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“Shut up,” he snapped as his heavy boots trod down to me. “On your knees.”
My throat constricted. I didn’t dare defy him, but I didn’t rush to comply, either. Taking my time, I sank one knee to the ground and then the other.Think, Lara. What can you use?
“I’m going to fuck that whore mouth of yours first. Teach you to say no to me,” Ben snapped, stopping about a foot and a half in front of me and reaching for the waist of his pants.
I gagged, feeling something digging into my thigh.Calder’s knife.Hope seared through my chest.
All I had to do was wait for him to get close enough to use it.Well, he certainly planned on doing that.Bile rose in my throat, knowing what that would entail, but I had to. I had to survive. I had to protect my sister.
I waited, feeling my muscles start to vibrate with adrenaline as he came closer, one hand opening the flap of his slacks, the other keeping his gun aimed at me.
“God, I need this,” he groaned and freed himself.
Though I’d probably seen hundreds of men’s cocks at this point, I found in that moment there was a distinct difference in observing the anatomy of a patient and seeing the sad erection of a man who was about to assault me.
He came right in front of me, a sick grin on his face. I turned my face away and pulled the blade from my pocket.
“Don’t you fucking look away from me.” He grabbed my hair and yanked my head straight. Pain burst through my skull, and then the cold butt of his gun was pressed to the side of my head.
This was it. I was going to have only one chance to deflect his gun and sink the knife into his femoral artery. If I was lucky, by the time he realized what happened and could reach for me or try to shoot me, he’d already be slipping into unconsciousness.
One chance, and it involved putting his disgusting penis in my mouth.
“Open wide.” He yanked my head back, obscuring my view even more from the inside of his thigh. “Bite me, and I’ll blow your brains out.”
I stared up at him, his skinny member floating in my vision. I was sorely tempted to ignore his warning, but I wouldn’t. Notbecause I wanted to obey him, though he’d think that, but because I had a better plan. A better pain in store for him than a damaged penis.
“Fuck you,” I spat.
Rage shriveled his features. “Fucking—”
“Lara!” a voice boomed from the ridge.
Ben spun around.Distracted.And I moved. The knife flicked open and I drove it into the inside of his upper thigh at the same moment Calder fired.
Ben’s wide, shocked eyes came toward me as he fell forward like a sack of bricks. Yanking the knife free, I lunged to the side so he wouldn’t fall on top of me.
“Lara!” I heard him yelling, but it was muted under the thudding of my heart. I stared at the fallen man, face down in the leaves. I knew he was dead. I felt it. Just as surely as I felt the sticky heat of his blood on my hand, the dark heme coating the tip of the silver blade all the way to my forearm.
“Lara.”
Calder cupped my cheeks, forcing my eyes to his. Forcing my mind to the moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked, turning my head and scanning over my body like whatever my answer was wouldn’t have made a difference.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice not sounding like my own and my eyes drawn back to my hand.
His curse was muffled as he took the knife from my hand and dropped it to the ground, then used his own shirt to wipe the blood from my skin.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, pulling me tight to his chest. Only against his strength did I feel how bad I was shaking. “You’re safe.”
Calder couldn’t have held me for long, but he did manage to pick me up and carry me under the shelter, sitting me next to Rachel and using a wipe to clean the rest of Ben’s blood from my hands.
Before I knew it, a helicopter thumped above us and two park rangers had made their way down the ridge to our shelter. They helped stabilize my sister, who was too knocked out to even wake up as Calder and one of the rangers secured her on a sled and pulled her back up the ridge where the paramedics were waiting.
Thankfully, Adam Eden was already on the medevac before the group of us reached the compound from our campsite. The blades whipped higher, and I was glad I wasn’t the surgeon on call to treat Adam Eden, though I doubted he would make it even with every attempt to save his life.
Just like Ben.
