Page 4 of Two Chambered Heart

She was in the driveway of a mansion that belonged to a man named Mr. Kovack. The driver was Mr. Haeven, and the passenger was a guy named Kayden. The guys were packing, and the car alarm had been set, if what they said had been all true. She didn’t think they were lying about the car alarm.

Corey filtered through the rest of the information she’d learned while hiding under her coat. They had been driving out of the city for a while. They’d made one turn before stopping. She could surmise that the house was off a highway road and that the driveway was quite long. She couldn’t see the road from the back of the car. The man standing by was older, but that didn’t mean he would be easy to overpower.

Corey considered how fast she could run to the highway if she were to get out of the car. She could run to the woods. However, even if she could get away from this man and make it to the tree line before the guys got back to the car, she didn’t feel like being hunted prey in an unfamiliar forest. Corey considered where she would go, even after she lost them. If she could make it to the highway, she could hitchhike back to the city.

Maybe she was better off just waiting in the car and trying to get back unnoticed.

Though, if she did get to the forest, she could pee, and she really fucking needed to pee.

Her options spiralled through her head as she sat there, looking out the window of the car. Her eyes ping-ponged between the house, the old guy, and the tree line as her thoughts bounced back and forth—run or stay, run or stay, run or stay.

There were too many variables and not enough knowns for her to make a proper decision. Most times, Corey was analytical. She listened to her intuition, but only after canvassing all the available options. This had kept her alive more times than she could remember. She usually made decisions quickly. She wasn’t used to having so much time to weigh her options, and she lost herself in all the possibilities of each choice, feeling frozen.

A loud explosion shook her out of her deliberations, and she looked to the house. Smoke was coming from the back of the roof, shouting and gunfire following the explosion. Corey’s flight response kicked into gear, and she threw her coat on, covering her head in the hood before kicking the back door open on the side opposite the old man.

As she opened the door, the alarm started blaring as promised. The noise made her wince, but then a louder explosion shook the earth, echoed with the crystalline shattering of glass. She hoped all the commotion was covering the car alarm, but its continuing wail quickly dispelled that thought.

The driveway was extremely large, but there were no other cars on it, and Corey bolted for the tree line. From the corner of her eye, she saw the older guy round the front of the car to chase her down.

“Stop!” he called to her.

The forest line was at least 800 meters in front of her, and she chanced a look back to see how close he was. Before she could break into all-out sprint, the older guy pulled a gun from his jacket and aimed at her. She stopped in her tracks.

She watched him pull the trigger and heard the bullet leave the chamber. Faster than she’d ever moved, Corey spun away from her escape route and dodged the bullet, lunging for him. Her hood fell off and her hair swept out behind her, her heartbeat in her throat. She couldn’t keep running in the open with a man and a gun at her back. She needed to get the gun from him.

He had gotten closer to her than she expected, and she took three fast strides towards him with her long legs, while he recovered from the shock of having his target turn around on him. Or maybe he was just stunned that she was a woman. Either way, the few seconds she gained were the advantage she needed, and she bowled her body into him. She crashed her fist into his face, a satisfying crack confirming that she’d hit him hard enough in the cheek.

The hit to his face compromised her position, and he got one arm around her neck, the gun still in his other hand. Corey raked her nails across his left eye, feeling skin lodge under her nails. She almost vomited, but he loosened his hold around her neck enough for her to push him again. She kicked at his knee furiously and grabbed for the arm with the gun. He let off another shot, but she had his arm positioned away fromthem and the shot did nothing, the bullet flying far from where they were battling.

She had to hand it to this guy. He was extremely fit for being old. She was close enough to see the deep grooves in his face and the pinpricks of his pupils, the tendons in his neck straining. He tried to shake off her grip, but she held on. With his free arm, he elbowed her hard in the cheek, and his knee came up to catch her in her gut—but still, she held on. He loosed another pointless shot from the gun.

The gun looked like a standard size hand pistol, which would mean it could hold anywhere between six to twenty rounds. It was too big a range to get him to empty the chamber. Her best bet was to disarm him.

Corey kicked at his knees again and then tried to get a kick to his balls, which he avoided. She used her weight to pull the man down, taking them both to the ground. Corey’s knees hit the stone of the interlocking, and the guy’s knees followed. She would have bruises tomorrow.If I make it to tomorrow,she thought desperately.

Once down, Corey headbutted him hard. Another crunch echoed, and she saw black for a moment before her eyesight adjusted to see the blood pouring from his broken nose. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the house had gone up in flames. Through the ringing in her ears, the car alarm continued to wail, and she shook her head to recalibrate.

Corey let go of the man’s arm—a risky decision, but without using her arms, they were in a stalemate. Instead, she pushed the guy to the ground, hard enough for his head to hit the stone this time. She punched him in the gut and stood up quickly, stomping viciously on the wrist of the hand that was still holding the gun. His fingers finally released it, but as she stooped down to pick it up, she heard two other guns cocking.

“What do we have here?”

She looked up to see the two guys from the car standing just feet away from her. One gun pointed at her and another gun pointed at the body below her.

She froze, her fingers so close to what she’d thought would be her salvation.

Corey sucked in a breath, her heart lurching as she took in the two towering frames before her, savage smiles on their faces. She suddenly felt like a fox with her leg stuck in a trap, and these two were the hunters.

Genuine fear trickled down her spine as she took in their identical features, the fresh blood sprayed across their faces and the stony gleam in their matching green eyes. Twins—they were twins. Both of them held their jackets over their arms, and their identical white shirts, crumpled and untucked, were also covered in blood. One of them had on a utility vest, loaded with various weapons. She tried to ignore the fact that they were gorgeous.

The twins prowled closer to her, their guns still locked on their respective targets, until they were standing right before her.

“Well, Jase,” Kayden said to his brother, his eyes raking over her. “I think we found our wet dog.”

Chapter five

- Kayden -

Kayden Haeven stared at the strange girl in front of him. He couldn’t place her age, but she looked like she was in her twenties. A bruise blossomed on her right cheek, and her light eyes held fear, but she snarled, pulling up her top lip. Her tenacity had surprised him, fighting for her life like a feral cat. Her hair was a mess, with auburn pieces sticking to her face.

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