Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
In a flash, Cassie realized what was happening. These men were human traffickers and they were trying to take the two of them away to sell them!
Their brazenness surprised her somewhat—she’d heard of women getting snatched from parking lots and mall food courts, but she’d never thought predators like these two would attempt to snatch victims right in the middle of a crowded street fair.
But was it crowded? It had been when they first arrived but they’d walked a little way from the main hustle and bustle of the fair and the crowds had thinned considerably. In fact, she didn’t see anyone around but an old woman who looked to be in her eighties minding a booth where she apparently sold hand knitted blankets. She wasn’t even paying attention to them—she was peering myopically at her phone and she had the volume turned up as though she couldn’t quite hear it.
Shit! Cassie thought. They were in trouble. Still, she wasn’t going without a fight.
“You’d better leave us alone or you’ll be sorry!” she snapped at the man who was tugging on Miri’s arm.
Miri, poor girl, wasn’t saying a word but tears were filling her big brown eyes and rolling down her flushed cheeks. She was trembling so hard Cassie could feel it where their arms were still linked together.
“Oh yeah? How you gonna make us sorry?” the first man demanded, glaring at her.
“I won’t, but her husband will.” Cassie nodded at the weeping Miri. “He’s a Beast Kindred and she’s carrying his baby. You don’t think he’ll tear you limb-from-limb for daring to touch his wife and child?”
This seemed to worry the first man with the greasy hair, but the second one only remarked,
“Holy shit—she’s pregnant?” as he tugged harder at Miri’s arm. “That’s a fucking bonus!” he added to the first man. “I got a client who’ll pay double for her.”
“I don’t know, man—didn’t you hear her? She’s got a Kindred husband,” the first man protested.
“Fuck that—she’s lying,” the second one—who had a big pimple in the middle of his eyebrows snarled. “Come on—let’s get ‘em to the van.” And he pulled so hard that Miri’s arm came loose from Cassie’s and she went stumbling to her knees on the sidewalk.
She gasped in pain but still didn’t say anything as tears poured down her face. Cassie bent to help her with an exclamation of dismay, but the first man grabbed her arm and hauled her away from her weeping friend.
“Let me go! Let me go!” she shouted. “Help! Help me! Help us!”
It occurred to her that she ought to have shouted earlier, but everything had happened so fast and she’d never been in this situation before. She had never dreamed that someone would try to snatch her right off the street!
A few heads turned but the people they belonged to were far away and they didn’t seem to understand what was happening. The old lady at the knitting booth didn’t even look up from her phone.
“Help!” Cassie shouted again but at that point, the first man slapped a hand over her mouth and began dragging her physically away from the sidewalk and towards a dark panel van with no windows and no license plate across the street.
Cassie couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Was she really going to be trafficked in broad daylight in the middle of the street?
Apparently so because no one was coming to her rescue and Miri was being dragged to her feet, still sobbing, with her knees bleeding from the contact with the hard sidewalk.
And that was when a deep voice behind them said,
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing to my wife?”
Cassie tried to whip her head around but the man who was kidnapping her still had his hand over her mouth. So she didn’t see anything but a blur as Miri’s Beast Kindred husband rushed forward and grabbed the man who was trying to kidnap his wife by the throat.
He hoisted the would-be kidnapper over his head and Cassie saw his eyes turn from gold to blood red as the Rage took him.
“How dare you touch her?” he roared at the hapless man.
“Didn’t…mean…nothing by it,” the man choked out—he was the one with the pimple between his eyebrows. “Just trying to…to…”
“To what?” The Beast Kindred’s voice had dropped to a low menacing growl.
At that point, Cassie bit the hand of the man who was still holding her and he screamed and tore his hand away.
“They were trying to kidnap us!” she shouted, her voice coming out hoarse with terror and fury. “They were trying to drag us to a van and take us away!”
The Beast Kindred’s eyes went even redder and almost seemed to glow with Rage.
“You fucker,” he snarled at the man he was holding.
“Lies!” the man choked. “Not…true!”
It was clear the Beast Kindred wasn’t buying it.