Page 50 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

X

I pushed my creaky old van as fast as it would go. My accelerator foot to the floor, I steered around the bends of the bluff road, peering through the rain smashing against the windshield.

Headlights coming up the other way made the visibility worse, and I swerved around a car in front of me that was going too slow.

All I could think about was getting to Violet.

And I’d royally fucked up in leaving Levi and Whip behind.

That thought played over and over in my head, urging me on, despite the rain and people who drove too slow in it.

I took the dirt road that led down to the bluffs, but there was more than one entrance, and I had no idea if this was the one she’d meant or if she’d been at the one farther up the mountain.

This was the one closest to Psychos. It had to be this one.

“Please, Violet. Don’t be dead when I get there,” I muttered. “That will be really fucking upsetting.”

It would be a lot more than upsetting. It would be throw myself off the fucking cliff devastating.

But I couldn’t let myself go there.

Maybe she was just joking. Maybe this was an elaborate prank to get me up on the cliffs and she’d just have a nice romantic dinner set up there, with candles and moonlight.

And a big ugly white murderer van right in the fucking middle of it.

“Fuck!” I screamed, stomping my foot down on the brakes. I scrambled for the door, yanking the handle, falling out and trying to find my feet again on the uneven road in the dark.

Numbers filled the air in a robotic voice.

“X!” Violet screamed from her position on the edge of the cliff.

Her voice ripped through me, the fear in her tone leaving behind a gaping wound.

Because I would never unhear that terror. It would play over and over again in my nightmares for the rest of my life, I was sure of that.

The white van’s tires spun, kicking up a spray of rocks and mud in my face. I shielded my eyes with my arm but kept running, only managing to slam my fist against the van door before it peeled away along the road.

Frustration flooded me, and I let out a scream, an internal war battling inside me, between the desire to get back in my van and chase them down so when I caught them, I could gut that fucker slowly and painfully, making him beg for his life for hours before I eventually ended it.

And going to the woman I loved.

It took less than an instant for the desire for her to win out over the desire to kill.

I ran toward her. “Violet!”

Her hands stretched out, palms facing me. “No, X! Stop! Don’t come any closer.”

I stopped in my tracks, having learned my lesson from her. When she said stop, I needed to stop.

She let out a sob. “There’s explosives. They’ve rigged the cliff with something, and if I move, I’ll set them off.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I have to jump.”

I shook my head fast at the very thought of her diving over the edge. “No! No, you’re okay. We’ll call the cops. Get the bomb squad up here. Whatever it is they do. Just stay there.” I was already pulling out my phone, my heart sinking as I watched her eyeing the edge.

The storm only howled louder, like it was urged on by her fear.

By mine.

That fucking water was practically calling her name, whispering it seductively, luring her down.

If I could hear it, so could she.

I faltered with the phone, all my concentration on her. “Just stay there, Vi. It’s going to be okay.”

“I can’t,” she said miserably. “There’s no time. You can’t hear the countdown.” Her sob almost drowned out her words. “But I can. It’s in my head. He’s in my head.”

She stared at me across the gap. It was barely twenty feet, but neither of us could move, both of us frozen.

“I have to jump,” she said again.

I couldn’t let her do that. I still remembered what it felt like to have the water suck you down. To have it in your nose and ears and mouth. To feel it seep inside your body until it was in your lungs, the searing, crushing pain suffocating you while you fought to live.

“Run to me Violet,” I begged her. “ Please . Run to me.”

“I can’t.” She just stared at me. “Ten,” she practically whispered, her mouth moving but the sound barely reaching me. “Nine.”

I shook my head. “No! Violet, run!”

She stepped toward the ledge, her decision clear.

She was going to fucking jump.

She could hear the countdown in her head. That much I could see. And I’d heard enough of it before the white van had sped away to know that she was right.

We had seconds.

But I only needed one to make a decision.

I ran for her. Sprinted across the gap, wrapping my arms around her and dragging her back.

We both landed in the dirt and mud, my body cushioning her fall, right as she whispered, “One.”

I covered her, protected her, praying to whatever fucking god there was that this wasn’t the night He took her from me.

Or that if it was, He took us together.

Because I was so fucking in love with her.

Not in the stupid, playful way I’d told her before.

But in the soul-destroying, all-encompassing way a man loved a woman when he fell so hard there was no coming back.

If she was dying tonight, then so was I.

We both waited for the explosion. Her tense beneath me, both of us barely breathing, waiting for it to end.

Nothing happened.

I counted to ten silently in my head, my breaths suddenly so fast they kept time.

Still nothing.

“Did we die?” she whispered beneath me.

I cracked open an eye and was flooded with glaring brightness. “I think so. I see the light.”

“X, that’s your van’s headlights.”

“Oh.”