Page 73 of Secondhand Secrets

Her attacker pulled her from the ground and shoved her back into a tree, his fingers wrapped around her throat, as though every rough gesture reprimanded any defiance.

“Hurry up and get the other one.” He spoke in a rough yell to his lanky friend behind him, this man’s dark stare not leaving hers.

She wanted to yell too. Wanted to warn Sarah. But the pressure at her throat made air hard to come by. Helpless, all she could do was glance around wildly. Her attacker’s attention didn’t budge, his lip curling in a sign he took pleasure from her pain.

The wild beat of her heart filled her ears and pounded at her ribcage. His focus slipped to his hand at her neck, and his tongue darted out to lick at his cracked lips, bringing focus to his unkempt, dark facial hair speckled with gray—only for his mean scowl to move lower still. To her chest. “Not often we get two ladies.”

Sarah’s screams filled the air, along with the frantic thuds of a scuffle, and Ally took that chance to avert her gaze to Sarah.

The other guy had his hand hooked under her armpits and dragged her backward through the open passenger door. She twisted in his hold, forcing him to lose grip and fall back to the ground. Ever the fighter, she tried to crawl over and past him but stumbled while doing so, and he wrapped his arms around her ankles, slowing her escape.

Breaking one leg free, she kicked him in the eye.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” Blood poured from his upper cheekbone, and he lashed a hand out, catching the front of her orange t-shirt and tugging her face closer. “You’re not the one we came for. I should put you down right now.”

He wrestled a gun from his back pocket and pressed it into Sarah’s temple.

“No!” The command escaped Ally on a shrill scream, shrill because of the hand compressing her throat. “The Syndicate. They’ll want her too.”

The man holding Sarah kept his gun in place, along with his focus, only moving to flick the safety on the gun. “Wanna bet?”

“You came for me because of Chip Overton, right?” The pounding in her head mingled with the growing sickness in her tummy, but she nodded as best she could to Sarah. “That’s his sister.”

There’d be hell to pay for outing Sarah, but that would come later. Right now, Ally set her mind to surviving one moment at a time.

The man with the gun shuffled to standing, leaving Sarah on the ground, her hands supporting her from behind while she stared up at him. He pulled the trigger, hand veering at the same time.

Sarah winced, the bullet skimming mere inches from her head and hitting the earth behind her, silent tears quick to streak her earth-smeared cheeks.

“Now, you get one thing straight”—he used the gun’s muzzle to tap her chin up, ensuring she had nowhere else to look but at him—“I don’t know who the Syndicate are. I don’t care either. Only that they’re paying good money to bring you in. So maybe I won’t kill you. Maybe. But I sure as hell will shoot. And that’s without saying all the other things I could do to you without leaving you dead, got it?”

He paused for a moment, and the man holding Ally rubbed a thumb down the side of her throat, as though sending a message on the other things he would personally do besides killing her.

The man before Sarah rose and peered about. “Are we all done here?”

Though Sarah’s complexion turned sheet-white and her throat bobbed in restrained fear, she gave a slow and silent nod.

“Good.” Once again, the man yelled, swatting the gun through the air in a move-along gesture. “Then, get up and get in the fucking van.”

The van in question sat yards away, idling in its mangled state, the front passenger side smashed in, and the windshield cracked. Sarah stood, walking on despite her likely pain and fatigue, her stare connecting with Ally’s in a soulless and resigned gaze.

The man holding Ally pulled her into a walk ahead of him, his hands gripping tight at her upper arms and crushing her against him from behind. “You might be able to get me not to hurt you.”

His beer-scented breath struck her neck, and he gave a soft chuckle, his thick fingers sliding under her bare arm and grabbing at her breast. His touch nothing like the soft and considerate man she’d loved and left behind in Boston.

The ache in her head intensified, and a wave of dizziness rocked her, her ears ringing with a thin and tinny sound. Her focus fell to her shuffling feet, to the blurring earth and leaves below.

A need to vomit rose in her gut and burned her throat. Not just because of the man touching her. But because something wasn’t right here. As though her injuries from the crash ran deeper than the merely visible surface wounds.

“You really gonna risk your life for a piece of ass?” She lifted her attention to the other guy glaring from outside the open van door, gun still pointed at Sarah as she disappeared inside.

The man holding her shoved her the last few steps to the van. “Two of them. Two of us. You know what I’m sayin’?”

The other man caught her and chuckled, looking her dead in the eyes before adding, “Yeah, maybe you got a point.”

As much as she tried to hold back, those words and this man’s new smirk stirred the sickness rocking her body, and she doubled forward, puking on the ground at his feet.

His friend hollered a menacing, mocking sort of laugh, but she peered up at the man before her, his smirk fallen to a cold and disgusted grimace. One that left her fearing he’d abandon his deal with the Syndicate and kill her now.

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