Page 96 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

“Get your fucking hands off me.”

She kicked him in the shin as hard as she could, freed herself from his grasp with an inward twist of her arms like her trainer had showed her. She was about to break into a run back to the site when a shadow slipped from the darkness ahead and blocked her path.

Angeline stopped short,heart thudding, throat dry. “Who’s there? Who are you?”

The rain came down harder then.

She put up her fists, ready to fight. Instead, she caught a hard, stunning blow on the side of the face, sending her to the ground.

Tavo stood over her. Her head spun. Warm blood sluiced down her cheek. The world wobbled, white stars dancing. The pain, the brutality of his betrayal.

“I’m sorry, Angeline,” said Tavo. But his voice was cold: he wasn’t sorry. The other person came to stand beside him.

No. It wasn’t—possible.

“Oh, God,” she said. “You.”

Then black.

36

MAVERICK

“Where are they?” asked Maverick, looking at the trees through which Tavo and Angeline had disappeared. He tried to manifest their return, imagining Angeline’s smile, Tavo’s serious frown. Hector didn’t answer.

Outside, Petra’s men stayed stock-still, unmoved, apparently with no intention of leaving their posts to take cover, even as the rain bore down. The sky was the color of dread, darkening, foreboding, and the wind pushed around the trailer. Still, the men stood sentry against the gloom, black-clad, straight-backed. On Maverick’s phone, the huge swath of red weather was swallowing the island.

Tap. Tap. Tap.The rain slithered down the window in rivulets, blurring his vision outside. He had a thought then, resting his head against the glass. End it. Let the men take him. Let the company fold. Burn it all to the ground and see what rose from the ashes.

But it was too late for all of that.

The last moment to cancel had been when Alex confronted him in the parking lot of the hotel.

Maverick, we need to talk. Like now.

Looking back at it now, he saw the conversation for what it truly had been. His old friend was offering him a lifeline, a way out of the mess he’d made. But in the moment, he had felt like an animal in a trap.

Alex. Fuck. I’m so sorry.

Hector was silent in the chair, staring at his phone. “Hector, it wasn’t a rhetorical question,” he snapped. “Where are they? Are they on their way back?”

“Uh,” Hector said, “we have a problem.”

The rain beat a tempo on the roof in fits and starts, sounding like some giant was throwing great handfuls of pebbles at the metal intermittently.

“What now?”

“They’re gone,” said Hector. “They’ve turned off their locations.”

Maverick moved over to his friend. Hector’s hand was shaking as he held up the screen to show him the PopMap. Their icons were shaded gray.Location unavailable.

“Why would they do that?”

Hector just shook his head, rubbed hard at his stubbled chin with one hand.

“Mav?” he said. His tone had gone serious, his gaze direct. “You have to tell me, man. We’ve been friends forever, right? What the fuck is going on?”

Maverick was searching for something to say, some way to explain the absolute shitshow they’d found themselves in, when his phone rang. It rang and rang.Caller Unknown.He didn’t want to answer it.