Roxanne St. Claire - Make Her Pay

She opened her mouth to scream, bracing for the pain, the sound of her bones breaking, the blackness of inevitable death.

But the groaning machine stuttered… then whined. She was lodged just enough to hold the gear back. But the beast was fighting her, and something told her that one killer gust of wind would finish her off.

“Help!” she screamed, her word drowned out by the cry of the machinery. “Someone help me, please!”

But no one could possibly hear her over the endless, deadly wind.

“That was a gunshot,” Con said sharply.

Lizzie’s heart clenched. Would that woman hurt Bree. Why ? “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I did.” Con squeezed even more speed out of the bike, powering up the turnoff to the Bettencourt farm. At the windmill, he vaulted off the scooter and instantly pulled her off. “You need cover. Inside, now.”

“What?”

“I heard a gunshot. You’ll be hidden and safe here, and I’ll find out what I just heard.”

As much as she wanted to believe he was wrong, she’d been with the man long enough to know not to question his hearing.

They darted over the gravel to the door, only to find it locked.

Con swore under his breath, reaching for his gun. He pushed her behind him with one hand and fired twice at the lock, the shot so loud she had to cover her ears. The door popped open and he pushed her in, then froze.

“What-”

“Shhh!” He held a hand up to her mouth to silence her, closing his eyes.

All Lizzie could hear was the infernal growl of the wheel, the moan that sounded like a woman-

Calling for help!

Con launched toward the stairway, disappearing into the darkness as he took the stone steps three at a time. Lizzie followed, the sound even clearer as she entered the echo chamber of the stairwell.

She rounded the curve, blinking in the dark, but seeing Con bent over a body.

“Bree!” She threw herself to the ground just as Con turned the woman over and two lifeless eyes stared up at them, blood oozing from a hole in Solange’s chest.

“Help me!”

For a split second they stared at each other in shock, then simultaneously jumped up and ran up the last of the stairs.

“That’s Brianna!” Lizzie cried, her foot slipping as she tried to take the stairs three at a time like he did.

Con beat her to the door, lifting a leg and slamming the wood with a solid kick. Lizzie practically pushed him out of her way, but he held her back. The area was nothing but an open pit, the stairs turning into a three-foot-wide ledge with no railing or inside wall.

“Bree!” She took a step toward the center, but Con yanked her back, diving to the edge himself.

Lizzie followed, falling to her knees, a scream welling up inside when she saw Bree four feet below, trapped between two massive cogs, her legs extended to hold back the turning wheels. Blood oozed from her shoulder.

“Oh my God!”

Con thrust her back. “Find the brake, Lizzie! There’s a brake outside, under the sweeps! A lever, a rope, something turns this off. Find it while I go down there to get her.” He flipped himself over the ledge so fast she barely saw him disappear, stunned as he dropped through the air and landed right on the cog of one of the wheels, his weight taking over the job of holding off the machine from squeezing Brianna any more.

“Find the brake!” he yelled.

She shot downstairs.

“Go below!” Con yelled after her. “You have to look below the sweeps!”

Leaping over Solange’s dead body, she stumbled once on a loose step, bracing against the wall to save herself. Spinning around the wall as it ended, she tore outside.

Below the sweeps. Below them?

Flat against the stone building, she made her way around toward the front, the giant blade whooshing by her head at what seemed like fifty miles an hour, the wind pressing at her.

Peering up, she saw a rope, frayed and shortened with age, fifteen feet above her head.

The only way up there was to scale the stones. If she fell backward, she’d be sliced in half by one of the sweeps. She glanced down the cliff, which was equally dangerous.

There was no way Con could get her sister out of that machine if they didn’t stop it.

She grabbed hold and started to climb the wall, every muscle quivering as she scaled one stone, then the next. Her fingers dug into the cold, hard wall, barely able to find a grip as the next blade whizzed by. She put one foot up, then the other. Using all her strength, she hoisted herself higher. The next possible step was hip high, requiring her to lift her knee up as far as possible, pull with both arms, and find her footing as the sweeps sailed by and the wind whipped off the ocean.

Forcing herself not to shake, she continued to climb, grunting with the effort, determined to make it.

The rope was within reach. One more step, one more pull, one more huge push… she finally got high enough and reached for the bottom of the rope, but she just couldn’t… get… it.

A gust of wind fluttered the rope, catching the unlatched door above the windmill shaft and blowing it open, sending Con’s voice out into the air.

“Hurry, Lizzie! Hurry!”

They were still alive! She stretched her arm farther than it seemed possible, closing her hand over the rope to pull.

It didn’t budge.

Horror rocked her. Wasn’t it the brake rope? Or was she just not strong enough? She needed all of her weight to pull on it, and if she grabbed it with both hands, she could swing right into a passing sweep.

She couldn’t let them die.

Using every muscle in her body, she levered herself against the wall, grasped the rope with the other hand, and hung from it.

It was coming down! It was moving ! A grinding sound echoed as the sweeps slowed, and she looked up to see the lever attached to the rope moving down, down, down.

The sweeps grew slower. The groans lessened. The odds of Bree and Con living increased. Finally, when the brake lever was parallel to the ground and the rope had dropped so far that Lizzie was only two feet in the air, the sweeps stopped.

She did it. She did it!

“Can I let go?” she yelled up to Con. Her arms were burning, but if she let go and dropped to the ground, would the sweeps start back up again?

There was nothing but ominous quiet in response. Was she too late? Had one of them slipped and let the gears crunch them both while she was scaling the wall? She barely breathed, hanging on to the rope as if it was hope itself.

“You can let go,” he finally called out. “I’ve got her. We’re out.”

She tumbled to the ground with a moan of relief, then ran into the building, seeing images of Bree, bloody and inches from death… and Con diving into the deadly machine to save a woman he’d never met.

He’d risked his life without a second’s hesitation.

Who cared what mistakes he’d made in the past? He’d just erased them all.

BY THE TIME the Azorean police officers left the scene, the sun was rising.

Lizzie had left with Brianna by way of the Azorean version of an ambulance, once they’d determined that the bullet had passed through her muscle tissue and the wound could be tended without airlifting her to another island. Con stayed with the police, participating in hours of frustrating communication in broken English and Portuguese, explaining that Solange was dead when they arrived.

That was, oddly enough, the easiest task of the night. The police believed her to be a recluse psycho who was rumored to have attempted suicide at least once in the past, and they were opening an investigation into the death of her nurse earlier in the week. Now they were gone.