Page 86 of Texas Kissing

“Him first,” we both said at the same time.

The asshole shook his head tiredly. “You,” he said to me, and used the silencer to knock my hat off myhead. Then he pressed the end of the silencer into my forehead. I tried to think up a plan, but nothing came to mind.

The asshole’s finger tightened on the trigger.Think, Bull!

But I’ve never been much of a thinker. So I decided to just be myself.

“Hey,” I said. “You know why theyreallycall me Bull?”

The asshole rolled his eyes and leaned in to listen. I lunged forward and head butted him as hard as I could. He crumpled to the floor.

“‘Cause my mama said I got a head made of nothing but bone,” I told his unconscious body. I started trying to get out of the ropes. Behind me, Calahan was doing the same. After a few seconds of straining, I lost my patience.They’re getting away!“Don’t you have a fucking FBI special-issue knife or something for shit like this?” I snarled.

“They’re ropes, cowboy, aren’t you meant to be good with ropes?”

I felt myself getting angrier...which was just what I needed. We both heaved and growled and finally yelled. Calahan’s ropes snapped and he gave a shout of victory. A split-second later, my chair tore apart into chunks of wood, which quieted him down. We stood there panting and, for a second, grinning. Then we remembered ourselves.

“Pretty boy asshole,” I spat as I pulled the remaining ropes off me.

“Dumb hick,” he spat in return.

I grabbed my hat off the floor and shoved it on my head. “Call for backup,” I told him and ran for the door.

Outside, I headed for Calahan’s car. They were well ahead of me, but there was only one road they could take and—

Shit.They’d slashed the tires on Calahan’s car, just to be sure.

I looked desperately around the parking lot, my chest tightening in fear. And then my eyes fell upon the field next door.

73

Lily

They’d putme in the back with the dark-haired one. The older one was driving. We had to go through the center of town to reach the highway and traffic was heavy so we’d slowed almost to a crawl. The driver slapped the wheel in frustration.

I stared out of the window at the town I’d never gotten to know. Just as I was finally starting to fit in. Just as I’d found someone. Was Bull even alive, or had they already killed him?

The guy driving pulled out his phone and dialed. I knew immediately who he was calling. “We got her,” he told my uncle. He listened for a second. “He wants to talk to you.”

He passed the phone back to the dark-haired guy, who passed it to me. I braced myself for a voice I hadn’t heard in two years.

“Tessa,” it said with honeyed venom.

I wasn’t sure whether he was going to have me killed, when I got back to New York, or keep me imprisoned in the house and force me to testify in hisdefense. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

“Fuck you,” I said instinctively. Tears were flooding my eyes. I threw the phone back at the dark-haired guy and stared out of the window. I didn’t want them to see me crying. I stared at the street, at passing cars, at the driver-side mirror—

And saw something unbelievable.

Coming down the street behind us, riding between the lines of cars, was Bull on a white horse.

“You guys are in so much trouble,” I told them.

They followed my gaze and then twisted around to look out of the rear window. The dark-haired guy pulled out his gun, glanced around at the hundreds of witnesses and nervously holstered it again. The driver honked his horn, but there was nowhere for the traffic in front of us to go.

“He’s just one guy,” the driver said. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Yeah,” I told them. “But he doesn’t know that.”

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