Page 33 of Deadfall

“Yeah, hopefully Rune gets through soon and we can be out of here before Mahoney even makes his move. Whatever that may be,” I muttered.

G sighed. “We also have to hope Rune can keep our location hidden from the mole. The last thing we need is Mahoney finding out we’re here.”

“We’re sitting ducks,” I agreed and then shook my head and chuckled. “The situations you and I get into, man. It’s never a dull moment, that’s for sure.”

“Let’s hope this doesn’t turn out like any of those,” G said dryly.

I shrugged my shoulders as the scars on my back suddenly felt tight. Sometimes I could still feel the burn of the whip despite the skin being long healed.

“Yeah, let’s hope,” I murmured.

19

EMERSYN

I watched the guards approach in the grey light. Despite it being late afternoon, the sun fought to shine through the cloud cover. There was no way to tell if these were the same two guards as last night, but it didn’t matter because one of them swung a loop of keys around his finger which meant I was about to get released from this hell.

I struggled my way to my feet and gathered whatever strength I had left. I kept my head down as they unlocked my cuffs. I had to momentarily lean against the post to breathe through the pain as blood rushed back.

The guard yanked me from the post. “Let’s go.”

I stumbled against him and when he shoved me away, I used my momentum to crash into the other guard.

“Jesus, are you sure she’s not drugged?” He grumbled and reached out to steady me.

I gripped the knife I’d just lifted and without hesitating, slammed it into his eye then took off down the beach to the song of his pained shrieks. Seemed like a great plan, except my legs wouldn’t cooperate and I stumbled the first few steps and fell face first into the sand. I regained my feet, but didn’t get more than a few strides before electricity ripped through my body and locked up my muscles.

Once again, I collapsed on the ground and the shock stopped. Unfortunately, it had taken all the fight left in me, and all I could do was pant and wheeze like a pathetic fish out of water. Footsteps approached. The guard grabbed my hair and yanked me up, only to punch me in the jaw, and I went down again.

“Fucking, bitch,” he growled.

I scrambled away, but my body decided to stop working and I didn’t get far before my arms gave out. He easily pushed me onto my back and straddled my hips.

“You’ve been a bad girl.”

He grabbed my neck and shoved me down into the sand while pawing at the zipper of his pants. He batted my hands away and smirked at my feeble attempts to fight him off.

“Get off me,” I snarled and thrashed in a pathetic attempt to maneuver him off, but I was too weak.

“You know what happens to bad girls?”

I glared and stopped my struggles long enough to spit in his face. Absolute murder hardened his eyes. He slapped my cheek and squeezed my throat until stars broke out across my vision. Just when I thought I’d black out, the pressure released and he shoved my face to the side into the sand.

“They get punished.”

He yanked my legs apart and pawed at his pants in an attempt to free his cock.

“Fuck!” A shout from his buddy down the beach distracted him enough that he paused and looked up. We both watched the man stumble towards us with blood dripping down his face. He’d finally stopped screaming at least.

“She stabbed my fucking eye!” The hurt one collapsed onto his knees at my head and held the bloody knife to my face. “She’s gonna fucking pay for this.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, apparently a blade to the face was still triggering.

“No—” The other one batted the knife away. “Mahoney said no damage.”

“I don’t give a fuck. She has scars already—who cares?”

He tried to maneuver the knife back to my face, but the other guard got to his feet. He zipped himself back up and kicked his companion in the thigh.