I pulled out the phone again and looked at the signal. No bars. I decided to distract myself by snooping. I called up the camera roll and started going through his pictures. They looked like pictures you’d find on any regular guy’s phone. A barbeque, a baseball game, and one featuring the kidnapper front and center, with poker chips piled high in front of him.
Again, I was struck by how “normal” he appeared. How uncreepy and non-kidnapper-ish he seemed. He was the most dangerous kind of criminal of all because no one would suspect him. No one would be inclined to believe any accusations against him.
I flipped through a few more of the photos when one had me gripping the phone until the bones in my fingers ached.
It was of a young blond woman. She was smiling, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were haunted, they were sad… and they were also a little empty.
Around her neck was the locket I’d found in the dirt—the one now in my pocket.
My stomach roiled. Bile rose up in my throat and I dropped the phone and lurched to the side and heaved violently. Nothing came up because my stomach was empty. I made hideous sounds and the pain of retching had me collapsing onto the dirt floor and curling into a ball.
I lay there for a long time, feeling the cold dirt against my cheek and keeping my eyes closed, hoping I might wake up and find this was all dream.
Eventually, the uncomfortableness of my position made me roll over onto my back and stare up at the black sky.
Only there wasn’t just black sky to look at.
There was something pale in my line of sight.
My heart rate accelerated when my eyes made out the shape of a man.
Nathan! He’d come for me after all!
“I told you I’d come back,” intoned a voice from above.
Chills crawled up my spine and I shivered. That wasn’t Nathan. It was my kidnapper.
“I had planned on leaving you down here for the night,” he called. Funny how his voice didn’t seem that far away; it seemed as though it was very close, and I reminded myself that he was up there and I was down here. For once, I didn’t mind being down in this hole.
When I didn’t respond to his comments, he spoke again.
“But it seems I have misplaced something. I came back to see if you had something of mine?”
My eyes darted to where the phone lay on the ground. It was facedown and the case was black. I knew he wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Are you talking about your heart?” I snapped. “Cause I’m pretty sure you weren’t even born with one.”
“Feisty.” He chuckled. “I like feisty. It turns me on.”
Gag. Me. With. A. Spoon.
“It seems my cell phone has gone missing,” he said. “You don’t have it down there, do you?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t still be here,” I yelled.
“Well, that’s good. Because I would hate to have to move up my timeline and just kill you now.”
His timeline?
Something told me that being killed now versus later was probably the better option.
“I’m going to send down a rope ladder. Climb up,” he said.
I wanted to laugh. Yeah, right. And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass.
It was almost cute the way he tossed down the rope ladder and adjusted it so I could climb right up.
If pigs with mustaches and goatees were cute.
“Come on,” he instructed.
“No.”
The silence that followed my one-word reply was almost comical.
“What did you say?”
“I said I would rather sit down here and rot and die than climb up there and be any closer to you,” I spat.
I heard his rough inhale and I knew I pissed him off.
Good. He pissed me off too.
“Get. Up. Here. Now.”
“Why? So you can rape and murder me? No thanks. I’m not really feeling much like rape and murder today.”
“You little bitch.”
“I thought you said you liked my feisty attitude.” I mocked. I knew I should shut up, but I found myself with a severe case of diarrhea of the mouth.
I sat down to punctuate my intention of doing exactly what he told me not to do. As I sat, I slowly pulled the phone into my palm and then crossed my hands over my chest, hiding it beneath my arm.
“How rude of me,” he said in a conversational tone. “I realize my mistake.”
Then he disappeared, leaving the rope hanging there, taunting me with freedom. I knew better. He probably wanted me to think he left so I would climb up to my doom.
While he was gone, I shoved the phone up my sleeve and then hooked my thumb through the little hole made into the arm. Hopefully that would be enough to keep the phone hidden.
A few minutes later, something hit me in the head.
I looked up only to see something else plummeting toward me, and I ducked just in time to avoid being hit in the face.
“What the hell?” I muttered and reached out to pick up the items he chucked down the hole at me.
My hand closed around one of the slightly textured, round items. It was an orange.
The crazy ass threw two oranges at me.
“I get grumpy when I don’t eat, too,” he said, like the reason I didn’t feel like dying was because of low blood sugar.
There weren’t enough M&Ms in the world for that. An orange sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.
My stomach rumbled at the sight of it. I was tempted to peel it and dig in. But my writer’s brain kicked in. He might have used a syringe and injected it with some sort of deadly poison.
I think I’d rather starve.
“Eat,” he commanded.
I stood and threw the orange back up at him.
I was a girl. I threw like a girl.
The orange came back down and made a plopping sound at my feet.
“I would eat that if I were you,” he growled.
I didn’t bother to reply. I was exhausted, and fighting with him made it worse. I needed to save my strength for getting away.
I sat down in the dirt just as more thunder rolled overhead. I wished it would rain. I wished it would lightning and thunder and a storm of epic proportions would rage. It would chase him away. He would be forced to leave me here and not come back ‘til morning.
