Selena

 

Mitchell didn’t have much time to react. He jumped into the fray, fighting with all his might, doing the honorable thing and protecting me as Logan had asked.

 

He managed to fight the guy off for a short while, too. It was a big man, with more weight than speed. He wore a black blazer, black pants, black shirt. It all looked very ominous. The mask on his face was what made him look terrifying.

 

There was nothing I could do to help Mitchell. I couldn’t fight. I was frozen with fear and he was fighting his heart out for a woman he didn’t know. For a moment I couldn’t do anything, but slowly the adrenaline faded and I could think clearly again. He was still fighting the guy off, attacking him with quick jabs so the guy had to move his hands to his face to protect himself.

 

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a frying pan from the drying rack where I’d left it before Logan and I had gone into hiding.

 

I ran back to the lounge where I could still hear them fighting. I yelled at the top of my lungs and stormed the guy, ready to hit him over the head so hard he saw stars. I didn’t make it.

 

He managed to get his hand in his blazer and he pulled out a gun. The whole thing happened in slow motion, and I still couldn’t stop it. There was nothing I could do. He pulled out the gun, shoved it against Mitchell’s chest and pulled the trigger. There wasn’t a lot of blood. When Mitchell crumpled to the ground red bloomed on his chest and his eyes were glazed over, vacant. I was frozen again, horrified. It was like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, looking down on it, uninvolved.

 

The man slowly turned to gun toward me. I was still gripping the frying pan in both hands, holding it in front of me like sword.

 

“Drop it,” he said in a low voice. He didn’t seem freaked out at all about the fact that he’d just killed someone.

 

I threw the pan down. I wasn’t going to walk the same road. I was a coward; I wasn’t planning on fighting back. The pan rolled to the side with a clatter and I lifted my hands. I stared at Mitchell’s body, dead on my floor, and it all started dawning on me. Mitchell was dead. The killer was right in front of me, pointing a gun at my face. I swallowed hard. “Don’t shoot me.”

 

He smiled then, his teeth white against the black mask that clung to his face. It was one of those ski masks or whatever you call it, the wool ones. It had to be terribly hot in there. He pulled the mask off. What was the point, then? His face wasn’t much better to look at. He had a scar running from temple to cheek and his eyes were lifeless black holes, as if he did this kind of thing all the time. I didn’t want to know how many people he’d killed in his life.

 

“Let’s get going,” he said. His voice was as empty and unfeeling as his eyes.

 

I listened. I didn’t know where he was taking me but as long as I was alive it didn’t matter. I just couldn’t die, not now that my life was going somewhere. And, God, Logan would never forgive himself. I knew he would feel like Mitchell’s death was also his fault, but if I died he would never ever let himself off the hook for it.

 

The guy in black marched me out of my own door and we walked down the stairs to a big black car. The thing looked like it had escaped from one of those Rap music videos. The inside smelled like pineapple air freshener and smoke. It made me nauseous. As soon as I was sitting in the corner against the other door, huddled against the leather seat, the smell of my fear filled the car, too.

 

He sat opposite me, not saying a word. His gun was in his lap – passive but not packed away. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. He’d just killed Mitchell. He was taking me somewhere unknown. I could still die today.

 

We drove for what felt like about half an hour when the car stopped between containers that looked familiar but I couldn’t place them. We just sat there, doing nothing. I couldn’t run on such a high level of adrenaline for so long so I started relaxing.

 

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

 

“Shut up.”

 

I snapped my mouth shut. I wasn’t going to argue with the guy with the gun.

 

I didn’t know how long we were there for, but it felt like forever. The space in the car seemed to shrink, squeezing me, bringing me closer to my kidnapper. The smell made me sick to my stomach. I was starting to wonder if the smell was trying to cover something else up. Maybe I was just making things worse. My writer’s imagination was just eating this shit up, making it worse than it needed to be.

 

Finally, his phone rang and he held it against his ear, nodding without saying a word. The car started up again and moved forward, slowly, as if we were creeping up on something. I looked out of the tinted window.

 

My kidnapper moved closer and taped my hands together. He gagged me, too, and I felt claustrophobic, unable to move properly, to talk, to escape. I started crying. We rolled along and then the containers fell away and we stopped next to a group of men with guns. They all looked as dangerous as the guy in the car with me. I didn’t want to be here.

