Page 92 of A Violet Obsession

He lifts his head and coughs. Spits again. Then grins through the blood.

It’s my Finn on his knees—but it’s also this stranger, this hardened man from the last decade, deliberately provoking armed killers. Every smart-mouthed taunt is another yard of distance he’s trying to buy me.

And I’m just standing here, frozen.

“We’re wasting time,” a third man growls. “She’ll track easily enough. Kill him.”

The man behind Finn shifts his grip on the pistol.

The buzzing surges up my arms violently. Beneath it, for half a second, the whisper slices through

Go. Now.

I don’t know what it means. Toward Finn? Or run away?

That’s when the two men from the ridge come crashing back.

“Can’t see the body from up here,” one pants. “But her tracks go right to the edge. She must’ve slid on the ice. She’s gone.”

Finn’s eyes close. His whole body sagging in their grip, every ounce of fight draining out at once. The man who was laughing through blood is head down, shoulders collapsing.

He thinks I’m dead.

I step out from the trees.

“I’m right here.”

Finn’s head snaps up. For one raw second, relief floods his ruined face—then fury.

We’ll fight about it later, I tell myself.

Please let there be a later.

“Lily—no!” He surges against the men holding him. “Get the hell back⁠—”

A fist slams across his jaw. I cry out before I can stop myself.

One of the men comes toward me, a blank expression on his face, and the one holding the pistol jabs it harder into Finn’s skull when he tries to get up, struggling against the men holding him down.

I hear a strange, muffled voice, and then another of the men turns to face me with a tablet strapped to his chest like body armor. On the screen is an old man with an oxygen tube under his nose. His eyes are sharp and strangely friendly.

Somehow, it’s worse than the rifles.

“Ms. Jenkins.” The voice through the speaker is warm and unhurried, as if he’s greeting me at a party. “I’m so relieved you’re unharmed. I’m Richard Tate. I’d like to extend an invitation—to be my guest in New Mexico.”

I lift my chin, hoping he can’t see the terror clawing through me.

“Call them off Finn,” I say, “and I’ll come with you.”

Finn goes rigid. “Lily, don’t you dare⁠—”

Another fist cuts him off. I flinch but don’t look away from the screen.

“Stop that,” Tate snaps through the speaker. “There’s no need for unpleasantness now. If the lady’s champion wishes to accompany her, he may. We’re not animals.”

The word champion hangs in the cold air—ridiculous and somehow perfect. I feel Finn’s eyes burning into me the whole time.

“There’s one more who has to come,” I say.