by Lauren Algeo
He ran his hands over his wet head. ‘I must have blacked out as I came too on the floor of the bathroom a couple of minutes before you got here. There was no sign of Ellen and I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared the hiker would come back and finish me off, that I locked the bathroom door and hid in there until I heard you come in.’ He finally met Brewer’s eyes. ‘I’m so sorry. I let them take her.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’ He couldn’t exactly blame Mitch for not being able to block his mind from the hiker when he’d never had one in his head before. Never experienced first hand how they could manipulate your thoughts and bring your darkest fears to the surface.
‘The third hiker must have gone while I was out of it,’ Mitch said. ‘The other two left straightaway though so I’m guessing they may have put Ellen in a car to transport her?’
‘More than likely,’ Brewer agreed. ‘I don’t understand why they left you alive though. They could have easily killed you and taken Ellen without the extra hassle of another person.’
‘Maybe when I passed out the hiker thought I was dead?’ Mitch suggested.
‘No, they don’t make mistakes like that,’ Brewer frowned. ‘They left you alive for a reason.’
‘But why? And where have those sons of bitches taken her?’
Brewer felt burning tendrils of certainty snake through his body and every muscle tensed. He knew exactly where they were transporting Ellen.
‘Tennessee.’ He wet his lips in order to form the next sentence. ‘They’re taking her to him.’
Chapter 28
The Master has Ellen. That one thought repeated constantly through Brewer’s head. The Master had her and he needed to get her back right away. Before anything bad happened… or anything worse than had already occurred.
He paced around the motel room, while Mitch watched wearily from the floor, but inspiration wouldn’t come. All he had banging around his head was panic and endless questions. Why had they only taken Ellen? Why had they left Mitch here, alive? Were they still nearby somewhere, plotting to come back to get him too? One question shouted louder in order to be heard over the rest of them.
‘How the hell did they find us?’ he whispered out loud.
‘I don’t know,’ Mitch replied. ‘They can’t have followed us from that dude’s house in Clearfield.’
‘No, there wasn’t time for three of them to get there that fast.’ He paused to kick at the bathroom door in frustration. ‘How, god-damn-it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mitch repeated in a sullen voice. ‘That hiker was in your damn head! Maybe he saw that we were planning to head to Indiana after.’
Brewer quit his dizzying pacing abruptly. He didn’t want to accept that suggestion however Mitch could be right. They had mentioned coming here next and the hiker could easily have plucked that from his thoughts. But Indiana was a fairly big place, how had they been able to locate them so quickly? There had to be dozens of motels.
A sudden thought caused his heart to skip a beat and he realised that this was his fault. Ellen’s abduction was on his hands. He sank down onto the bed, as his legs grew uncomfortably heavy.
‘Oh god,’ he muttered. ‘They found us through me. I was tired earlier and it just didn’t occur to me… I booked this room under my real name. It should have dawned on me that the Master knew who we were. I should’ve used a fake one! I led them straight to us.’
It would have been so easy for them to ring around all the motels and check. He’d gifted their location to those monsters.
Mitch looked up at him but there was no blame in his eyes. ‘None of us would have thought of that at the time. It’s down to both of us that Mrs Mac is in trouble. We need to get her back!’
‘I just don’t know how yet.’ Brewer felt on the verge of tears now the initial anger had subsided.
His Ellen was out there somewhere. Alone and terrified, with two hikers doing god knows what to her mentally and physically, on route to a complete psychopath. One that they still didn’t know the first thing about. Who he really was and what he wanted. He needed to get Ellen back safely. He couldn’t lose another person so soon after Georgie. Not another important woman in his life.
‘First things first, we need to get to Tennessee as quickly as possible,’ Brewer started, then he glanced down at Mitch and took in just how much of a state the kid was in.
His clothes were still damp and he was shivering uncontrollably on the floor. His breath seemed to rattle in his chest as though there was still fluid on his lungs.
‘Scrap that,’ he said. ‘Firstly we need to get you into some warm, dry clothes, and you need a hot drink.’
Mitch started to protest meekly but Brewer held up a hand to stop him. ‘If we’re going to rescue Ellen, I need you as strong as possible. Get yourself sorted while I load up the car.’
He had a horrible thought and began to scour the room desperately. Ellen’s pack was discarded at the side of the room and he saw the glint of keys poking out of the small, front pocket. They still had the car.
Mitch heaved himself off the floor and began to strip off his sodden clothes. Brewer carried on talking fast as he put the room back together as best he could.
‘There’s nothing we can do about this broken lock on the door but they might not notice until check out time tomorrow. I paid for the room in cash anyway so they can’t chase us to repair it through a credit card.’
He was spouting meaningless nonsense but he couldn’t seem to stop. Anything to quell the rising sense of dread inside. What if they were too late to save Ellen? Tennessee was a large state; it could take them days to locate the Master’s house. If he even had one? She could be held somewhere else, a business address or abandoned building. The hikers must be using a car or van to transport her. What if they just kept her in there? No, surely she’d be taken to the Master himself.
