The vertigo made her woozy. She gripped the dashboard. “This is what love looks like to you?”
He smacked the wheel, still driving dangerously fast for the conditions. “You never get me, do you? I’m looking out for you, just like a big brother should.”
She shook her head, but when everything blurred, stopped. Think, Alyssa!
Option one—she could grab the wheel and force the truck off the road. At this speed, on these curves, they’d roll. She might survive. She might not.
Option two—she could wait. Wait until they stopped, until the truck wasn’t moving, until she could get out and run. The airstrip meant open ground, which meant distance between her and any locked door.
Option three: talk. Use the drive to break him. Make him see what he’d done—what he was doing. Reach whatever was left of the brother she loved underneath the man he’d become.
As if he were reading her mind, he pitched his voice low and hard. “I have a sedative in my bag. Ketamine. I don’t want to use it, Lyss. I really don’t. But if you try to fight me, if you try to run when we get there, I will put you down long enough to get you on that plane. I won’t let you die because you’re too stubborn to let me help you.”
The threat was delivered calmly. Almost gently. The way you’d explain a consequence to a child.
Something inside her went quiet. Still.
He would drug her. Her own brother would inject her with ketamine and carry her unconscious body onto a plane. He’d frame it as love. He’d tell himself it was necessary.
And he’d add it to the long list of things he’d labeled for her own good that were really for his.
“You’re right,” she said. “I am stubborn, and I am scared. But not of the cartel.” Her eyes were still burning, but they were clear enough now to see his features. She swallowed and forced herself to keep her gaze locked on him. “I’m scared of you.”
His jaw clenched. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’ve never meant anything more.”
He stopped talking to her then. She could feel the clock ticking—every minute was a minute farther from Mack, a minute closer to the airstrip, a minute closer to disappearing.
“I know about Eric Edwards,” she said.
She watched the name land. Watched Blake’s hands tighten on the wheel.
“I know he was David Morrison’s best friend,” she continued. “He washed out of boot camp, while David made it through, and he ended up working for the cartel.” She paused. “And I know you found him. Or he found you. And you told him the same lie you told me. The same lie you told Dad. That Mack was responsible for David’s death.”
He whipped his head toward her, back to the road. “You don’t know jackshit. Your head is full of what Mack’s been feeding you.”
“Blake.” She said his name the way their father used to—sharp, commanding, the voice of authority she’d spent her life flinching from. She’d never used it before. It felt strange in her mouth. Powerful. “David Morrison died because you disobeyed a direct order. You broke position, you drew fire, and David died covering your mistake. Mack’s hand was shredded by shrapnel because of what you did. Three civilians died because of what you did. And you blamed Mack. You looked him in the eye and told the investigators that he was the one who disobeyed orders. They believed you, because Dad used his influence to make sure they did.”
She could see Blake’s face go white. Not the flush of anger she’d expected. The bloodless pallor of a man hearing the thing he’d spent years running from.
“You destroyed Mack’s career.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, her heart breaking all over again. “You destroyed our engagement. You destroyed my life. And then you took that lie, and you gave it to Eric Edwards like a loaded weapon. You pointed him straight at Mack, and now there’s a man out there with a rifle who wants to kill the person I love because you were too much of a coward to tell the truth.”
“It wasn’t—” Blake’s voice broke. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“It never is. Not with you.” She was crying now, but the tears had nothing to do with the airbag residue. “It’s never supposed to go like this, but it always does, because you lie. That’s what you do, Blake. You lie, and other people pay for it. David paid for it. Mack paid for it. I paid for it. Jenna paid for it.”
His head jerked at Jenna’s name. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t kill her.”
“You brought the cartel into our lives. Every death, every bullet, that fire—it all traces back to you and the lie you told to save yourself.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Now you want me to get on a plane with you and run to Canada. As if you can outrun what you’ve done.”
“I can keep you alive.”
“Mack was already doing that. He could have washed his hands of me, but he didn’t. He’s protecting me from your mess. That’s real love. Not kidnapping me and threatening to drug me. He gives me a choice. Every single time, he gives me a choice. You’ve never done that.”
The truck slowed. Through the windshield, she could make out the landscape opening up—flat ground, a cleared area, the long dark stripe of a runway against the snow. There was a metal hangar and a small prefab building. A white, twin-engine plane sat on the tarmac.
Blake pulled off the road and stopped. He sat there, engine idling, both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. “Lyss.”