Page 49 of Controlled Chaos

The girls were cowered in the corner of the room as if expecting the worse to happen. Debbie and her twin were standing next to Frankie.

“If they hypnotized Edward and know about his drug connection, then what makes you think they don’t know about you?”

“They didn’t at first.” She shrugged. “But they figured it out when they caught me sneaking back into the bungalow after our trip over the fence line.” She turned to me. “I have an exit strategy already in place but not for this many people.”

I nodded. “I can fly, but that plane is a four-seater. We won’t be able to get everyone out of here.”

The whimpering started in the corner again as I peered out the door to make sure no one else was coming.

The guard on the floor moaned, making us all glance back in his direction. Frankie stomped over to him and frisked him, taking his phone and relieving him of his radio and gun. She pointed it at his head just as he was trying to open his eyes. “Get in the hole.”

He stared up at her with dazed and glazed eyes the second his radio squawked with Thaddeus’s voice. “Robert, check in.”

He reached for the radio, and Frankie shot at his feet, stilling his hands.

She might as well have just alerted all the guards that Robert was in trouble and exactly where to find us.

Frankie gestured toward the hole with the barrel of the gun, not lowering it until he’d climbed down into it and she removed the ladder, securing the grate back into place.

The radio squeaked again. “Carter, check on Robert’s location. That sounded like gunfire.”

“Copy that,” the other voice answered.

“Take the girls to the other side of the fence line and to the shore. Hide them until I call in an extraction,” I said, stepping out of the hangar.

Frankie’s hand landed on mine. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to cause a distraction,” I said, taking the radio from her hands. I gestured toward the fence line in the distance. “Go.”

I ran toward the cart, thankful to discover the keys were in the ignition and not in the hole with the guard. I turned it over and waited until Frankie and the other girls reached the fence. She helped the last one over before she climbed over it herself.

I turned the cart around and keyed the mike. “I know about Katerina and the others you’ve killed, and now I have the proof, you sick asshole.”

I lifted my finger off the button.

“Who is this?”

“Your worst nightmare,” I answered. “I know about the drugs and the hypnotism, and I’m going to tell the world unless you give me what I want.”

It made sense now how I was going to die. Why I’d be in that area to begin with.

The mike was keyed, even though there wasn’t anyone speaking. I pressed down harder on the gas, heading toward the oncoming lights.

“What is it you want?”

“I want to know the exact details about how you and Monica killed Porter’s father.”

There was a sharp feminine intake of breath on the other end, and there was no answer.

“You didn’t think I knew?” I asked. “You know, when Edward took the guns from my bag, he should have taken my cell phone. The entire world has been alerted to what you’ve been up to. You can kiss your little empire goodbye and get used to wearing orange instead of this drab-ass beige.”

“You little bitch,” he growled. I was making headway. Gunfire was my only warning before my tire blew and the golf cart went careening into the trees. It hit a big trunk and threw me from behind the driver’s seat.

My head hit the ground hard. The last sound I heard was the radio, out of reach.

“We got her.”

“Bring her to the gravesite,” Thaddeus growled.

My vision blurred as I struggled to stand seconds before the flash of movement. A sharp pain landed on the side of my head, and my world turned black.

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