That train of thought sparked another idea in his head. The motel probably had CCTV in the car park and might have picked up the hiker’s vehicle. If they had a number plate they might be able to trace it somehow and get a location. Was there a way to do that on the internet?
Brewer’s head felt like it would explode. All these thoughts and feelings and questions, and one word drumming out a panicked tempo underneath: Ellen, Ellen, Ellen. It all rose to the surface at once, and he ran to the bathroom and vomited violently into the toilet.
He knelt there on the hard tiles and expelled everything he had inside. Mitch appeared at his side in his boxer shorts and put a glass of water on the floor but didn’t say a word. When Brewer had nothing left, he flushed the toilet, rinsed his mouth out in the sink, and gulped down some water. It was cool but still scalded his dry, broken throat. His body was quivering yet his mind felt clearer. He would get Ellen to safety no matter what it cost.
When he came out of the bathroom, Mitch had gotten dressed into new baggy jeans and a large, grey jumper. He looked a great deal stronger than he had a little while ago.
‘I’m ready,’ he said with a steady, determined voice.
Brewer nodded and gathered up his and Ellen’s rucksacks, and the holdall with the guns. They trooped out of the room that, several hours ago, they had entered with no idea of the nightmare that was to come. Two sombre figures instead of three.
They walked quickly to the car with their heads down. Brewer threw the bags onto the backseat then climbed behind the wheel while Mitch got into the front passenger seat. Ellen’s seat.
Brewer put the key in the ignition before he noticed there was something on the windscreen. A card of some sort, tucked under one of the wiper blades. He almost dismissed it as rubbish – an advert for someone’s local business or service – but something made him get out of the car to check. He pried the paper out from under the wiper and held it closer. It was small, only the size of a credit card, however it packed a punch big enough to send him reeling backwards.
The card was plain black, with no logo or image, but in the bottom right-hand corner
there were two lines of simple gold text. The first was a phone number and the second line was an address. In a town called Lexington. In Tennessee. The hikers had left a calling card.
Chapter 29
Ellen lay rigidly and tried to slow her racing heart. Her hands had been tied tightly behind her with some sort of rope and she was lying on a moving floor. She was in the back of a small, panel van. There was a thin layer of carpet on the floor that itched her skin. Her eyes were uncovered but it was too dim to see much, and there were no windows to let in any light. They hadn’t gagged her however she knew better than to scream.
She let her fingers work at the bonds on her wrists while her mind tried to process the horrific events. She’d stopped at the shop after taking Scott to the hospital and hadn’t even started reading the first newspaper back at the motel room when everything had changed. Three of those murdering beasts had broken into their room.
She felt the dull ache in her upper body and the painful swelling on her right cheek. She’d tried to prevent them from dragging her outside but they’d been too strong and two of them had overpowered her. She’d received a sharp blow to the face when she’d tried to bite the female hiker who was tying her hands together. Then she’d been thrown in the van and it had started moving. She hadn’t even gotten a clear look at the outside of it.
She thrashed against the rope, acutely aware that this was what they themselves had done to the other hikers over the last few days. She didn’t deserve this though, they did. They were cold-blooded killers who loved what they put people through. They had murdered her Lucy.
An image of Mitch flashed up in her mind and her heart lurched. What had that hiker done to him after she’d been so violently dragged away? She didn’t want to contemplate the worst but she couldn’t stop the thoughts from forcing their way to the front. Was Mitch still alive? Or had that hiker stayed behind to kill him?
Tears welled up in her eyes at the idea of it. Mitch had been asleep when they’d kicked the door in and looked so bewildered by the whole scenario. He’d tried to help her only he was no match for them. The poor boy had never even had one in his head before. She prayed desperately that he was still alive. That he’d somehow managed to run away, or at least been left relatively unscathed.
It was wishful thinking but she wasn’t ready to deal with any alternative. It would tip her over the edge and she would lose the last ounces of strength she was clinging on to.
She imagined Scott’s strong face to try and calm herself down. She trusted him more than she thought possible for a man she barely knew. He would never let anything happen to her if he could help it. She had no doubt he would come after her. That he would do everything he could to rescue her. She believed that from the bottom of her heart and the idea gave her a little comfort in the bleakness.
She still didn’t have what she was feeling for him straight in her mind yet. It was confusing and scary, but she knew he made her feel safe and like herself. He’d reached out to her through the haze of her grief and made her feel alive again. That probably wasn’t the best base to build a relationship up from but that didn’t matter yet. She didn’t even know what they had between them. It was just something.
She lay still for a moment, panting in the darkness and trying to listen for any sounds from the front of the van. There was nothing but the purring of the engine. She wasn’t really surprised – there was a solid panel dividing her from the front seats. Even if the two of them had been talking up there, she wouldn’t have been able to hear them. They could be sitting there right now, plotting what they were going to do with her and she wouldn’t have a clue.
It felt as though they’d been driving for hours already and she had no way of telling what time of day it was. She couldn’t free her wrists to check her watch. Would Scott know by now that she had been taken? What had he found when he’d gone back to the motel room?