 

They shifted a bit and someone tied to a chair came into view. A moment later I realized it was Saul. They had me and they had Saul, the two people Logan really cared about. May was there, too. The woman from the library. Logan’s ex, the one that was causing all this trouble. She had a gun to Saul’s head. The adrenaline in my system kicked in again and terror hardened in my stomach, making it hard to breathe. This was going to get really ugly, really fast.

 

I barely thought it when I saw Logan standing on the other side of the group. He had a mean look on his face, a look I had never seen on him before. He wore leather clothes, a menacing outfit, and he had dynamite strapped to his chest. Dynamite.

 

The car door was opened and I was yanked out. I whimpered, scared.

 

Logan had a button he was clutching onto and I was pretty sure I knew where he was going with this. He was going to blow us all up. He was crazy. I suddenly wasn’t sure who the man was that stood in front of me. This wasn’t the man I loved, the man I’d agreed to marry. This was some maniac with explosives and a crazed look in his eye. This wasn’t Logan.

 

He shouted something I couldn’t hear, the fear overpowering everything else in my mind, and lifted the button. I watched as his thumb came down on the button and I ducked my head down. This was the end. This was where my story ended, the happy ending gone, only fear and despair left. I screamed, squeezing my eyes shut.

 

There was no explosion. There was a lot of movement, May’s surprised cry, laughter. Laughter? That didn’t make any sense. I looked up and everything had changed.

 

The men all around May had their guns hanging at their sides. They were crowded around Logan, shaking hands with them. May looked shocked and furious, like she couldn’t decide which emotion to go with. Logan looked at me and smiled as if May wasn’t even there. It was the kind of smile that would make your heart melt.

 

It washed away all my fear. It would be all right now, I was sure of it. Logan started walking toward me. He was going to come and save me. He was going to take off this tape and the gag and he was going to wipe my tears away and everything would be better. I knew deep down he wouldn’t have done something crazy like blow everybody up.

 

One of the other guys headed toward Saul and started untying him May shouted at him to stop.

 

“I’m still in charge here, asshole!” She sounded panicked.

 

He laughed and shook his head. “Tables have turned, sweetheart.” The way he said sweetheart was like it had a foul taste.

 

May picked up on that, too. Her face went red. “You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do. That was our agreement. I’m paying you, for God’s sake!”

 

He shrugged. “Logan’s paying me more.”

 

Loyalty was all about money? It didn’t make sense. I’d seen different with Logan and his guys, but maybe that was what made them so special. May shook her head and kicked the gun out of the guy’s hand. He looked at her, angry.

 

“You may think you make the rules around here, but I still have a gun.”

 

She pointed it at Saul’s head and everybody froze. I looked at Logan. He’d gone pale. He believed she would do it. That wasn’t good. I trusted Logan and I went along with what he believed. He knew what he was doing.

 

“Don’t do this, May.” It was Saul who had started talking. “If you kill me now, you’ll die. They’re all on his side and you know Logan won’t let it go until he sees you dead for killing me.”

 

Saul was right. If the bond Logan had with his men was anything to go by, he would never rest until May paid for killing one of them. God, if he knew about Mitchell…

 

“Maybe you’re not the right person to use as a target, then,” May sneered. She turned the gun slowly away from him and for a moment I breathed easy. That moment passed and then I was looking down the barrel of the gun. I couldn’t breathe. I saw my death in that round mouth, the gun that would spit my death at me.

 

Logan lunged forward. “Don’t!”

 

May laughed. “I never thought the day would come where you lose your cool about something. She means more to you than your men, does she? That’s interesting. I thought you weren’t capable of love.”

 

“Just not with you,” Logan said.

 

May’s menacing smile disappeared. Did he have to insult her now? With the gun trained on my face? I was whimpering again no matter how hard I tried not to. May seemed to relish in the fact that I was so scared I could barely stand. I had never had gun pointed at me and it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced.

 

Everything was frozen. The gun was on my face. Saul’s face was shock. Logan’s face was horror. All the other guys had their guns pointed at May but I had a feeling it wouldn’t make any difference. She’d lost her mind, after all, and she was angry and jealous of me. I had taken her place in Logan’s life, after all, and he cared for me in a way I was gathering he never cared for her.

 

She wanted to see me dead and with her heartlessness, her lack of morals and values, her obsession with the Fallen Thorns, I wasn’t under any illusion that she wouldn’t shoot me. None of the men, not even Logan, could outrun a bullet.

 

I closed my eyes and conjured up Logan’s face the way he looked at me when it was just me and him, when there was nothing in the air but love. I didn’t want to be the horror, the anger, the fear, to be the last thing I saw before I did. I was pretty sure this was the end.