The doors swooshed shut, immersing the interior in darkness. The floor lurched below her and they began their descent.

All the while, he held her arm in his bruising grip. Her face ached and her mouth had swelled and was split in the corner. The metallic taste of blood hovered on her tongue, but she was alive. She wouldn’t give up hope yet.

Please, Sam. Find me. Save our child. Save me.

I love you.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened to more darkness. Had they descended to hell?

Her father thrust her forward, and she clumsily stumbled along the hard floor. He’d slowed now, and he limped heavily, his body bobbing into hers.

She faked a stumble, then let out a cry of anguish. He fell into her, recovered and let out a hiss of pain. But she’d slowed him down.

Her brain short-circuited. She could only slow him down so much in hopes that Sam came for her. She babbled out the first thing that came to mind in a desperate bid to distract him, make him talk, all the clichéd things someone did when she was fighting for her life. What else was there left for her?

“How did you survive? I shot you. You should have died.”

Probably not the best thing to do. Remind him of the fact she’d shot him down like he’d shot her mother.

He remained silent, refusing to be drawn into conversation. His only response was to kick at her ankle to spur her movement. She went forward, pretending to fall. Her hand groped for the wall so she didn’t go down hard.

“You’re trying my patience,” he snarled. “Get moving or I’ll shoot you and leave you here.”

Like a flame to a dry fuse, fury caught fire and burned hot and wild through her veins. “Why don’t you then? You’re a coward who preys on women and those weaker than you. You shot my mother at the dinner table. What kind of sick fuck does that?”

He actually paused, his fingers still on her arm. She felt a betraying tremble surge through his body. The cold bastard had reacted? To the mention of her mother?

“You think I shot her for some random point?”

He chuckled, but it sounded more like a pissed-off hiss than amusement.

“Your mother was a whore with no loyalty. Just like you. She betrayed me just like you betrayed me.”

“What kind of shit have you been smoking? What could she possibly have done to deserve being shot in the head over dinner for God’s sake?”

“Shut up,” he barked. “Shut the hell up and keep walking.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, but he twisted her arm until she cried out in true pain. She fell silent and battled the waves of nausea coursing through her gut.

The tunnel led on forever, but her sense of time had been irrevocably altered by the chain of events leading to now.

She nearly tripped and went down when her foot clipped a divot in the floor. She registered the sound of a hand sliding over the wall and then light flooded her eyes. She blinked, not wanting to be weak and miss an opportunity—any opportunity—to fight, to escape. To live.

Her heart sank when she saw two Hummers parked a few feet away and the long tunnel leading out in front of them.

His hand still wrapped around her arm, he held up his gun with the other hand and pointed it square in her face.

“Get in.”

Oh God, she couldn’t get in that truck. She couldn’t allow him to take her.

A shot roared in her ears. Reflexively she jumped back just as her father hit the truck. His head smacked sickeningly against the passenger window, and for a moment he stood, eyes yawning. Then like a puppet whose strings had been let go of, he sagged and slid down the side of the truck. Blood smeared and streaked a path downward and then pooled beneath him when he finally collapsed to the ground.

She whirled, expecting to see Sam or one of his brothers standing behind her. She prepared to launch herself toward him, her heart pounding in relief. She stopped short, her feet tangling and catching when she saw Tomas standing a short distance away, gun still raised in the direction he’d shot.

Her stomach lurched and she fought the urge to throw up.

She stared numbly at him, not knowing what she was supposed to do.

“He deserved a more painful death,” Tomas said in a detached voice. “For what he did to Maria.”

Sophie shook her head. “Why do you care what he did to my mother?”

Tomas turned his gaze on her, and she shivered at the coldness she found there. All traces of fear had been wiped from his eyes. No tension, no nervousness. It was as if he’d been freed from the one man he feared above all else.

Wildness blazed and his expression turned triumphant, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

“He killed her because she loved me,” Tomas said. “He found out. I don’t know how he found out. Maybe one of the servants betrayed her. But it’s no coincidence that the day after she gave herself to me, he killed her.”