She closed her eyes to shut out Mitch’s petrified face. She had to focus all of her energy on getting away from the hikers. She couldn’t allow herself to be overwhelmed by nightmares. Instead, she tried to concentrate on the momentum of the van. The movement was smooth and steady so they had to be on a main road, probably the interstate. There was no slowing down, only the occasional swerve from side to side. It didn’t feel as though they were driving particularly fast, although she was disorientated and couldn’t tell for sure.
Ellen didn’t need to wonder where they were taking her. She’d known instinctively in her gut from the moment the hikers had thrown her in the back of the van. They were taking her to their father.
The idea of meeting the Master filled her with a sick dread, and the prospect of seeing him face-to-face, alone, made her stomach contract painfully. She’d never once imagined she would have to face him by herself. She needed the support of Scott and Mitch. What was she supposed to do? She had no way of killing him. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to keep him out of her head. She wasn’t particularly well practiced in the art of blocking her mind from them yet.
She lay there, in an awkward position, and stared at the ceiling. The one huge question she did have was why had the hikers only taken her? Why wasn’t Mitch tied up in the van with her?
It was possible that the hikers had come for them all – there were three after all – only they’d panicked when they realised Scott wasn’t there and had just taken her. But that still didn’t answer why they had left Mitch behind. Unless they wanted him to stay to tell Scott what had happened? But why? Would they send more hikers for the other two?
She closed her eyes again and tried to think through her fuzzy mind. She had been the one to shoot the two hikers with the venom and bring them down, and the one before with the insulin. The Master might want her first to inflict some extra pain for what she had done. That idea didn’t exactly help in keeping her calm.
There were beads of sweat on her forehead and her hands were clammy. It was hot in the back of the van and she felt light-headed. It would do her no favours to faint during this journey. She needed to remember how long they were driving for, and any changes in the road surface. She took slow, shallow breaths until the dizzy sensation passed.
She only had herself to blame for this predicament really; she hadn’t sensed the hikers coming to the motel. Or rather, she thought she hadn’t. Now she went through it again, there had been a tight feeling in the pit of her stomach but she’d attributed that to nerves and worry about what Scott was up to in the hospital. She’d been thinking about nothing but his safety and hadn’t considered that hers could be in jeopardy. She’d accidently ignored the one advantage she had over them. It was the fact there had been multiple hikers that had confused her. If she’d realised what the feeling was earlier, she could’ve gotten Mitch to safety.
She stopped herself from going any further along the guilt path. ‘Stay strong,’ she whispered out loud. ‘Keep your head clear.’
She shifted on the floor and felt something sharp dig into her back. She twisted round to see what the offending item was. There was a small nail nestled on the scratchy carpet. It was thin and silver, no longer than her little finger, but it was a potential weapon. And right now, any weapon would do.
She didn’t have any pockets, and she couldn’t lift her jumper to tuck the nail into the waistband of her leggings with her hands bound behind her. She manoeuvred her body and stretched her fingers to pick up the sharp little dagger. Her jumper had long sleeves and she wiggled her hands to tug up one sleeve then pushed the nail underneath the thin strap of her watch. She thanked god she had put it on when she’d changed before dropping Scott at the hospital.
The nail poked against her skin however it was secure and she pulled her jumper back down to conceal it. She wasn’t sure how much use something so small would be – you couldn’t kill someone like the Master with that – but it made her feel safer to have it on her. A tiny sliver of reassurance.
She lay back down on her side and resumed trying to free her han
ds from the rope. She would bide her time and wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.
Ellen sat up with a start. Had she been asleep? The van was still dark and rumbling along at a steady pace. It could have been minutes later, or even hours, there was no way of telling. How on earth had she dozed off?
Her whole body was stiff and her arms ached from the effort of trying to untie herself. She pursed her lips and felt the skin on her cheeks pull painfully. The right one was tender and no doubt had an ugly bruise blooming. She wished she’d managed to fight more and inflict some of her own pain back.
Ellen stretched her arms out behind her to get some circulation going and tried to concentrate. She didn’t think they’d stopped anywhere while she’d been asleep or she would have been awoken by the change in motion. She just didn’t have a clue how long they’d been on the road for now. If they were nearly there. Was it still even the same day? She stared into the darkness blankly but it held no answers.
Nothing changed for what felt like an eternity. Eventually the van began to slow and made a few sharp turns. Ellen had to lean against the side to keep from being flung around. The road got more uneven until the van was bouncing along, and she struggled to keep her balance. Finally, it came to an abrupt stop and the engine died.
Ellen sat in the gloom, barely breathing. She’d been anticipating this for hours but now the moment was here, she felt more scared than she ever had in her life. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably, although she was determined not to let them see how terrified she truly was. She fixed her gaze on the van doors and waited.
They didn’t fling open, as she expected, instead the left door opened slowly, followed by the right. Ellen was surprised to see it was dark outside. They’d been driving all afternoon and into the night. Where were Scott and Mitch right now? Were they going to come for her?