Recalled (Death Escorts #1)(56)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Toward my death.

I rolled onto my back and, taking aim with the disinfectant, pressed the button. This time only a small cloud released because in my haste earlier I’d used what was left in the can. I threw it at him in frustration, hitting him square in the face.

I hoped his nose swelled up like the rest of his face.

If I was going to die on the floor of some crappy diner, I was at least going to inflict as much damage as possible to the man who murdered me.

I began looking for something else I could use to fend him off when I felt warm hands come around my back and lift me up away from the floor. I used my feet to push myself up until the person behind me swung me up completely and into his arms.

I blinked. My vision was blurred, but I caught the outline of black-rimmed glasses.

Dex.

Considering that this other guy just told me Dex wanted me dead too, I wasn’t sure I was any safer than moments before.

But the way he held me tight made me doubt what I’d heard. I was so relieved to see him that my cheek fell against his chest and my eyes closed.

“Hang on, Piper. Don’t pass out on me,” he said, low, into my ear then he shifted my weight so he held me even closer against him.

“I thought I told you to stay away from my Target,” Dex growled in menacing tones. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Charming?”

“I’m doing what you haven’t and taking my reward.”

Dex stepped closer to the killer and I stiffened. He was supposed to be stepping away…

“I’ll do my job on my own time. If you don’t like it, then you take that up with me or G.R.”

His words made ice form in my belly, but then he was stepping away, heading toward the door of the diner and out into the cold.

Dex didn’t say anything as he walked to his car, parked halfway on the sidewalk, and leaned down to open the passenger-side door. He sat me onto the warm leather and shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over my body, tucking it around me. Tears sprang to my eyes for so many reasons I couldn’t even name them all, and I turned my face away from him.

The car door shut softly behind me and then he was climbing into the driver’s seat, revving the engine and aiming all the heating vents at me as he pulled away from the curb.

I didn’t bother to turn away from him again. I was too stiff and sore and I wanted to watch his expressions when I asked him the question I had to ask.

I opened my lips, but my voice came out as a strained whisper. He glanced at me sharply and reached out to pull the coat closer around me.

“Don’t talk. You might make it worse. I’m taking you to the clinic.”

When he pulled his hand back, it stopped and hovered beside my face. I watched his jaw clench as I felt his fingers brush over my cheek and stroke downward. My eyes closed at the contact. So rarely did he touch me like this.

God help me, I craved it.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I managed to rasp once he pulled his hand away.

The silence in the car was so absolute I was beginning to think he hadn’t heard, but then he glanced at me. His eyes were all the answer I needed.

He was.

I lost it. I freaking lost it right there.

I jerked my body up, throwing aside his coat, pushing it away from me. I didn’t want the comfort of it. How could someone comfort me one moment, then kill me the next?

I would rather just have what happened in the diner. At least that was clearer. This was just… This was… It was messed up.

“What are you, an assassin?”

“Calm down, Piper. You’re going to hurt your throat,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone.

I laughed. It hurt. “What do you care?”

I shoved at his shoulder and the car jerked, but he quickly righted it. He didn’t respond. He just drove, staring out the window with his jaw set.

“So if all you wanted was to kill me, why not just do it? Why bother getting to know me? Why bother with all of… of… this?” I motioned between us and he glanced at me and lifted a brow.

Something inside of me shriveled with that kind of mocking look.

It said This? You’re a silly girl with a silly one-sided crush. If you thought there was something between us then it was all in your head.

I wanted to die right then. I felt like such a fool.

I slapped him across his face, wiping that smug look right off it.

“Piper…” he growled, down shifting the car.

My hand stung, but I didn’t care, and then I gasped as another realization hit me.

“All those accidents… all those times… that was you wasn’t it? That was you all along, trying to kill me!”

His jaw clenched again and he refused to look me in the eye, and I knew. I knew I was right. All those times I thought we were getting closer, all those times we spent together that I thought meant something really hadn’t.

The things I replayed in my head when I lay in bed at night hadn’t been romantic. They were attempted murder.

Why had I never seen a vision of this? Of all things, why couldn’t I have seen this?

“Kill me now,” I said low, the words sounding as raw as my throat felt.

This earned me a glance.

“If you want me dead so bad, kill me now.”

I saw his hand flex on the gearshift. I could taste the temptation in the tiny space between us. He really wanted to kill me…

I punched him in the shoulder, taking us both off guard. I didn’t stop hitting him. I kept at it, punching, hurling my fists as hard as I could, landing blows wherever allowed.

“Piper, stop it!” he said, turning, grabbing both my wrists and squeezing. He was breathing hard and his chest was rising and falling rapidly. The temperature in the car was intense from my anger and the fact we never turned down the heat. But as soon as he grabbed me and our eyes collided, everything around us kind of slowed down…

In his eyes I saw a flash of regret and a flash of determination. I didn’t know which was stronger and I never got the chance to ask.

Because the minute he took his hands off the steering wheel to grab me, he lost control of the car.

It fishtailed, spinning us in circles until we slammed against a dense patch of frozen trees, bouncing off and hurtling farther away from the road, only to crash into another patch of trees. When the car finally came to a halt, a large mass of snow fell from the tree we’d just rammed and fell onto the hood, breaking the already cracked windshield. Glass rained down upon us and then everything fell still.

Chapter Fifty-One