Page 1 of Point of Contact

CHAPTER ONE

COURTNEY

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SHE TOLD THEM this was going to happen.

Tried to explain the severity of the situation she was facing, but no. No one was willing to consider for one single second that maybe she’d learned.

That maybe she was better.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. She should be used to people turning their backs on her when the life she had no choice but to live bled into theirs.

It still stung, the burn lingering as she watched the masked men ransack her house from the chair they’d parked her in, foolishly restraining her with nothing but a set of handcuffs as they dumped out drawers, swiped across tabletops, and shredded pillows and blankets, leaving nothing but pointless chaos in their wake.

Honestly, it would be a pretty fitting way for her to go. Forced to watch as the only things she really had in this world were destroyed moments before being destroyed right alongside them.

Except she didn't particularly feel like dying today. Not when salvation was so close she could almost taste it. And that knowledge ignited the determination she’d been working so hard to fuel over the past year, making it flare hot enough to combust.

But in order to make it out of this, she had to be patient and calm. Neither was her strong suit.

One of the intruders turned to her, his cold eyes slowly dragging over her from behind the knit mask that was as pointless as the mess they were making. His gaze paused on where her tits stretched the tank top she’d pulled on before jumping on the treadmill. Like he was contemplating something more sinister than property damage and murder.

What did it say about her that murder didn’t rank as the worst possibility? Lots, probably.

But, like every other person who put their eyes on her, he found her lacking. And for the first time, she was grateful. Watching the only world she'd ever known being ripped apart in front of her before her life ended was one thing. Being raped on her way out was another.

Except she didn’t plan on going out today.

Not tomorrow either.

One of the other men came up beside the man now watching her with a disinterested, almost disgusted gaze. Like she was the offensive one. "Time to go."

Time to go.Shit.

She was running out of opportunity, and it was happening fast. It was either make shit happen now or end up the way everyone wanted: The dead daughter of a drug lord no one had sympathy for.

Schooling her features, she wedged one thumb against the cold, hard, metal cuff, using her other to press hard until the joint gave. She blinked a few times to clear the watering brought on by the pain but didn’t flinch.

Not that it would have mattered. The men milling around the home she moved to less than a year ago weren’t watching her nearly as closely as they should have been. They were clearly new to this. Green enough that they hadn’t heard the rumors about her. About how problematic she once was. How she was capable of anything that might get her a shred of the attention she’d been denied her whole life.

And while the quest for attention from her father might have ended, her capabilities remained. Her willingness to do any and everything to get what she wanted lingered.

And right now she wanted to live.

Now that her thumb was dislocated, it was easy to slip her hand free of the cuff. But it wasn't time to act. Not yet.

She took a slow breath in through her nose, barely parting her lips to set it free as she used her other hand to set the misplaced digit where it belonged. Pain shot up her arm, tingling in a jolt that forced her to swallow down the whimper trying to break free. Stars danced in front of her eyes as her vision narrowed, but she continued her slow breaths through all of it. The setting was always worse than the dislocation, but fighting with her thumb flopping around would put her at a marked disadvantage.

She slowly felt around behind her, careful not to shift her body in any noticeable way as the fingers of her right hand teased along the underside of the table they’d been stupid enough to bind her in front of.

She wouldn’t hold it against them though. She'd been stupid for a very long time. Played games and threw fits and metaphorically shot herself in the foot at nearly every turn.

That all changed a year ago when she realized there was only one person in this world who cared if she was alive or dead. The only person she had to rely on. The only person she could trust.

Herself.

And so she made sure she was trustworthy as hell.

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