Page 49 of Power Term

“You have to, Mess. Whit is….” His eyes flick to something behind me and stare unfocused. “This is beyond what I ever imagined him capable of. I knew he was an evil son of a bitch, but this is… different. His need for revenge on you, on us…. All he can focus on is making us pay for what happened four years ago.”

“I know what he wants, and I’ll give it to him. He wants me to call Sam. For me to step down and have Sam select Shawn as the VP. I’ll give it to him. I’ll give him whatever he wants. I can’t watch—”

“It’s not as simple as the VP spot anymore, you know that. It might have started as that, and you getting that spot instead of him might have been the catalyst, but this is more than that. Now it’s personal to him. He won’t stop this until we’re both….” He shakes his head. “Shawn’s been planning this for a while, and it’s carefully thought out and well-funded. We wondered where he’s been the last year. Well, now we know. Planning all this.”

“How do you know all this?”

His slight sad smile tugs at my already bleeding heart. “You were drugged during the drive here, baby. I wasn’t. I heard it all, I know what he has planned for you and me. The longer they’re focused on me, the better. I’ll be the distraction to keep their filthy fucking hands off you and give Smith and the others time to find you.”

What he’s asking me to do clicks into place. Despite the sharp stab of pain in my neck, I shake my head. Locks of stiff hair fall into my line of vision. “No. I won’t watch them hurt you.” I can’t do what he’s suggesting, can’t let them torture him for as long as possible, with me watching, to give the others time to find me again.

“It’s not a suggestion, Randi.” A sliver of my Trey, that commanding, dominant tone, hardens his voice. “I can’t—” His voice cracks. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep their focus off you. I can’t watch them hurt you” His shoulders slump. “I’m not strong enough for that.”

“Trouble—”

“You’re the one who matters, Mess. Not me. You have to live. Because if you don’t, I’ll be dead anyway. I don’t want a life without you in it.”

“Where is T?” I whisper, unsure where Shawn and the others are at the moment. T was with us earlier, that I do remember. He’ll talk Trey out of this ridiculous idea. “T, where are you? Talk some sense into him.”

A grief-filled sob swings my attention back to Trey. Head bowed, shoulders trembling, he doesn’t look up when I whisper his name.

“What’s going on, Trey?” I say louder. “Tell me what the hell is going on.” I yank at the restraints preventing me from comforting him, hating them more in this moment than ever before.

“He’s gone.” I narrow my brows, not understanding. “Tank… Davis is gone.”

“Where do they have him?” Deep down, I know what he means by “gone,” but I can’t go there. No, there has to be another explanation. Maybe they let him go. That’s a possibility, right? Maybe Shawn realized he didn’t need T for me to talk and let him walk away.

Yes, T is out there free somewhere, putting together a plan on how to save us. That’s who Davis Washington is, the badass sweetheart who always has a plan.

He has to be okay.

He has to be. I won’t accept any other outcome. That’s how it works, right? If I don’t accept that something terrible happened to Trey’s best friend and Sarah’s husband, then it never occurred.

“Trey?” I beg but seal my lips at the shake of his head.

The faded memory from earlier comes flooding back, this time brighter, clearer, allowing me to remember every horrid detail.

A sob shakes my chest and shoulders.

I had one part right. Shawn didn’t need T for his plans for me.

Shawn’s bored voice after we emerged from the tunnel slowly becomes clearer in my memory.

“Take that one and dispose of him… No, I don’t care how you fucking do it….”

Then a distant gunshot.

A single shot. The kind where there’s no question that the bullet killed its intended victim.

“No.” My voice cracks with the surge of grief. Trey nods, still not meeting my imploring stare that’s begging him to tell me it’s not true. “Did you see it?” My words come fast, spilling from my lips as my mind grasps on to this one sliver of hope. “Did you see them kill him?”

“No.” Trey’s gruff voice is filled with the same soul-aching emotions rolling through myself. “I tried to fight them, tried to…. I couldn’t do shit as they carried you in one direction and dragged him in another. I had to choose. And I chose you, Randi. Every day, I choose you. I didn’t want them to take me out too, leaving you alone again with that fuckstick, so I stopped fighting back to make them think I gave up, but really I was going all in.”

“For me.”

“Always, Mess. It’s you or nothing.”

“But he’s… your best friend. How could you—”

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