17. The Beginning of the End

Sarah flipped the knob on the stove, turning the gas off under the eggs, and blotted droplets of water off the berries with a kitchen towel.

Confusion hummed in her head, resisting leaving her home where her mom had braided the rag rugs and polished the furniture, and yet Blaze's instructions to get in the car superseded all that.

She flipped the eggs onto toast sitting on paper plates and set them on the counter near the door, ready to take.

When they left.

When they abandoned her house and farm.

But Blaze had told her to.

But—this obedience thing was just a game they played, where he told her to do—things—and she did them because otherwise, she was too self-conscious and aware that she shouldn't be doing those things.

Even though she wanted to.

Even though she really liked doing them.

Leaving her farm wasn't part of the game.

What was she doing? She shouldn't abandon her farm because some bad guys might or might not be coming.

If anything, she should be preparing to defend it.

Sarah spun on her heel, her other foot already reaching to step toward the gun safe in the living room to retrieve her varmint rifle and her hand plucking her phone from her pocket to call Katie to send Martin over and put out the word that the fight was on, but a strange man stood in her way.

Dark-eyed, dark hair shaved to stubble, knife-edged slashes of cheekbones, and jaw smeared with green and gray greasepaint, taller than she was, and upper lip lifted in a sneer, he said in throaty, accented English, "Mary Varvara Bell want to talk to you."

The man grabbed her wrist, his fist like a manacle.

Sarah tried to yank away, flopping like a panicking line-caught fish. "No!"

He spun her, dragging her back against his body and slapping his meaty hand over her mouth.

More men stood in her kitchen, glaring out the windows. A lot of men. So many men's arms and legs wearing green and black stripes crossing each other and ending with guns pointing at the floor or waving at the ceiling, and faces painted in jagged patches, somany men.

The guy crushing her turned his head and ground out something guttural to the others.

Words in Russian resolved themselves in Sarah's head.

He'd said, "This is too easy. I'll take woman to other room. You wait for man."

Sarah knew better than to admit she understood what they were saying. Books had taught her that information was a weapon.

Instead, she tried to scream through the guy's hand sealed to her face, "Let me go! Let me go!"

For her screams, the man pinched her nose shut.

No air, no air.

Terror and panic running through her veins consumed all the oxygen in her lungs like a bonfire.

Dark walls fell toward her.

Every muscle fiber in her body fired and yanked as she fought to breathe.

The guy released his thumb from her nose.

Air poured down her throat.

Sarah huffed air, snorting it in as hard as she could to feed the frantic starvation.

He muttered beside her ear, "Be quiet, and I let you breathe."

Sarah was trying to burst out of her body to get away from him, but she couldn't let him kill her.

She had to be alive to warn Blaze.

She had to be alive to escape.

The guy was walking backward, dragging her, and she stumbled with her heels and toes on the rugs on the wooden floor to try to stay upright. He dragged her into her own living room and stood just inside the door, his back to the wall and his arms binding her.

No escape for her. She knew that. The cord of her life would be cut there in her house or wherever they took her, and she commended her soul to Jesus and Mary and hoped like hell it had all been enough.

Hours, minutes, nothing mattered. She was ending.

Because she wasn't worried about staying alive, other options presented themselves.

Sarah closed her eyes, shutting out even the view of her living room.

Her head lolled to the side as her legs collapsed like noodles.

She sucked the energy out of her body, leaving a hundred and sixty pounds of boneless meat.

The guy swore a bunch of Russian words that Sarah had never heard before and juggled her like an enormous jellyfish slipping and squishing in his hands.

He took his hand off her mouth, and Sarah sipped air as she pretended to have fainted.

When she ended up folded in half, hanging over his arm, the guy dropped her on the floor and shoved her over with his foot so she was on her stomach, and then he planted his heavy boot between her shoulder blades.

Even though he was shoving her into the rug with his boot, this was an improvement, Sarah was pretty sure. She could breathe, at least some, although the guy was almost standing on her back.

Play dead.One tactic to survive school shootings was to pretend you were already dead.

The front door was a dozen feet away, but she'd have to unlock the door and then the screen door to run out.

And they would chase her.

Her aunt had sent more goons, better goons this time, and they were probably much faster runners than she was.

They might shoot her.

The gun safe embedded in the wall was just across the room. Behind its iron bars, it held several rifles and a shotgun.

If she could get there and open it, she had a chance.

She just had to watch for an opportunity.

Escape first. Fight back if you can't.

Slams and men's shouts echoed from the kitchen.

Play dead.