sounds seem more prominent. There’s a rattle of cuffs, and yes, definitely a police siren.
“The cops are coming. We need to go,” I mutter, reaching out toward the voice. Now that Otto has fled, pain radiates all over my body, but the warm touch of Rowan’s hand is so soothing I lean in until my face presses to his stomach.
“I’ll guide you. Let’s go,” he says, and while I need to wash my eyes, his sweet kiss to my temple is the next best thing I could have hoped for. He’s alive, whole. We can deal with Otto later.
“I’m sorry I left you in the mall,” I say as he helps me up, because it feels important.
Rowan strokes my back. “I went off on my own. It’s not your fault.”
“Should have gone with you. I was stubborn,” I whisper, holding on to him as tears roll down from my aching eyes. But we can’t stay so I need to suck it up. There is no way. “I parked the car in that narrow alley to the right, close to a big tree. We need to disappear.”
I almost stumble when the front of my foot presses to something soft—a body?—but Rowan steadies me and leads the way. My arm rubs against the doorframe as we step into the hallway, but the insistent wail of the siren prompts me to breathe faster, and I reach out with one hand, seeking the railing by the stairs.
And then it hits me that I should be the one leading the way down, just like I had at the mall. But I can barely see anything even when I manage to force my eyes open. I’m ready to come up with a plan, but he speaks first. When he wraps his arm around me, I can feel the empty cuff dangling from his wrist against my chest. Even now, when I have so much adrenaline running through my veins, I love the sound of his breath.