Taser, she managed to think.
The shock danced all over her skin and nerves like a firestorm. Suddenly, nothing worked. Her limbs were dead weights, and the greater part of her brain seemed to be in the grip of a detached paralysis. She lay there, aware that her legs and arms were trembling but unable to stop it. She was breathing, but it felt as if someone else was doing all the work.
How many volts did those things carry? She’d read once that it was fifty thousand, which – if you were unlucky and had other health issues such as an undiagnosed heart condition – could kill you.
She wasn’t dead. Neither was Bri. But they were both about as useful right this minute as a couple of babes in arms.
Rosa, she thought, and screamed out the housekeeper’s name.
The sound that emerged was a tremulous whimper. What good could Rosa do anyhow? Nothing except get hit by that thing herself – and she was frail and old, the shock would most likely kill her.
Rufus pocketed the taser gun in a businesslike fashion, then came around the desk, bent and hefted her over his shoulder. She felt one of her shoes drop from her foot. Her brain was disjointed, sluggish to respond, firing a few synapses here and there.
He was going to carry her out the front door?
But there were men watching the house. Max’s men. They would see, they would come and stop him. And what could have been a curse could now turn into a blessing. Those men in the black van, the ones she believed were watching Alberto’s every move, would now come to her aid.
Wouldn’t they?
Rufus was out in the hall now, stepping over Bri, who was still shaking and helpless on the floor. Opening the front door, he casually hefted her in a fireman’s lift down the front steps. Someone was going to stop him.
She tried to see, tried to look around, but the world was upside-down and she couldn’t move her head, couldn’t move anything. She could see a car, and that was one of Max’s men in the driver’s seat. Why wasn’t he moving, why wasn’t he seeing this and hurrying towards them? His eyes were closed. Whether he was just asleep or had been zapped like her, she didn’t know. He wasn’t coming to anyone’s rescue, that was for sure.
Shit.
As if this was a normal everyday event, Rufus Malone opened the back door of a car, and unloaded her across the seat. She lay there, thinking How long until this wears off? Until I can move again?
She had no idea.
Rufus got behind the wheel. No one stopped him. No one lifted a finger. He drove off, clipping the wing of the car parked in front of him. He didn’t stop. He kept going.