Lift You Up (Rivers Brothers 1)

"I have no way to!" Harry insisted, voice hitching in what I could only imagine was fear.

"That sounds like a whole lot of your problem. You have until Thursday," another of the shadows said, the one closest to the door, most in the light. Tall, dark-haired, sharp cheeked.

"I need more..."

Harry's voice broke off to the sound of another crack, louder.

I was suddenly acutely aware of my eyes adjusting to the dark as I saw the back of his head slam into the unyielding cement floor, the sound of it making my own teeth feel like they were cracking together.

"This is not a fucking, negotiation," the man still holding the front of Harry's shirt informed him.

Another sound, a slamming, catching me off-guard, coming from behind the men, had my body jolting, my muscles reacting involuntarily, tensing then relaxing.

Even the ones in my hands.

My fingers opened, and I felt my phone falling.

Air catching in my chest, my hand desperately grabbed for it in the dark. But not quickly enough.

The clatter as it hit its side before settling on its back sent every head jerking in my direction.

"Savvs..." Harry's voice called. A gasp. A warning.

Light flashed out of nowhere, a beam seemingly meant to blind anyone caught in its path, casting perfectly on my frozen figure.

"Fuck," growled one of the men. "Get her," he added.

It was precisely then that my feet remembered they weren't glued to the floor.

I wished I was a hero. I wished I had what it took to take down three bad guys. I wished I had the lady balls to save my boss - even if he was the perpetual thorn in my backside. I didn't want him hurt. Or worse.

But I wasn't a hero.

I was a girl at the wrong place at the wrong time with just enough sense to know that I could not - under any circumstances - let one of those men get me.

Sometimes I cursed this place, this dead-end job I loved and loathed in equal turns at times, but there was something to be said for the home field advantage.

Maybe they had the flashlight.

But I had the two-week power outage after the last hurricane. I had endless trips in when the wind tore power lines down, powering up the generator.

In the dark.

I could navigate this place in my sleep.

My body twisted and jolted forward before any of the men could even break away from their crowd.

Before I even heard their rubber-soled shoes on the ground, I was down two aisles, tearing up them as fast as my admittedly somewhat short legs could carry me.

Fear was something I - as a whole - avoided. I wasn't an adrenaline junkie. I didn't seek out things that would scare me on purpose.

As such, I had little experience with its effects.

The way my skin prickled, the way chills racked my system. Even as it heated. Overheated.

The way my chest tightened, my muscles got tenser.

But also the way my focus heightened, making me able to turn corners faster than I normally could, change course without any actual thought, trying to trip them up, trying to send them flying into a random shelf jutted out just a few inches further out than all the others, trying to make them trip over the oddly placed garbage can in the middle of the floor.

But as I broke into the front from the storage room, I could hear them behind me.

Ten, fifteen feet at most.

Sheer desperation had my legs - so unused to unnecessary things such as running - sprinted forward, letting me break through the center aisle, charge at the door, throwing it open with enough force that I wasn't even sure if the glass shattered as I broke into the street, the rain pelting down on me.

I wanted to scream.

Screaming was what you did, right?

Fire.

Never rape or abduction or big scary shadow men.

But this was not the nicest part of town. This was a stone's throw from gang territory. Screaming, I imagined, was a weekly occurrence, only acknowledged by a parting of a window curtain.

Not by actual help.

Not by interference.

No one wanted to piss off the wrong people.

I remembered being told in a lecture once that if you thought you were being followed, that you should drive - or run - to the police station.

But the police station was half the town away.

Even if my body was used to things like cardio, I didn't think I could outrun men with much longer legs than me for that long.

There was only one person I knew at this end of town.

One person who could, at the very least, hide me.

Decision made due to lack of any other viable options, I threw myself suddenly down a side street, going up a block, then over, then back up again, whipping my dripping hair out of my face, the men behind me panting almost as hard as I was.