Page 37 of Along for the Ride

I lean back and look him in the eye. “If anything happens to Leana, it’s a death sentence, so you’re fucked either way. You can run from George, or you can run from me. Pick your goddamn poison and drink up.”

Karson grips the phone and exits the car. Instead of making the call, he paces back and forth, scratching his head and muttering to himself. He’s flustered, and I’m glad. He deserves every ounce of hell he brought on himself when he ran his big mouth.

I scoot closer to Leana and wrap my arm around her, and I’m surprised when she doesn’t pull away. “I’m sorry, wanderer,” I say.

“Why are you apologizing?” she whispers against my chest. “You didn’t kill me.”

That’s exactly why I’m apologizing.

ChapterSixteen

Karson

Ilook around the wooded area and cram the phone into my pocket. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Gentry and Leana have been listening from the open door, but now that I’ve failed to make the call, Gentry decides to get out of the SUV and rub it in. “That doesn’t sound like you’re fixing the problem you caused.”

“We need to kill her,” I say.

“I told you. You’ll have to go through me to—”

“Stop posturing. We won’t really kill her. We just have to make her look dead.”

“There’s no way that will work,” she says.

Gravel scatters beneath my feet with every step I take toward the mouthy thief. I lean into her face and grit my teeth. “Make it work.”

She doesn’t even bat an eye. She just shrugs her shoulders and says, “I failed theater courses two years in a row. It. Won’t. Work.”

I flip open my blade and go for her throat, but Gentry rushes between us. I’ve had enough of this bullshit. “Gentry, we have no fucking choice. George will want proof of the little thief’s demise. If she doesn’t want to play dead, we have to do what we have to do.”

Gentry looks between us. The smug, self-assured look on her face has my hands itching to wrap around her throat and squeeze until something pops. She enjoys a blissful ignorance we’ve never known. She doesn’t understand that Gentry and I live in a kill-or-be-killed world. We’ve broken the code of our universe by allowing her to stick with us for as long as she has, and now it’s time to set things right. If she won’t give in and go with my scheme, I’ll have to fix this shit myself, Gentry be damned.

“What’s it going to be, you two? Fake or real death?”

Leana drops to the ground with a dramatic huff. “Get it over with,” she says before lying back with her tongue sticking out and eyes rolling back in her head. It’s the least convincing fake death I’ve ever fucking seen, and now I understand why she failed theater class.

I climb on top of her. If we’re going to do this, it has to be believable.

“Get off her, Karson,” Gentry says as he grabs my arms.

I rip out of his grasp. “No, Gentry. You’d pose her all nice, as if you just strangled the life out of her, but I plan to do this shit right.” I pin her arms beneath my legs and look up at Gentry. “Get down here and choke out your sweet little ‘wanderer.’”

“Excuse me, what?” she asks, trying to wiggle free.

“Fuck no!” Gentry shouts.

“Now, Gentry. I need you to trust me.”

“I haven’t trusted you in a very long time,” he says as he drops to his knees. “You just keep fucking shit up.”

I smirk at him. He may not trust me, but he doesn’t have a choice right now.

“No, no, wait!” Leana says before Gentry’s big fucking hands wrap around her throat and squeeze. She flails beneath me, bucking her hips against my crotch as she struggles. It gets me hard, and as red spreads from her throat to her face, it feels like I’ve got a rebar rod in my pants. Spit gathers on her lips in a foamy spew of panic at the prospect of death. Her hands claw at his. He looks down at her with a glassy stare that I know too well. He’s enjoying it, even if he doesn’t want to do it.

Even if he’d never admit it.

She strains more violently beneath me, and I groan as she grazes my dick. Her lashes flutter, her struggle wanes to a flop, and Gentry rips his hands away from her.

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