Sophie shook her head. The world was crazy. She’d sprung from insanity. Her entire gene pool was one big tainted mess. How could she have ever deceived herself into believing she could lead a normal life when she had lived her earlier life surrounded by crazy?

Completely and utterly overwhelmed, she sank to her knees and finally all the way down, until her butt hit her heels. She buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth.

“Get up and get in the truck,” Tomas ground out.

Her head flew up and she stared at him in disbelief. “You’re crazy. You’re as crazy as my father. I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t have the key, Tomas. You go. They’ll come for you. They’ll be here any moment. If you want to survive, you better get out now.”

He turned the gun on her, and where before he’d seemed a nervous wreck, now he seemed frighteningly confident and at ease.

“Get up now. Get in the truck.”

Slowly she pushed herself upward, her knees knocking together like rocks. The world tilted and swayed, and she nearly fell over again.

She stumbled to the next Hummer, fumbled with the handle and managed to open it. Tomas stalked forward, shoved her inside, then slammed the door behind her. He walked around the front, pointing the gun at her through the windshield all the while. Grim determination was etched on his face. Oddly she was suddenly more afraid of him than she’d been of her father. At least she’d known what to expect before.

Tomas got behind the wheel, transferred the gun to his left hand and cranked the engine.

With a roar, he accelerated down the wide tunnel, the headlights bouncing along the walls. After a few moments, the tunnel lightened as sun poured down the passageway. They burst from the enclosure, and dust rose as he wheeled the truck onto the narrow roadway.

She turned frantically in her seat, searching for direction. Her gaze locked onto the house they’d come from. It grew smaller and smaller as the Hummer streaked through the rocky, arid landscape. Into nothingness. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but rock and jagged hills.

CHAPTER 30

WHEN an explosion rocked the house, Sam and his brothers flattened themselves on the ground, and Sam’s heart nearly stopped.

Sophie. Grenade.

Dear God, what had she done?

“Sam, no!” Garrett barked close to his ear.

He hadn’t even realized he’d gotten to his feet and run for the door until Garrett flattened him. He lay on the ground, Garrett sprawled on top of him, his gut about to explode with what-the-fuck.

“Goddamn it, Sam, we’re going to do this right, and that doesn’t include you getting your ass shot full of holes.”

“Get off me,” Sam gritted out. “I have to find her.”

The sound of a helicopter landing diverted his attention for all of two seconds as he glanced back to see Resnick hustle Marlene Kelly aboard.

Relief for his mother mixed with god-awful fear for Sophie.

Slowly Garrett moved off Sam, and Donovan and Ethan moved up beside them, guns drawn and trained toward the entrance of the house.

“We do this together,” Garrett said. “As a unit. Backup. Familiar concept? As in you go nowhere without it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam growled. “You get off way too much giving me orders.”

“Yeah, well, when your head is up your ass, someone has to give them.”

Ethan and Donovan crouched on either side of the entrance. Ethan held up one finger, then two, and when he popped the third up, he and Donovan swung around and bolted inside.

Sam and Garrett followed, then moved ahead beyond the foyer.

“We’re inside the house,” Sam said into his receiver. “Steele, Rio, give me your status.”

“Engaged,” came Steele’s short reply.

“Coming in from the west,” Rio said a moment later. “Cleared our area. Backing up Steele to clear the riffraff. No casualties to report.”

“Good,” Sam murmured. He hoped to hell he’d be able to say the same.

“Over here,” Ethan called from the left.

Sam, Garrett and Donovan carefully picked their way across the room to where Ethan stood with his rifle up and pointing down a hall.

“Holy hell,” Donovan muttered. “I’d say this is where the grenade went off.”

Sam swallowed. His stomach lurched and he swallowed again.

The room was toast. Rubble was everywhere. The walls had collapsed and the doorway was askew leading into the connecting room.

Carefully they picked their way through the destruction. Sam hoisted a large section of Sheetrock, but nothing was underneath it except more debris and the floor. He let it fall and continued a path into the adjoining room.