I’ll kill you...
Either way, I was pretty sure the memory of him saying those words would burn into my brain for a long, long time.
And then I heard his voice again.
I bolted upright in bed and bit back a startled gasp as I looked around my darkened bedroom.
Okay.
O-kay.
I was definitely awake. Definitely not having some kind of awful nightmare. Almost definitely not completely crazy.
I slid off the bed, careful not to disturb Axel or Micah. If I was going crazy, I didn’t want to subject them to my waking nightmares. They were already worried enough as it was.
It’s fine. Everything is fine. Nobody is going to kill you.
So why was my heart still trying to beat its way out of my chest?
I tiptoed across my bedroom and slowly turned the door handle, wincing as the floorboards creaked loudly under my feet. Granted, I barely heard it over the thundering sound of my heartbeat, but I knew for sure it was loud enough to have been heard down the short hallway.
Peeking out the doorway, I made out my mom and uncle talking in hushed tones. At least Uncle Jeff was safe, but I was scared to even wonder what he’d done to Randy.
A shudder went down my back as I stepped out into the hallway. God, please say he didn’t kill Randy. Please. Not that I’d been particularly worried about Randy’s safety—especially considering that he’d threatened to kill me several times that day. But I was concerned that Randy’s family would use their power and money to put my uncle behind bars for the rest of his life if he did anything to the precious, deranged Johnson family heir.
I exhaled slowly as I crept down the hallway, barely even realizing I’d been holding my breath the whole time. Only when I saw my mom and uncle standing there in the kitchen did I finally start to breathe easier.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said, reaching out to brace myself against the wall in case my wobbly legs decided to give out. “I was having this awful, crazy dream, and I thought I heard—”
The words died in my throat as my uncle stepped aside to reveal a third person there with him and my mom.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, stumbling back a step. Randy Johnson was there in my mom’s kitchen. He was bruised and bleeding and tied to a chair, but he still had that same cold, angry, crazy look in his eyes that I’d already seen too many times over the course of the day. “Oh my God. Oh my God...”
It was all I could say as my brain tried to make sense of the scene in front of me.
My mom huffed out a short breath and gave my uncle a hard glare as she walked over to me. “It’s okay, honey,” she said quietly. “He can’t do anything to you anymore. He won’t even have a chance.”
“Damn right he won’t,” my uncle growled without taking his eyes off Randy. “I’ll cut his fucking tongue out if he so much as opens his mouth.”
If that was supposed to make me feel better about the situation, it didn’t work. My whole body shook so badly that my teeth started chattering. I needed to pull myself together, but it was hard to even think about being strong when the only thought in my mind was that I needed to put as much space between myself and Randy as possible.
Even beaten up and hogtied, he still looked way too threatening.
I swallowed hard and willed myself to stop shaking as my mom gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “What are you going to do with him, though?” I looked from her to my uncle and back again. “I don’t... you can’t... you know it’s going to be bad if he dies, right? Like, really bad.”
Uncle Jeff shrugged. “I don’t give a shit whether he lives or dies. Not my problem.”
“It will be your problem.” Mom sighed, then turned back to me. “But no, we’re not going to kill him. Not as long as he’s in my kitchen, at least. The sheriff asked Randy to keep him tied up until he could get down here to make a proper arrest. But that might take a while because of the storm.”
My mom’s words helped to soothe my frayed nerves, but I still hated that Randy had to be here inside the house. He’d already proved that he was dangerous and crazy—and I knew without a doubt that he would happily kill us all if he had half a chance.
He might have originally wanted to keep me around for his sick, twisted fun, but he wouldn’t have kept me alive forever. And now? Now that I’d escaped, and we’d turned the tables on him?
Yeah, I saw it in his eyes. He wanted us dead—all of us.