Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
My heart pounded like a relentless hammer against an anvil. There was no choice to be made.
I knew how this was going to play out. Laurel wouldn’t let another person die in her place. She’d go to this team of gunmen, and they’d either kill her now or take her. And Juric would eventually kill her, or even worse, he’d kill the child inside of her.
I couldn’t have children, and I’d be damned if I’d let someone take that from my sister. Laurel and Jason deserved their happiness, had earned it with all they’d survived.
My sister struggled against Jason’s hold. Her hands clawed at his arms to release her, and his lips were moving, probably pleading with her to stay quiet. So the men wouldn’t take her.
I wouldn’t let that happen any more than he would. And I had something that might actually prevent it. I could give them a chance to escape. I owed Laurel after what I’d said to her that dark afternoon after our mother’s death. Those hurtful, untrue words had driven my sister away for six long years.
“Look at me,” I whispered to Shawn, whose focus was on the gunman who had just killed the blonde woman. His gaze turned to me, and it brimmed with chaos.
I couldn’t go to my death without him knowing.
“I told you I wasn’t capable of giving you what you wanted. Everything.” My voice broke on the word. “You were proving me wrong.”
It only added to the chaos in his eyes, and then there was a different horrified scream as another woman was plucked from the ground.
Time was slipping away. I couldn’t waste any more of it saying goodbye.
I gave a strangled cry before letting go of his hand and launched to my feet. This time I moved out of his reach.
“Stop!” I yelled. “I’m Laurel Hayward.”
22
KARA
Breath was frozen in my lungs as I took a step toward the gunman.
The man had thick eyebrows and fat lips that turned down in a sneer as he examined me. I could feel every pair of eyes in the crowd on me as I shuffled forward on the ridiculous shoes. I kept my gaze fixed on the gunman when I passed Jason and Laurel, not wanting to give anything away.
Plus, it would be too much to handle, too emotional. My last memory would not be of my sister’s face streaked with fear.
When I reached the man who seemed to be the leader, the one who had jumped on the table and triggered the explosion, he hopped down and sauntered up to me.
This man was definitely not Juric.
The device used to set off the explosions was a phone, still clutched in his hand. On the tiny screen I could see a picture of Laurel, where she looked drugged. Thank God we looked alike and I’d continued to color my hair blonde even when it had begun to darken in college. I was blonder than Laurel was now, anyway.
The gunman was skeptical. I looked like Laurel, but it wasn’t like we were twins.
“Who are you?” His accent wasn’t thick, but the gravity of everything made thought difficult and I struggled to process his question.
“Laurel Hayward.”
He pressed a button on the phone and brought it to his ear, uttering a few words in a language I didn’t recognize. The man nodded, satisfied with whatever the person on the other line said, and pocketed the phone.
“Give me your hands,” he ordered.
“Why?”
“He said you’d put up a fight.”
I’d make sure Juric knew how true that statement was if I got the chance. I lifted my hands, which were shaking violently, and the man looped a thick, white zip tie around my wrists. He yanked the end painfully to cinch it closed, and the plastic edges bit into my skin.
That was when it became horrifyingly real.
I’d taken my sister’s place and successfully fooled these men. Successfully fooled myself into believing I could do this until it was too late to turn back. The man nudged my shoulder and forced me to turn and face the people scattered across the lawn.
Black smoke poured from the windows of the brewery.
There was a woman dead on the ground near my feet.
And before me, Shawn’s employees, bloodied and every face staring up at me. I didn’t want to see any of it. Certainly not my sister, who sobbed in Jason’s arms. His face was a mixture of emotions I couldn’t place. He looked . . . shaken.
Hopefully, he was thinking about how to escape with his wife and how to save his sister-in-law who’d given him a tremendous gift.
Most of all, I didn’t want to see him.
Yet I faced the crowd, and it was like being on stage. An unspeakable force compelled my gaze to him.
Shawn couldn’t stop me. If he revealed I was lying, he’d condemn me to the same fate as the woman lying face down in the grass, blood staining her blonde hair, and the men would go back to looking for Laurel. He couldn’t come for me, because they’d kill him.