Slam!
Her head snapped to one end, a dangerous sound as he stumbled away from her with the bloody gun in his hands. For a moment she went utterly silent. Smile dropping, eyes widening.Silent.
Then she looked up. And his entire body wentstill.
That gaze.
All it promised was torturousdeath.
“So, it was the Lions,” she whispered, tugging at her bonds. Cole scoffed, even as a terrible feeling climbed up his spine, his stomach dropping.
He could hear the warnings in the back of his mind like damn sirens.She’s dangerous,he could hear his brother saying,don’t provoke her, Cole.
You provoke Raylene Walker, and you don’t get out alive.
Well,fuckhim.
“You can’t get out of here, Walker.” He snarled and Raylene smiled again, looking up at him with blood dripping down from the side of her face.
“I got here because I wanted to.” She sang, quietly as if she were talking to a child, “And I’ll leave when I want to.”
“Bullshi–”
Raylene just turned her head away, and with a malicious twist to her lips spat out blood on the ground. Smeared the red by rubbing her lips against her shoulder. His hold on his gun tightened. There was a sadistic twist of her head when she sighed and looked back up. Gone was the helpless girl. Gone were the tears.
She’d played him, he realized terribly, and he’d fallen into her trap like arat.
“You’ll keep me here?” she murmured, her head tipping sideways,“You?”
He hissed at her in response, shaking as he did so.She’s bound, he told himself,she can’t get out. I can kill her.She grimaced as he leered closer to her face, forcing that glimpse of rage of the lightest courage to rise in his eyes. It didn’t seem to matter though.
“I got you here, didn’t I?” he said, and she raised her brows. This close he could see her dead eyes flicker with a promise of revenge. Promise of death. She didn’t open her mouth to respond.
She didn’t have to.
Everything happened within a second.
And although it seemed it was happening too fast, he felt every drop of blood in his face drain when Raylene Walker’s hands snapped out of her bounds with a loudrip. It was too slow for him. She didn’t even rise up.
All she did was lean back on her outstretched hands and lift her legs in the air. With all the force he couldn’t even imagine she had, she kicked him square in the chest and there he went. Flying back. Somehow, he couldn’t even bring himself to scream as he was pushed away.
When Cole slammed against the concrete walls behind him, an echoing sense of ringing started in his ears. He felt the snap of his bones, the pounding of his heart and that pain?
Itexploded.
Cole gasped, his breathing harsh now as the crunch of footsteps carried themselves towards him. He groaned in the dust and looked up.
And there, right in front of him, stood Raylene. Quiet as a ghost.
Staring down at him as if he were a mere pest in her way. And just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. Cole didn’t shake when his throat threw up a sticky substance up his lips. Didn’t even flinch when a sudden roaring began in his ears as he slowly raised his fingers to his lips.
“Oh right,” she said then, just as he brought down his fingers from his lips and saw the red coating his fingertips, “That’s me returning the favor.”
A look of horror crossed his eyes, no,no, no, nothis couldn’t be happening.This cannot be happening. But it was. Because Raylene was suddenly crouching down in front of him with a grin on her face.
“You think I wouldn’t know about my own sister being murdered?”
Her voice was so soft, so quiet. But no one could ever miss the rage that simmered underneath that innocence.
