Page 83 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
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“Ahhhhhh!”Jada screamed and shuddered, then her mouth filled with salt water and her eyes stung as she snapped them shut. Her body automatically stopped sucking down water, and she began holding her breath as she realized she might drown. Her instinct was to swim to the surface, but her arms and legs wouldn’t work.
She was tied up!
She opened her eyes again in panic and started to flail around. Anything to get to the surface. But she couldn’t.
Someone was holding her shoulders, forcing her underwater. She flung her body back and forth, her hair tangling in front of her eyes. She was losing consciousness. Her elbow banged against something hard, and she clamped her mouth shut even tighter, fighting back a scream of pain.
More pain.
More pain.
Someone grabbed her hair and pulled her up out of the water.
Air.
“Pretty tits.”
“He’s right. You’ve chosen well, Gideon.”
Jada looked for Gideon but couldn’t see past her hair plastered across her face. She was waist deep in water; at least her bound feet were touching the bottom.
“Get her out of there!” she heard Gideon yell.
“You look really upset, Gideon. I’ll leave her where she is. I like to see you suffer.”
Was that Miles Albright?
Why is he doing this to me? To us?
Jada’s lungs seized. The cough that crackled through her lungs shook her entire body. As huge ugly sounds came out of her mouth, she thrashed around in the small space of water. Her ribs hit the side of the oil barrel she was in, cutting into her skin.
“Unnhhhh.” A howl of pain interspersed with her coughs as the saltwater hit her broken skin. It felt like someone had taken a red-hot knife and stuck it between her ribs.
Jada couldn’t stop coughing. She flopped against the side of the barrel again, this time scraping her upper arm, then cutting into it.
“Owwwww,” she started to cry as she coughed. She couldn’t make out what Gideon was saying. He sounded likehewas in pain.
Someone yanked her hair again, then grabbed her under her armpit and wrenched her shoulder as they pulled her out of the barrel. Her thighs to the tops of her feet were scraped raw as she was hauled over the side.
“Ahhhhh.”
Is that me screaming?
Her body turned to lava with the pain, then mercifully she passed out.
* * *
Gideon couldn’t affordto feel anything. Jada was alive. Neil was alive. That was what mattered. No emotion.
I need to assess the situation.
“Aw, your pretty little girlfriend has a boo-boo. Aren’t you upset?”
A well-dressed man in a suit, who looked like the pictures of Miles Albright, pushed himself off the back of the SUV near the closed bay door of the warehouse. He walked over to Jada where she was lying on the rough wood floor. He pushed at her with the toe of his expensive loafer.
“Weak.”
