“Here comes the rope.”
A light shone down, showing the rope lowering. She reached for it with her good arm. Crap, this was going to be painful. She pulled it over her shoulders awkwardly with one arm then grabbed the wrist of her bad arm and forcibly pushed it up through the noose. She let out a pained cry as the rope landed around her waist. She dropped her sore arm back down, breathing through her nose in an attempt to hold back any more cries.
“You all right?”
She panted shallowly. Shoot. If that hurt so much what was it going to feel like to be dragged out of here?
“My arm hurts to move,” she explained. “I was shot.”
“Getting shot tends to hurt.”
“You’re speaking from experience?”
“Yep. Let’s do it now, before you can worry too much. If you start bumping into the side of the hole, you’ll need to use your good arm to protect your sore one from being jolted too much. I’m going to do this as fast as I can, all right?”
“All right,” she said, her teeth clenched together as she wiggled the rope up so it was under her arms. It drew tight.
Here went nothing.
Ink was ready to tear his hair out.
Panic threatened to completely derail him. He knew he had to calm down if he had any chance of finding her. But it was damn near impossible when they had no idea where she was.
“Nobody I’ve talked to knows where Forrest is,” Spike said, walking into Ink’s living room. Duke had already arrived and currently had Sunny bundled up on his lap on the sofa. “He’s laying low. His house here is over-run with feds. No way they’d take her there. I’m surprised he had time to bother sending these guys after her.”
“Maybe he’s had them watching Betsy for a while,” Stone said with a frown. “There had to be some way they knew she was friends with Sunny and how to find this place.”
“I thought they were going to kill me,” Sunny said with a small sob.
“You’re safe, baby. You’re safe,” Duke crooned to her.
He had to turn away from them. The pain of knowing Betsy was out there, hurt, frightened, at the hands of two goons.
It made him want to hurl.
Her stomach heaved again.
Sweat coated her skin and she shook from an overload of pain and adrenaline.
She’d hoped she might lose consciousness because of the pain. Had prayed for it. Maybe even yelled that at one stage.
But no such luck.
She lay on her good side on the ground. She couldn’t even work up the energy to be happy about the fact that she was out of that damn hole.
“Well, now. That wasn’t so bad, right?”
Not so bad, was he insane?
Actually, she was fairly certain he was insane.
“Thank you. For saving me.” She pushed up with her good arm so she was sitting. The world around her spun and she had to take some shallow breaths to calm her stomach. But eventually, everything came back into focus.
The man who’d rescued her was standing a few feet away. He had the flashlight aimed at her body so it wasn’t shining so brightly into her eyes. It cast his features into darkness. She couldn’t tell much about him, just that he was a lot taller than her and had to be pretty strong.
“You’re not out of the woods, yet.”
She snorted, looking around her at the huge trees. They appeared to be monsters, looming over her in the dark. She shivered.