Page 127 of Hold Me Before You Go

This would haunt them for the rest of their lives, and I was the reason.

The man mumbled some more to himself, complaining about this job and the weather, turning on his heel and leaving us. The thin door wobbled back and forth for a few seconds, and I waited until I could no longer hear his footsteps before speaking again. “Jack is the man Brandon got into trouble with,” I whisper-hissed to the girls.

“Wait—so that’s not Brandon?” Sarah breathed, her brows slamming together as she looked at the door.

I shook my head. “No. I’ve never seen that man in my life.”

“Are we going to die here?”

The question came from Margo as a quiet, cold whisper.

Sarah and I looked over to her. “Don’t talk like that,” Sarah said. “Everything is going to be okay. Michael and Grayson will find us. They have to know we’re missing by now.”

I nodded. “Grayson gave me a new phone with a new tracker. He—”

“—the man threw it in the river,” Margo said calmly. “All of our phones, actually.”

Sarah whimpered from behind me as Margo continued to stare straight ahead. “I didn’t do a single thing with my damn life. I have nothing to show for the twenty-eight years I’ve been on this planet.”

My eyes widened at her admission. She’d always been closed off, walls higher than the ones I’d built around myself years ago.

“Margo, don’t talk like that,” I said, repeating Sarah’s soft words. “We’re going to make it out of this, I promise.”

That triggered her. Her cold green eyes sliced to mine. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Cardinal. I can’t stand it when people break their promises,” she said, her voice unsteady, like a boat in a storm.

Seconds turned to minutes, and as they continued to pass us by, my doubt grew.

Where was Grayson?

Sarah and I had huddled closer to Margo, the three of us shivering by the time the man came back. His hair was wind-blown, his eyes wild, and the day light behind him was starting to fade.

We’d been missing for hours.

“Get up,” he ordered, out of breath. “Get the hell up! We have to go! Now!”

Sarah and I shared a look.

Help was close, and he was getting scared.

“Did you hear what I just fucking said?” he barked.

A loud boom outside had the walls around us shaking, and the man fumbled his gun. We watched silently as he scrambled to get it back in his hands, pointing it at us. “Get up!”

I sucked in a breath as a dark figure appeared behind him. “Going somewhere?” the rough voice asked.

My chest nearly caved in.Thank God.

The man whirled around, screaming coming from his throat as Hayes stepped into the room, his eyes on fire. He looked over at us, and a muscle jumped in his bruised cheek when he spotted Margo sitting beside me. Hayes looked like he’d just crawled his way out of hell.

“Your boss is a sneaky son of a bitch,” Hayes began, taking another step, not giving a shit about the AR-15 pointed at his chest. Hayes lifted a finger, pointing it to the bruise on his cheek. “He’s got one hell of a right hook—well,hadone hell of a right hook. I crushed his fucking hands under a cement block before unloading a clip into his chest.”

My breath caught.

“S-stay away from me!” the young man yelled.

Hayes ignored him. “You have two options: drown in the river or leave peacefully. Don’t go back to Black Mist. Start a new life, kid. It’s not too late.”

“I-I never wanted to do this,” the man stammered, looking over to me. “That Brandon guy tried to strike a deal with Jack. H-he told us about your money, and Brandon still owed Jack.”

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