Page 5 of Vengeful Lies

Gunfire erupted around them, car horns honked, people screamed, cars took off, some hitting each other as drivers panicked and tried to get away.

Outside the car Gavin dropped, blood covering his body and spreading, his eyes already wide and vacant in death.

Dave cursed as he got out of the car, returning fire.

It did no good.

He dropped too.

Leaving her and Essie all alone.

Gabriella reached over and unbuckled Essie, wondering if she could slip away with the little girl in the chaos around them.

“Stay with me, don’t make a sound, and do what I say,” she told the little girl staring in shock at the carnage around them. The poor child was going to be traumatized for life.

Opening her door, Gabriella climbed out, taking Essie with her. Eyeing up their options, she decided they would head back down the line of cars behind them and then head into the nearest store.

They made it three cars down before the men in black were there, surrounding them. Grabbing Essie and ripping the child from her arms.

She screamed and fought.

She couldn’t let them take the girl.

Essie was only four, so young, so small, so vulnerable.

A blow to the side of her head stunned her, but Gabriella shoved aside the pain and dizziness and kept fighting with everything she had.

“Bring her with us,” a voice ordered, and she was snatched off her feet and both she and Essie were carried back to the SUV.

Inside, she was shoved down in the space behind the passenger seat. With the man who had grabbed her sitting on the back seat, it left her barely any room, even less when the door was slammed closed beside her. On her other side, a sobbing Essie had been shoved down between the backseat and the driver’s seat, two other large men sitting side by side on thebackseat as the last jumped into the passenger seat and the SUV sped off, tires squealing.

In less than two minutes her entire life had changed.

Had ended.

Because she feared neither she nor Essie were getting out of this alive.

But if there was a chance, even a small one, that she could save the little girl she loved, she would take it. Cade had already lost his wife, and she would do everything within her power to make sure he didn't lose his daughter as well.

No matter the cost to herself.

Chapter

Two

September 1st

9:26 A.M.

As though his presence could change the outcome, Cade screeched his car to a stop outside where cops were rolling out crime scene tape to keep people out of what looked like the set of an action movie.

There were crashed cars littered about.

Blood was smeared on the asphalt.

And he could see white sheets covering bodies.

Whose bodies?

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