TAG

TAG

S
HARI
J. R
YAN

Booktrope Editions

Seattle, WA 2014

COPYRIGHT 2014 SHARI J. RYAN

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License
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Cover Design by Shari J. Ryan

Edited by Katrina Mendolera

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

PRINT ISBN 978-1-62015-533-2

EPUB ISBN
978-1-62015-561-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919080

In dedication
to my parents:

Mom and Dad, I would not be who I am today without you. You’ve given me the tools to thrive and the support to feel successful in my goals. 

Mark and Evilee, I’m very lucky to have you in my life. You have gone above and beyond to make me feel cared about and make me a part of your lives, which I couldn’t be more grateful for.

Love you all, always.

I’d like to thank our service men and women for the sacrifices given to protect and serve our country. For the blood, sweat and tears you shed, you are not thanked enough for what you have volunteered to do.

I am lucky enough to be a part of a military family and to be a part of people’s lives who have served this country proudly. It is and always will be an honor for me to know you, and to call you my friends.

To my stellar book manager, proofreader and friend,
Jennifer Gilbert, thank you for being my first reader and my biggest cheerleader. Your relentless efforts in helping my books
succeed have never gone unnoticed. You go above and beyond and always outdo yourself. There aren’t enough
ways to say thank you in the world to make myself clear on how much I appreciate what you do.

Katrina Mendolera, an incredibly talented editor, my
books would be nothing more than words on paper without the
constant hard work and passion you bring to my stories. You have been a terrific friend and I can’t thank you enough for the amount of work you do to help make my
books shine.

Ken Shear and Katherine Sears, over the past year you
have
made many of my dreams come true and given me the opportunity to achieve more than I ever could have
thought possible. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this remarkable publishing company.

Marni Mann, who I now call my narrative consultant, thank you for your sage advice in crafting this story. Not only have you been a true friend, but you have also been a wonderful mentor.

Randy Gilbert, thank you for offering to be my awesome cover model. We all know a cover sells a book . . . so I’m
holding you responsible.

To my beta readers: Kristina, I treasure our friendship and
your honesty. Your honesty has helped me to grow this book into a better story, and for that, I couldn’t be more thankful. Gerrit and Jess, thank you for taking the time to offer your expertise in helping me smooth out some
technical areas of
the story. Lisa, as always, thank you for passionate
feedback. It gives me the motivation to push myself a little harder.
And last but not least, Tanya, I treasure the friendship
we’ve grown to have and I thank you for taking the time to read this book and offer me your feedback.

To my friends and family, I thank you for the constant love and support you have shown me over the past few years.
Living out a dream doesn’t come without sacrifice and
while I may seem as though I’ve fallen off the face of this earth, please know I love you all.

Lori, thank you for always reading every excerpt, every quote and every new idea I send you, and thank you for
giving me the motivation to keep writing. Love you.

Josh—my dearest. You are the sweetest and most understanding husband in the world—I’ll get to those
dishes in the sink tomorrow. I promise. Love you, always.

Boys—Bryce and Brayden, as you get older, I cherish the moments when you look at my books and call them: mommy’s books. My heart warmed when you, Bryce, told
me you want to write a book someday. Brayden, even though you don’t know what it means to write a book, you look awfully cute walking around the house holding one.

A SHADOW GROWS
on the ground in front of me, and I know
only
one of us is walking out alive. It
will
be me. The echo of gravel
crunching beneath his feet puts all my senses on alert. I hear the hollow short breaths wheezing from his weary lungs. The pursuit is up, and I dig my fingertips into the brick wall behind me, bracing myself to face this asshole once and for all.

The shadow slinks into the light and a knot pinches in my
stomach as a translucent red dot wobbles through the space in front of me,
which seems to rest directly on my chest. My focus is pulled further
into the conjoining street, and I’m able to draw an invisible line between the red glow and the hollow barrel held in his right hand. My throat swells around my tonsils. I
can
do this.

But then there’s Krissy.

Blood-stained fingers of his left hand are woven around a knife
and splayed across my sister’s mouth, the blade pointed straight
down into her collarbone. One wrong move and she’s done. I never would have thought her luck would be so poor.

The corners of his lips curl upward into a sinful grin, revealing
even more blood. He’s only holding the knife up to her throat for effect—so he can drag out every second of Krissy’s miserable death.

Her dark cobalt eyes are large and appear silver from the
reflecting street lights, which illuminates her fear even more. Her chest heaves
in and out. In and out, faster and faster, fighting with the last breaths she will take. Time has stopped around us. The world is out-of-
focus,
and it’s just her and me—the little girl kneeling next to me at our dollhouse, the little girl sitting at the other side of our tea party table,
the
young woman whose shoulder has gathered so many of my fallen
tears. The loss of her will make my life meaningless once gone.
I will always protect you,
I want to say.
But it’s too late.

His hand concealing the pistol lifts again, and the red dot moves up and down from my chest to my neck, swaying with each of his breaths.

“Last chance to tell me where Daddy is,” he snarls in a gravelly shout.

If I knew, I would have told him way before things ended up
like this. My sister should not have to die in his place, and neither
should I. I would happily take that bullet for my sister, except I assume he has more than one bullet.

I slip my hand into the back waistband of my pants and curl my
finger around the trigger. I have one chance. Please, God. Save her.
My hands spring forward, and I pull the trigger without having time to focus on the target.

The bullet grazes the side of his torso and a simultaneous bite of
pain burns through my shoulder. I’ve been shot, as well. The right
side
of my body is immediately numb. My knees buckle and my body
tumbles to the gravel as if pulled down by a magnetic force.