Page 70 of Blue

“Yeah?” Dash answered.

“What prospect do we have on Blue?” Mooky asked as he shifted weight from one foot to the other.

“We don’t. Thought she was with Nate?”

The pounding in Mooky’s head increased. It matched the fever pitch in which his heart thundered in his chest. “Nate dropped her off.”

“What’s going on?”

“Her car is abandoned in the lot of Ace Hardware.”

Desperate for a different outcome than his worst nightmare, Mooky begged Odin to have Blue stroll from the store.

“The fuck? How did it get there? She inside?” Dash’s disbelief came through the phone.

She didn’t come out. Mooky scrubbed his hand down his face.

“Don’t know, man. Her phone and purse are inside. That’s not Blue.”

“What are you thinking?”

Nothing he wanted to admit to thinking.

Sighing, Mooky scanned the lot again. He couldn’t say the words. He just knew something was wrong.

Blue

Struggling to stay conscious, Blue focused on random objects to keep her mind occupied. Bleary-eyed, her blinks got slower and slower. She didn’t care about drool dripping from her mouth. All she had to do was stay awake.

“You really shouldn’t fight.” Dylan had the audacity to stay. While he sat outside her peripheral vision, he felt the need to provide commentary—taunt her.

She wanted to curse him out. The words bubbled in her throat, but her lips wouldn’t move. It took every ounce of her energy and focus to breathe and keep her eyes…

“There you go,” he said, and Blue snapped her lids up again.

No. She wouldn’t let him win.

“Come on. Really, it’s getting annoying at this point. Just let it happen. It’s going to whether you like it not.”

She tried to tell him to fuck all the way off, but it came out as a gurgle.

Getting down on his stomach, Dylan rested his chin on his hands and his elbows on the floor. She refused to cower.

“You know, you’re wasting your time. You should try to enjoy it,” he said.

With his gaze locked on hers, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking away.

Nothing was there. Emptiness. Not an iota of emotion reflected back at her. There was no anger, no regret. Nothing. He just watched her potentially die from whatever he’d injected into her.

He was dead inside.

Her stomach rolled, bile rose in her throat, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. With a lurch, the contents of her belly spewed forward. One heave, two, and three.

“Gross.” Dylan recoiled.

Her throat burned differently. Her eyes watered, and snot ran down her face. Whimpering, she laid there with her head resting in a puddle of her own vomit.

She couldn’t summon the energy to move. It took everything she had to breathe and blink.

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