Page 154 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

“You killed her to practice?”

He pulls my hands together, tightening zip ties around my wrists.

“The money wasn’t bad, either. But you… you have a trust. How did that escape intact? Your parents were so desperate for money after paying your kidnapper, it brought them to divorce.”

I bare my teeth. “They told me it was something my grandmother set up for me before she died. They couldn’t have touched it if they wanted.”

He appraises me for a moment.

“A picture, then,” he grunts.

He pulls out his phone and turns it on. Whitney is on the chair, her eyes barely slits. She meets my gaze and nods once in the slightest way. If I wasn’t staring holes in her head, I would’ve missed it.

Masters’s phone chimes as it powers back on. He fiddles with it for a second. “Eyes on the camera,” he orders Whitney. “This is going to your parents.”

Her eyes roll back, and she falls off the chair. It tips over, crashing to the floor. The detective—I need to stop thinking of him as that—sets his phone down and kneels beside her, slapping her cheek.

This is my moment, and I’m stuck to the floor.

I can hear her, though, screaming into my head.

Run and don’t look back.

I edge past Masters, snatching his phone off the table. I make it to the door when Whitney suddenly screams.

Don’t look back.

I grasp the doorknob, but it doesn’t budge.

“Going so soon?” Masters says.

I spin and glance around the small office. Something wild overtakes me. The need to escape—to survive. I see the lamp by the floor, then my attention jumps.

To the window.

We’re only a story up.

Whitney jumps on Masters from behind, pulling him down backward on top of her. She screams like a banshee, and the sound seems to reverberate. “Go, Skylar,” she yells.

Fuck. I’m doing this.

I snatch the lamp from the floor and chuck it at the window. It smashes then dangles from its cord. I yank on it, sweeping it side to side for clear place to put my hand.

“No!” Masters roars.

I hoist myself up and over.

For a moment, I’m weightless. It’s only a split second, really, and then my feet hit the cement floor. I tuck and roll, forcing aside the pain radiating up my legs.

Footsteps clang on the metal stairs above me. I stand and bolt down the hallway, toward the glowing exit sign.

“Stop, Skylar,” Masters yells. “If you go out there, I will find you and kill you. You hear me?”

Don’t stop.

I slam into the door and slide the deadbolt back. It slips open easily, and then I’m free.

I shoot outside and hesitate. We’re in the middle of small clearing. Forest surrounds the building, the ground sloped down. The snow is falling thick and fast, and I glance around. It’s familiar and not. A distant memory yawns open.