Melody Anne - Scorched

“Look!” Rafe growled, trying to keep his voice down.

That’s when Adriane saw two men come around the corner of the house and spot Shane and Rachel. His breath caught in his throat as the men lifted their weapons, aiming them directly at the woman he loved.

Before the men were able to get off any shots, Shane fired, nailing both men, while he continued moving rapidly toward the safety of the fence.

“We need to help them,” Rafe hollered, no longer trying to be quiet as shots rang out in the cold winter night.

Adriane and Rafe raised their weapons and charged forward as Shane and Rachel reached the fence. They were too far away to help in the actual escape, but they could take out the men trying to shoot the pair. Adriane breathed a sigh of relief as Rachel slid through the opening and began running. Then he lost her to the night as he faced the house again and shot a man in a second-story window who was aiming straight in the direction Rachel had just run. The man went down, screaming as he fell into the snow, his blood turning the ground red.

Just as Rafe and Adriane moved through the fence, there was an explosion, the blast so powerful that the waves hit them both, sending them flying backward in the snow as the sound echoed through the mountains.

“What in the hell was that?” Rafe shouted as he staggered to his feet.

“I don’t know,” Adriane replied, also struggling up.

They looked toward the house, which was now up in a ball of flames, and looked for the source of the blast. They hadn’t launched any explosives. Had Gianni destroyed his own place?

Creeping forward, they noticed the propane lines.

“A bullet must have hit the propane tank,” Rafe said as he cautiously looked around, searching for any more threats. It seemed the explosion had taken care of the rest of the men.

The next several minutes seemed endless as the house burned bright and the screaming of the enemy men who were still barely alive filled the air.

As Rafe and Adriane, who could count about fifteen men, dead and dying, scoped out what was left of the building, Adriane was torn. He wanted nothing more than to follow after Shane right now, to get ahold of Rachel and never let her go, but he had to make sure the threat was gone.

He couldn’t stop until he saw Gianni’s cold, dead face.

“Move cautiously,” Adriane said; the two of them stood up and crept forward.

They moved through the yard, the house now fully engulfed in flames and casting an eerie glow on the night. Adriane searched the faces of each of the men, frustration mounting when he didn’t see his brother among them.

“Gianni! Where in the hell are you! Come out and face me like a man!” Adriane called, his voice echoing through the mountains.

“Careful, Adriane,” Rafe warned.

“Time for being careful is long over,” Adriane replied, his eyes almost wild.

“I understand, but it doesn’t look like he’s here. Maybe he never was.”

“No. He’s here. I can feel it. He’d never have sent Rachel here alone. He trusts no one, not even those he hires. Rachel means less than nothing to him; she is merely a means of getting his way. But still, he wouldn’t leave her in the hands of these guys — not until he’d gained his objective.”

It had been a long time since Adriane had been with his brother, but he knew the man hadn’t changed that much in their years apart. Gianni used those he could and condemned the world as a pack of fools. But this time he was the fool, for he never should have pushed Adriane to this point.

“Come out now, Gianni!”

Only silence greeted him.

“We need to get back to the meeting place,” Rafe said, a new urgency in his voice.

“He couldn’t have gotten away,” Adriane said, frantically searching the yard, not ready to give up. Gianni had to be there.

“What if he did? What if he ambushes them?”

Adriane halted at Rafe’s words and turned to face him. “Let’s go,” he said.

The two men ran from the yard and made their way to the snowmobiles they’d come in on. Time seemed to freeze as they forced their way through the snow to their transportation. It seemed that every step took minutes instead of fractions of seconds.

Adriane needed to get to Rachel right now.

Just as the sun began rising in the sky, casting eerie shadows across the ground, Shane and Rachel rode over a hill on the snow-covered mountain and saw a vehicle waiting ahead on a paved highway road — no more bumpy remnants of mountain trails.

And did that vehicle beckon! Rachel, still freezing, had been fighting against the wind, and now, before her, sat a car that she knew would be blasting heat from its vents.

“Your rescue vehicle, madam,” Shane said as he slowed and clicked the doors open.

A shot rang out.

