Page 18 of Wild Card

“Yes!” he hisses next to my ear.

Gavin’s warm breath makes me sick, and when I feel his arm wrap around me from behind, I want to vomit. He lifts me off my feet, and although I try to fight him, it's pointless. I stop struggling, knowing I’m only going to wear myself out. I need to save my energy for when I might have a real chance to get away.

Gavin carries me over to Maxim’s car, and then my fear spikes higher. He pulls out a gun and uses the butt of it to bust out the passenger side window. It shatters, and he reaches in to pop the trunk.

“No!” I start fighting again when I realize what he’s about to do.

Gavin carries me to the trunk and then drops me inside. The impact knocks the wind out of my lungs, but I have no time to react before he grabs my hair again. He’s enraged as he lifts my head to only slam it back down onto the floor of the trunk. Spots dance in my eyes before they’re replaced by total darkness.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear the trunk close, and I know that I’m alone.

My last fleeting thought before I lose consciousness is, I’m always alone.

Chapter Fourteen

MAXIM

“Give me your keys,” I shout to Johnson when I see his motorcycle parked next to the building. As soon as I say the words, he tosses them to me. He might be an asshole, but he’s not one to ask a lot of questions.

“I’ll send backup!” he calls out as I rev the engine and take off down the narrow alley.

The GPS tracker on Rue’s ankle is connected to my watch, and it’s already going off. It was set to alert when she was a certain distance away from me, so now all I have to do is follow the direction it’s telling me to go. Going behind some of the buildings will help me cut them off before they reach the main road.

I must not be too far behind them or else he didn’t need to go far. There’s a lot of ways for someone to disappear in these warehouses, but he must not know Rue has a tracker on her.

The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe that she could have gone with him. She was running from him to begin with, and everything she told me about her life before was something I know she didn’t want to be a part of anymore. She wanted a way out, and that’s what I was going to give her. I thought things were going too far too fast, but clearly it wasn’t fast enough. I won’t make that mistake again.

My watch pings, and I see the distance between us is closing. Up ahead I take a sharp turn, and my tires screech. When I slide to a stop, I plant my boot on the ground and wait. As I predicted, my car comes around the corner, and I see him. Gavin is behind the wheel, and he looks deranged. I have to act fast because I have zero doubts he would run me over in his obsession to steal Rue.

Reaching behind me, I pull out my gun and fire off one shot in the windshield before shooting the tire. The driver slumps over, and the car turns sharply into the wall. When it crashes to a stop, I race over and check inside the vehicle for Rue.

There’s no one other than Gavin, and he’s not responding. My first shot caught him in the head, and when I try to check for a pulse he slumps over in the passenger seat. There’s too much blood for him to survive his injuries, and I’m not exactly worried about trying to save him.

“Where the fuck is she?!” I shout to the empty car.

“Maxim!” Rue calls out, and I hear thumping from the trunk.

When I try to pry it open, it won’t budge, so I tuck my gun in my belt and kick the lock with my boot. The metal latch pops open, and I yank at the lid. As soon as I open it, Rue practically leaps out of the trunk and into my arms.

“Oh god, Maxim, I was so scared,” she sobs, and I hold her tight against me.

“You’re safe, Rue. I’ve got you. I’m here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“I wasn’t going to run.” She sniffs, and I feel hot tears on my neck. “I swear. I thought about it for half a second, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave you.”

“Hey,” I tell her and force her to lift her face so her eyes meet mine. “You don’t have to run from me anymore. You understand? You want to run, that's fine, but you’ll damn well take me with you.” Her smile is so beautiful as she cries and then lets out a small laugh. “I love you, firecracker. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go and give you anything your heart desires. As long as you run to me and not from me.”

“I love you too, Maxim.” She sniffs, and I wipe away her tears. “And I promise. No more running without you.”

There’s an alarm in the distance that lets me know Johnson and his clean-up crew are on the way. This might not have been part of the plan in taking Vince Sledge down, but he’ll make sure this isn’t tied to either of us or that we catch any of the blowback.

“Ready to go home?” I ask, and her brows furrow.

“I’m not sure exactly where that is,” she admits, and her fingers thread through my hair.

“It’s wherever you are because that’s where I’ll always be. My home is anywhere you lay your head.”

“I like the idea of laying my head here,” she says and puts her hand over my heart.

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