Page 1 of Whips and Chains
1
VIOLET
“Three…”
My heart thumped against my chest, terror climbing its way up my throat. I stumbled, my back hitting the cold steel wall of the abandoned warehouse.
The man came at me, his footsteps faster and faster. Bloodied knife still clutched in white-knuckled fingers.
“Toby!” It was a desperate plea to my best friend. A feeble attempt to snap him out of the instinct that had convinced him only one of us could make it out of this alive.
It did no good.
Tears streamed down his dirt-smudged face, but he didn’t see me. He didn’t see Violet, the girl he’d made it through high school with. He didn’t see the woman who’d sat on the couch beside him for the best part of his twenties, eating candy and watchingGrey’s Anatomyuntil we both knew every scene word for word.
All he saw was survival.
All he heard was the unknown, unseen threat that whispered in his ears from speakers hidden high above our heads, promising his death if he didn’t kill.
“Two…” the distorted, robotic voice taunted us.
I twisted, trying to get away, but there was nowhere to go. No safety to be seen in dark corners. No one coming to save me. No one to hear me scream.
Toby grabbed my arm, the deadly knife between us, covered in blood from the man who’d already lost his life tonight and now lay headless in a pool of blood across the room.
The speaker let out its final warning.
“One.”
Toby’s dead eyes were the last thing I saw. The best friend who’d loved me so fiercely was gone, replaced by a man I no longer recognized.
I closed my eyes, giving in to a fate I never could have imagined, even in the worst of my nightmares.
In the cold warehouse, the psychopath watching us finally fell silent, waiting for my final moments to play out.
I waited for the plunge of cold, sharp steel that would end my life.
Waited for the pain.
Toby gurgled.
An out-of-place sound in the silence of the room.
My eyes flew open just in time to see him slump to his knees in front of me.
The knife stuck firmly in his neck.
“No!”
He collapsed completely, his head hitting the concrete floor with a sickening thud.
But it was nothing compared to the horror of that knife, wedged firmly in his neck, blood running from the wound, instantly covering his throat and collar.
I fell to the floor beside him, instinct taking over through the panicked screams inside my brain. I pressed my fingers around the wound, horrified when they came away sticky and wet.
Toby’s eyes stared up into mine.
The Toby I knew, not the cold, checked-out man from just moments earlier. The Toby who had loved me for a decade. The Toby who was more my family than anyone else.
