Page 30 of Rusty's Command

I should be helping Rusty. And Soda. I should be?—

A gunshot cracked through the tunnel like thunder, slamming into her eardrums and scaring the crap out of her. Her knees buckled before her brain could process where the shot had come from, and gripping the wall, she dropped to a crouch.

“No, please—” A man’s cry was cut off by another shot that rebounded off the stone walls in a deafening cascade.

“Get off me, you fucking—” A meaty thud echoed to her, followed by the sound of bodies slamming against stone.

Rusty!

Soda’s deep growl rumbled through the darkness like distant thunder, and her heart jackhammered against her ribs.

“You son of a—” The words dissolved into a wet gurgle.

Oh God!

“I’ll fucking kill you!” someone snarled, raw and wild, but it was cut off by a crunching sound like knuckles connecting with a jaw.

Every cry and grunt of pain twisted her stomach into knots. It was impossible to process the overlapping echoes as they bounced off the tunnel walls. She pushed herself up from her crouch, one hand still pressed against the wall, and forced her legs to keep her upright.

Her ragged breathing joined the brutal chorus as she bit her lip until she tasted copper, trying to keep quiet.

Then, a deathly silence filtered through the darkness. It was weird, unnatural. Terrifying.

Oh God, Rusty . . . please be okay.

She couldn’t decide whether to run to him or the opposite way.

The image of Rusty’s gentle smile flashed through her mind—the way it always started in his eyes before touching his lips, the way it made her feel like maybe the world wasn’t such a broken place after all. Then her traitorous brain replaced it with a vision of him lying broken and bloody in the darkness, and the pain carved chunks from her heart, destroying everything that mattered all over again.

Two more shots boomed through the air, controlled and lethal. Or was that three?

She was trapped in a nightmare of sound and darkness so absolute it consumed even the shadows. The void pressed against her eyeballs, making them ache with the futile effort to find light where none existed.

The silence crushed against her eardrums and the suffocating weight made the previous violence seem tame. Her own heartbeat became deafening.

Oh God. Rusty . . . please be okay.

The prayer echoed in her head in a desperate loop.

She hugged her knees to her chest, straining to hear anything—Rusty’s voice, Soda’s bark, even Pickle’s tapping toenails. There was nothing but the darkness that stretched forever around her.

The crunch of boots on gravel made her freeze. Footsteps thundered closer, accompanied by labored breathing.

Her heart slammed against her ribs and the darkness pressed in, absolute and suffocating until even her practiced breathing techniques—the ones that had saved her through countless panic attacks—crumbled against raw terror.

She pressed deeper into the wall, wishing she could slip through it like a ghost.

Her sneaker scraped against loose gravel, and the sound was shockingly loud. Fight or flight protocols screamed through her brain, but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, and as terror clawed up her throat the rational part of her mind cataloged options.

She only had one . . . to fight like hell.

A beam of light pierced the tunnel behind her, swaying with each step of its unseen bearer. The sudden illumination was as blinding as the darkness had been. Sienna clenched her fists, preparing to put up the fight of her life. Her body was weak with hunger and exhaustion, but she’d been caught in a deadly situation before, and she hated how little she’d fought back then.

Not this time. She hadn’t spent countless hours learning self-defense just to freeze up now. She’d trained for this. Her muscles remembered every lesson, every bruise, every victory.

I am not a scared, naive woman anymore, frozen against a wall.

I’m brave. I’m strong. I am fast.

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