Page 77 of Double Bucked

I feel him before I see him.

Someone behind me.

No. Not someone.

A body I know well.

“Don’t move,” James says. His breath tickles my ear.

His tall body presses against mine. My breath catches in my throat.

He puts his hand around mine. Like a puppeteer, he lifts both my arm and his. He directs the gun toward the last man standing. Before the other man can ever lift his weapon, James slots his finger against mine and presses in, pulling back the trigger.

The gun bucks in my hand. The shot lands perfectly between the other man’s eyes, and he falls to the ground.

It’s a strange, uncanny feeling. My soul leaves my body.

The gun feels like hot hell in my hands. I quickly yank my fingers away from it and spin around to look at him.

James. It’s James, but it’s not-James. He wears James’s tall build. James’s cropped, dark hair. James’s neat clothes.

But that hard look in his eyes. That’s not the man I know.

That’s not my fiancé.

He carries the gun in his hand.

He looks at me, and his voice is unbearably calm but firm. “There may be more,” he says. “We have to get you out of here.”

Then he extends his hand to me.

I can’t stop staring at it. Around us, the air is tinged with the metallic smell of blood.

The veins in his arm. Those long fingers that cradled my face. Those fingers that, seconds ago, guided me to end a life.

The silver engagement band around his finger.

None of it seems real.

“Claire.” He says my name, and his voice rings in my ear. “Come.”

But I can’t.

I won’t.

Instead of moving forward, my feet step backward.

Away from this demon that’s swallowed my fiancé whole.

But the second I step back, my knees give out. I take in a breath, but my vision swims.

Someone says my name, but I don’t know who.

Ransom. James. The demon.

I can’t tell because I’m falling, and the darkness wraps me in its arms and takes me down.

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