Shane suddenly jerked against her and then slumped forward, leaving Rachel baffled. What had just happened?

“Go!” Shane said, gurgling on his own blood, as he threw himself sideways off the snowmobile.

“Go!” he said again, but Rachel could do nothing but sit there as she watched his blood start to seep out against the fabric of his coat.

“You didn’t think you would get away so easily, did you?”

Rachel looked up as Gianni approached. She struggled to get her brain to function, to make her arms move, but fear paralyzed her.

She couldn’t leave Shane there, even if that’s what he wanted her to do. It was too late, anyway. Gianni was almost beside her, with a gun aimed directly at her head.

“Why?” she said, her voice trembling. She was trying to be brave, but Shane was lying there dying before her eyes and there was no way out.

“Because my brother needs to be taught a lesson. He may think he won something today, but all he did was kill off the men I would have had to destroy anyway. There can’t be any witnesses left when this is over. If I’m to take my rightful place on the throne, I have to look like the grieving brother, the savior coming home after the tragic deaths of my brother, his fiancée and his bastard children.”

Keep him talking. Rachel knew that’s what they did in every crime show she’d ever watched. She didn’t know why, didn’t know how it worked, but that’s what they did, and so would she.

“Adriane said that the crown was supposed to be yours but you didn’t want it.” Rachel spoke through chattering teeth.

“I didn’t know what I wanted when I left Corythia. I wasn’t much more than a child. My father is the one who sealed my fate. By the time I decided I wanted the throne that was due to me, he told me it was too late, that my ideas were wrong for Corythia. He’s the one who didn’t want to modernize. I will make a fine king, a king who will go down in history. This world may look at royal titles as nothing more than a show these days, but a little fear from my people is just what Corythia needs. I have a vision for my country — a vision both my father and brother were too weak to adopt. The people should respect their king — bow down to him — and pay, always pay, for the privilege of his rule,” he told her.

“If we promise to leave you alone, will you let us go?”

“You naïve, stupid woman. We both know that’s not how this works. You could make all the promises you liked while I had a gun pointed at your head, but the minute you were safe, you would be running to anyone who would listen to your story. I’m not a senseless man. So don’t insult my intelligence with your lies.”

“Then why not just kill me?” she shouted, growing fed up with this game. She’d rather he fired, took her life, gave Adriane some kind of warning, than force her to keep dancing around him, giving him this time to gloat.

“Good idea.” He raised the gun and aimed it right between her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a goodbye to her family — to Adriane. Closing her eyes, she waited. She wished she were brave enough to look Gianni in the face.

The gun fired and an unnerving silence filled the air.

Rachel waited for the pain to start, waited for her knees to give out and for her body to slump to the ground next to Shane.

“Shane!”

Lia’s scream startled Rachel into opening her eyes. Where Gianni had been standing in front of her, there was now only empty space. Her body racked with trembling, she looked down and saw the man who’d been torturing her, now lying on the ground, blood trickling down his chin from his mouth as he tried to catch his breath.

Then she saw the blood spurting from his neck. He was clasping the spot with one hand, but the light was already leaving his eyes. His hatred undying, he attempted to lift the hand still clutching the gun, but his fingers failed him and the weapon fell beside him as he stilled.

Kicking the gun away and then turning, Rachel saw Lia rush up from behind, drop to her knees and grab hold of Shane.

“Shane, don’t you dare die! Do you hear me! I won’t let that happen,” Lia yelled as she pulled open his coat and looked at the blood coating his shirt. So much blood — too much. It had seeped through his shirt and coat. How could he survive?

“Rachel!”

Turning again, she watched as Rafe and Adriane pulled through the trees and skidded to a stop in front of her.

Suddenly there was movement all around her, everything happening so quickly. Lia was shouting as Rafe and Adriane picked up Shane and rushed him to the rescue vehicle that Shane had brought to that place.

Rachel couldn’t move — she was frozen to the spot.

Adriane rushed back over to her. “Were you hit?” he asked, opening her coat and running his hands all over her body to look for any wounds. Rachel shook her head, but she couldn’t get her voice to work.