Page 49 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

VIOLET

I ’d put the message up on my social media, with Bliss looking over my shoulder. And then worked the rest of my shift with trembling fingers, not one-hundred-percent convinced I was going to go through with it.

I hadn’t missed the fact Travis had disappeared not long after I’d closed down my app.

Though he had also finished his meal and paid his tab to Bliss, so I couldn’t say with one-hundred-percent certainty that it wasn’t a coincidence either. A lot of people had left around the same time, their meals finished and the football game on the screen at a disappointing forty-point advantage.

Nobody was sticking around to watch that, and maybe that’s why Travis had left.

Or maybe it was him I’d be facing off against on the bluffs later that night.

The idea had left me cold. It was one thing to see him here in a crowded bar, where I knew he couldn’t do anything to hurt me.

But seeing him alone. In the dark. Knowing what he was capable of.

It was that thought that had me reaching for my phone, texting the guys, and telling them what I was doing.

X called almost instantly, and I silenced the phone, not wanting to be talked out of it.

I’d come this far. Set the wheels in motion. I needed this to end. I was so sick of being scared. So sick of always looking over my shoulder.

So sick of missing my best friend.

He’d died so I could live. And I wasn’t going to let him down. I wasn’t going to walk around these streets, just waiting for something evil to jump out of the shadows.

I was going to lure them out. Meet them face-to-face, on my own terms.

And then put a bullet through their heart.

Bliss had given me her gun.

I had very little idea how to use it, and if I wasn’t in point-blank range, I knew I would miss. But she’d pressed it into my hand anyway and said I couldn’t go up there unarmed.

She’d hugged me tight and eyed Fang and War still sitting at a table with the other Slayers, and led me to the back door. “They’re going to notice you aren’t here pretty soon, and I won’t lie to them when they ask.”

I nodded. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Please don’t tell them until then though? I just need a head start.”

She still seemed uncertain, but I grasped her fingers. “They’ll stop me if they know. Once I’m up there, they can back me up all they want. Hell, send the entire club up. I’m not on a death mission here.”

Bliss looked at me carefully. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded. “I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to watch any more people I love die either. And that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t face this head-on.”

Bliss nodded, her tone turning hopeful, like she was trying to reassure herself as much as me. “They might not show up anyway.”

“You’re right. They might not. I might just end up staring out at the view.”

Except we both knew that was unlikely.

I could practically feel eyes on me, even though Bliss and I were the only ones around, the parking lot in front of us empty of people.

The darkness watched.

It drew me in.

Begged me to follow it.

So I did.

I took Bliss’s SUV up the road that ran along the Saint View beachfront and up into the hills. My fingers tapped the steering wheel, and my leg bounced the whole way. But I didn’t falter. I kept my foot on the accelerator, following the winding road until we were at the top.

The rain picked up the higher I went, and the trees whipped back and forth with the force of the rain.

Everything inside me said I should go back.

But everything inside me also screamed I should go forward.

Bliss’s gun sat on the seat next to me. I steered into the bluff parking lot, and a clap of thunder drowned out the nervous chatter of my teeth.

I put the car in park, grateful that as Bliss had predicted, the lookout was completely empty of other cars. The storm picked up as I sat there with the doors locked.

Like that might keep out a bullet.

I was no safer in this car than I was outside of it. I glanced around, peering into the shadows, just praying Levi and Whip and X were here somewhere, watching.

I’d given them thirty minutes. That had to be enough.

I didn’t dare check my phone.

Because some part of me knew that even if they weren’t here, I was going to have to do this myself.

“Get out of the car, Violet.” I muttered to myself, picking up the gun and shoving it into my jacket. “Get out of the fucking car and be the woman Toby always said you could be.”

He’d loved a mantra. He’d had me repeat more than one of them. That I was bold. Brave. Fearless. Fantastic.

I hadn’t believed any of them then. Repeating the words hadn’t meant anything when I didn’t feel it inside.

And yet somehow, when I whispered them now, they felt entirely different.

They felt like weapons. Like armor.

Like truth.

I pushed open the door and got out, slamming it behind me and striding forward to the edge of the cliff. I shuffled my way along the rock that loomed over the swirling ocean, careful not to get too close to the drop. Lightning cracked over the water, and power surged in the atmosphere around me.

Or maybe that was something inside me. I didn’t know. But I suddenly felt like I had Mother Nature on my side. Like I was the storm. I was the wind. I was the ocean churning beneath me.

I checked Bliss’s gun in my pocket. Ran my fingers over it, reassuring myself it was still there. Then yelled, “Come on, you miserable assholes! Show yourselves!”

The bluff remained empty.

I scanned the darkness. Were the guys there, watching? They had to be. I didn’t dare turn my phone back on to text them. It was too late for that. I’d turned it off, not wanting them to talk me out of it, and now I had to follow through.

