Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [108]
“You did it to yourself. You smuggled the drugs. You fenced the art. The feds had other witnesses besides me, including Timothy.”
“Timothy paid for his betrayal, and so will you.”
“Where’s Teresa?” she asked, trying to keep him talking.
“Your friend can’t help you. This time you aren’t going to escape. Shane is dead. Timothy is dead.
And soon you’ll be dead, too. It’s much sweeter this way. I thought it would be enough to know you had taken your last breath, but it will be much more satisfying for me to pull the trigger. But first your friend, I think.” He pointed his gun at Jake.
“Don’t!” Sarah cried.
Her loud yell made Caitlyn scream. Her tiny fists swung in the air, her feet kicking wildly as she fought to get away.
Victor had one arm around the baby, and Sarah could see that Caitlyn’s squirming was distracting Victor. Like any good toddler, Caitlyn knew instinctively how to go boneless and limp, how to use her weight to flop around like a rag doll.
“Dammit,” Victor swore at Caitlyn. “Shut the fuck up.”
Caitlyn screamed again as Victor tried to get a better grip on her. Sarah took a step forward, unable to bear the sight of her daughter’s struggles.
“Don’t move,” Victor said. “Or I’ll kill the baby first.”
Sarah stopped abruptly. Victor made another attempt to get a better grip on Caitlyn, but in one wild flurry of arms and legs, her daughter knocked the gun right out of Victor’s hand.
Sarah watched in shock as the weapon flew across the room and landed on the hardwood floor, sliding on a straight path toward the bed.
For a moment everyone froze. Then they all moved at once.
Victor let go of Caitlyn to grab for the gun.
As Caitlyn fell to the floor, Sarah ran to her, sweeping her up in her arms.
Jake kicked the gun farther away from Victor and tackled him. But Victor had at least forty pounds on Jake.
Sarah wanted to help, but she needed to protect Caitlyn first. Jake would want her to run. And that was what she would do. She turned toward the door, then gasped in horror when she realized the door was blocked.
There was another man facing her now—another gun pointing straight at her head. And on the man’s wrist was the tattoo of a tiger. Rick, another Harvard boy gone bad.
Casting a quick look over her shoulder, Sarah saw Victor shove Jake against the far wall. Jake’s head bounced against it so hard a picture frame came crashing down. Jake fell to the floor while Victor staggered to his feet, blood dripping from his mouth and nose, fury in his eyes.
Jake looked like he’d blacked out, Sarah thought as she saw his eyes flutter closed. It was over. There was no way she could escape now. They were going to die.
“Should I shoot her?” Rick asked.
“No, I want the pleasure,” Victor answered, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. There was an evil light in his eyes as he looked at her. “First your baby, then you.”
“You just got out of prison,” she argued desperately. “You have your life back. If you kill me they’ll track you down. You’ll go back to jail.”
Victor shook his head. “No one will ever know it was me. They’ll think it was him. Everyone knows you were running from someone—who better than your ex-lover? Time to say good-bye, Jessica.”
Sarah couldn’t say a word. Fear paralyzed her throat. There was not a damn thing she could do to stop him. Or was there?
She pressed Caitlyn’s tiny head against her breast. “She’s just a child. She’s innocent. Let me put her down, and then you can kill me. Please, Victor. I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t kill my baby.” She knew her pleas were falling on deaf ears, but she had to try. If Victor had one ounce of humanity in him, he’d let Caitlyn go. But as she looked into his eyes, she knew that whatever humanity he’d had was long gone.
“She has your blood, the blood of my enemy.