Page 113 of Smith

No. I wasn’t going to beg for my life. Or maybe I was. I needed to buy myself time. If he thought I was weak and frail maybe he’d let me off the couch. I could get to the kitchen and find a knife.

“Please don’t kill me.”

Billy rolled his eyes.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

Um, yes.

“I don’t think you want to kill me. I think you want to leave?—”

“Leave before those assholes get here,” he finished for me. “They’re not coming, bitch. They’ll never find you.”

He was wrong about that. Smith and his team would absolutely find me. whether I was alive when they did was a different story, but I knew Smith was looking. I knew Kira was right then working her crazy magic. I knew it with every fiber of my soul. Smith would never stop looking.

I was just afraid of what he’d find.

I was afraid of what it would do to him if he found me looking the way I was sure I looked. Not that I’d passed a mirror since Billy had used me as a punching bag but I knew one eye was swollen shut. I knew my face was caked in dried blood because I could feel it cracking on my skin when I spoke. And I knew because I could see my legs, I indeed had road rash from my hip to my ankle.

Smith had seen Valerie beaten and he’d spent over two decades feeling guilt. He’d blame himself for this. I didn’t want him to find me beaten, but I also didn’t want him to find me dead.

“Answer me!” Billy swung the revolver and popped off a shot.

His look of surprise said he hadn’t meant to shoot a hole in the wall.

Safety first, dickhead.

“Look what you made me do.”

The ringing in my ears from the three-fifty-seven blast muffled his voice but not the fury that shone from his eyes.

This was it.

Someone in one of the houses nearby would hear that shot and call the police.

He knew and I knew it.

My time was up.

It was now or never.

No more worrying about what Smith would find. No more wondering if my body would work the way I needed it to.

It was either be shot to death while sitting on the couch or shot to death fighting.

My parents didn’t raise a meek daughter.

It was time Billy Fucking Rice learned he’d fucked with the wrong woman.

With his attention still on the hole he’d shot in the wall, I sprung off the couch. My head connected with his chest, my neck, spine, and ribs screamed in pain but I didn’t stop shoving him back. Another shot rang out, reminding me I had to control his hand holding the gun. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the opportunity before he hit the edge of a table and toppled to the side, taking himself and me to the floor. A third bullet lodged into the couch I was thankfully no longer sitting on.

“Stupid bitch.”

His muffled insult barely registered over the constant buzzing in my ears. If I came out of this alive I might do it with hearing loss.

The side of my face slammed against the carpet, opening up a new gash or making an old one bleed. I blinked away the blood flowing in my eye. The numbness crept out, letting the pain rush back, taking my breath with it. Billy shifted behind me and his gun hand came down and slammed into my side.

Pain so overwhelmingly immense bounced around my insides, making salvia pool in my mouth. I might’ve cried out in pain. I might’ve screamed. I might’ve puked. I couldn’t say for certain—adrenaline spiked, my head swam—and in one last-ditch effort not to die, I rolled and grabbed Billy’s hand, shoved my finger in the trigger well with Billy’s, and forced him to pull the trigger.

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