Headlights bounced down the road, lighting up the trees whipping around in the wind. I clutched the gun in my pocket, reminding myself this wasn’t the time to pull it out. That car could be anyone.

It could be one of my guys.

I filled my lungs, the thought of accidentally shooting one of them so horrific I wanted to toss the gun straight off the ledge behind me.

But I wanted it to be one of them. Wanted to know they were here, fighting side by side with me against a faceless, cowardly evil.

The headlights lit me up, and I shielded my eyes with my arm, trying to see through them.

I prayed for it to be X’s van.

Except it wasn’t. When the headlights dimmed, a plain white van with the darkest tint I’d ever seen sat in front of me.

The same one that had been used when they’d thrown the brick through my windshield. I was sure of it. I’d been seeing that van in my nightmares, right alongside headless men and Toby sacrificing himself for me.

They all played over in my mind again now, and I shoved them away.

Now was not the time to lose focus.

“I’m here,” I shouted to the person inside the van. I spread my arms out. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? I’m here!”

I held my breath, waiting for a response.

Or for the guys to creep out of the shadows and surround the vehicle.

Nothing happened.

Fear rose up my throat, threatening to cut off my voice, but anger came right along with it. And it was the driving force. The one that overpowered everything else.

The man in that van was responsible for Toby’s death.

“Get out and face me!” I screamed. “Get out and show yourself, you coward! Because that’s what you really are, aren’t you?

A scared little boy, getting off on terrorizing others.

A sick, sad, son of a bitch who probably lives in his mommy’s basement.

” My chest heaved, the wind stirring up the sea behind me into a frenzy that fed the one pounding through my blood.

A primal shout ripped from my chest. “Get out and face me, you fucking asshole!”

Nothing happened. The person inside the van didn’t move.

The storm inside me exploded, like lightning had struck and obliterated everything in its path.

I yanked out the gun and squeezed the trigger.

The gunshot splintered the night, the crack so loud my ears rang, and my hands vibrated from the recoil.

But my aim was true. The van too big a target and too close for me to miss.

The shot bounced off the windshield, leaving barely a mark behind.

I didn’t even have time to flinch or wonder where the bullet ended up. I just stared in horror at the fact it hadn’t even left a dent in the glass.

Bulletproof glass.

Dread filled me. Who the hell were these people? But more than that, it was the realization that I was alone.

If X or Whip or Levi were hiding somewhere in the shadows, there was no way me firing a gun wouldn’t have drawn them out.

I was entirely fucking alone, in the dark, with a psychopath.

My fingers shook, the gun slipping from my grasp, and I didn’t even stoop to pick it up. I couldn’t move.

The driver’s-side window lowered, and I held my breath, waiting to hear his voice. Waiting for him to show himself.

I needed to know who it was. The not knowing was worse than the fear.

But he didn’t get out.

A recorded message played through the van’s speakers.

“Step where you shouldn’t, and boom goes your breath.

Run if you dare, and you’ll dance into death.

Each stone’s a secret, each step a mistake.

One wrong move, and the cliff will break.”

My blood ran cold. “No,” I whispered, staring down at the ground below me with the horrible realization that if the poem was true, then they’d rigged some sort of explosives that could detonate if I stepped in the wrong spot.

And last time, the poems had all been true.

I frantically searched the dirt for any signs it had been recently disturbed. That there might be explosives buried somewhere there, but it was impossible to tell amongst the long shadows and the rocky, uneven terrain.

I jerked my head up and screamed at the person in the van, over the top of the recorded message playing on repeat, just like the one in the warehouse had.

I knew what came next.

A countdown.

Bile rose in my throat. I spun around, staring down at the swirling ocean below me.

I could jump without taking another step.

And I could swim, but I had no idea if I could swim in a sea like that.

In the cold, in the dark, in my clothes.

How long would it take for me to get to the shore? What if I never found it?

My lungs got tight at the very thought of being smacked in the face by waves, over and over until I was pushed beneath them, the sea claiming their victim.

But I couldn’t move my feet either. Couldn’t run.

How could they have rigged the bluff with explosives that quickly? I’d only posted about coming up here at most two hours ago. Was that enough time?

It couldn’t be, surely. They had to be bluffing.

Except we’d thought that once before.

I’d underestimated them, and it had ended with a man being decapitated right in front of me, a blade dropping from a ceiling that had sliced clean through his neck.

Underestimating him again would be stupid.

And just like I knew it would, the message changed.

“Jump for the sea or run for your life,

Either way ends in panic and strife.

We’re bored of waiting,time to play,

Sixty seconds. Run or pay.”

I couldn’t jump.

I couldn’t run.

All I could do was stand there, locked in by fear, and the miserable realization there was no way out.