Page 152 of Swept for Forever
His shirt was torn, bruises darkened his cheek and jaw, and blood trailed from a cut at his temple. He was barely standing. Yet, through all of it, Dom was looking right at me.
“Autumn, you okay?” his voice rasped.
“I’m okay,” I managed. “Dom?—”
Then I saw him.
That neck. That goddamn neck.
I wished I’d never met that slime on the trail. I wished I’d met Dom under different skies without this much risk strapped to our beginning.
Stiff-Neck. He’d started it all. Now he stood in the doorway like a nightmare dressed in designer.
“Fuck you,” I spat. “Let him go! You won’t get away with this. Or whatever you’ve done to Deborah Sinclair.”
He gave a dismissive scoff as if I were background noise.
“Now that we’re all here,” he said smoothly. “I’ll get to the point.”
Pickle hauled Dom upright, his fingers clenched into his shoulder.
“I wanteverything,” Stiff-Neck said to Dom. “Every scrap of evidence. All of it. Or she dies.”
Dom replied, “Fine.”
I went still. He would always choose me even though it meant walking away from everything else. But Stiff-Neck didn’t play fair, and Dom knew it.
This had to be Dom Powell being Dom Powell. He had cards hidden so deep that you wouldn’t see them until he used one to cut your throat.
“I’ll give you everything,” he said again. “Just let her go, Spears.”
So his name was Spears.
“And you’ll go far from here. Vanish,” Spears said. “I know the cops haven’t got anything, or the Commissioner would’ve come sniffing.”
“Let her go,” Dom repeated. “And I’ll make the call.”
Spears tilted his head. “Cell reception ended miles back.”
Dom gave a weary smile. “The evidence isn’t with me. It’s with someone else. And I’m the only one who can get it back.”
That made Spears pause, and his fingers flexed on the gun. I could feel him teetering on the edge. “I’m not handing you a sat phone,” he said.
He moved toward me instead, his gun raised.
Then, crouched low, he leaned in close enough for me to smell his cologne—a slick, expensive cover for the rot underneath.
He said to me, “Nice to see you again. Autumn, isn’t it?”
I didn’t look at him. I looked at Dom.
“He wants it to look like an accident,” I said, remembering what Big-Mouth had mentioned the first day. “He’s not gonna shoot us.”
“Of course she’s right,” Spears cooed. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t mess up that pretty face of yours?—”
“Stop!” Dom’s voice cut through the air.
His restraint hung by a thread, the fury in his bloodied stance barely contained.