Maybe by then, Nathan would have found me.
If he was even looking.
Let’s face it here. My situation was pretty bleak. I was depending on a guy that I met through my kidnapper’s phone. I highly doubted that he kept upstanding citizens as company. I more than likely texted his partner in crime. The pair of them had a good laugh at my expense and then creepy up there came back to throw oranges at my head and then murder me.
This wasn’t one of my romance novels.
A dashing, romantic hero wasn’t going to come riding up on his white horse and save me.
I was going to end up on the eleven o’clock news.
“Come on,” the man above demanded.
“No!” I shouted.
“Fine!” he snapped. “If you won’t come up, then I’ll come down. It’s a small space, but I’m sure we’ll find room.”
I shot to my feet. “I’m coming up.”
He was already descending the ladder. I calculated my chances of yanking him off and beating him up before he overpowered me. Yes, he was bigger. Yes, he had weight on his side.
But I was seriously pissed.
(And I wanted to live to get a dog.)
“Fine, then. Hurry up. Or I’m coming down.”
He went back up to ground level and stood, staring down. All I could see was the round paleness of his face against the dark backdrop of night. I walked over to the ladder and hunched over a little, acting as if I were defeated. Quickly, I pulled out the phone and shot off one last text to Nathan, taking a risk that maybe he was going to help me like he said.
“I’m waiting,” he said angrily.
I tucked t
he phone back inside my sleeve and started to climb. I was freezing and surprisingly weak. It made climbing hard. I wasn’t a large person, but I slipped a few times and my weight seemed like a lot to haul up a thirty-foot hole.
I took my time, trying to drag out the minutes while trying to formulate some sort of plan. The only plan I could come up with involved not dying.
I guess that meant as soon as my feet touched the ground, I needed to run like hell.
And hide. Hiding might be good.
He got impatient the closer I got and suddenly the rope ladder began to sway as he dragged it upward, bringing me with it. I started to slip and I gripped the rope tighter. The friction between the dirt wall and my fingers ripped open the skin on my knuckles. I bit my lip instead of crying out because I was still standing by my decision of not giving this guy one second of satisfaction.
When I got to the top, he gave the ladder one great yank and I spilled out over the lip, landing hard against my side and sharp pain radiating through my body. I was pretty sure at least a couple of my ribs were broken, and I was staring at the reason why.
Black boots (or shit kickers as some people might say) stepped into my line of vision, and anger swelled within me. It was those boots that nailed me in the ribs; it was those boots that snapped my bones.
I ignored the fierce burning of my scraped knuckles and pushed up onto my knees. He grabbed my hair and yanked me to my feet.
“This isn’t the Stone Age,” I griped. “You aren’t a caveman. Quit pulling my hair.”
Surprisingly, he let go of my ponytail.
Then he backhanded me across the face. I really, really hoped my other eye didn’t swell shut. I kind of needed it to see.
“I’ve had enough of your attitude.”
I’d had quite enough of his hitting, but I decided against saying so.
He moved to strike me again. My reflexes were faster. I threw my arm up to block the hit and then I kicked him in the shin.
I took off running, not knowing which direction to go, but not caring. Anywhere was better than here.
He tackled me (hadn’t we played this out before?) and I fell, my face bouncing off the ground. The wind howled around us as my hand closed over a stick, and when he rolled me over, I swung it right at his head.
The tip of the makeshift weapon grazed his cheek and he grunted. Then he grabbed me around the wrist and yanked my arm away. He dug his fingers into my arm until I knew there would be bruises and he bent my wrist until the stick fell out of my grasp.
“What is this?” he asked, leaning down so even in the darkness I could see the wildness in his eyes. “What have you been hiding?”
His hand groped the shape of his phone beneath my sleeve.
I began to struggle, to kick and hit, to scream and shout. It wasn’t enough to throw him off me, and he forced the phone—his phone—out of my sleeve.
He looked between me and the phone for long, seemingly endless seconds. The weight of his large frame pushed me into the ground, and my breath wheezed in and out of my lungs, every single inhale and exhale hurting.
Slowly, he reached out and unzipped my jacket.
My mind swam with ways I could kill him, with ways I could cause him pain.
“Get off me,” I ground out.
He laughed.
His free hand pushed away the sides of my jacket, baring the white shirt I wore beneath. He made a tsking sound. “So many clothes you wear.”
Then his hand closed over my breast. It was an effort to remain impassive as he roughly kneaded my skin.
He didn’t even seem to notice he was fondling my breasts (thank God I was wearing a shirt and a sports bra) because he was too busy looking at his phone.
Please, Lord, don’t let him look at the call history or the texts.
I knew the second he saw one or the other. His hand gripped my tender flesh and squeezed until I almost cried out. I knocked at his hand, dislodging the worst of his grip.
“You called 9-1-1?” he said, his voice low and flat.
Fear skittered along my nerve endings and the hair on the back of my neck stood tall.
“What did you tell them?” he said, looking at me over the phone.
I remained silent. My hand was lightly feeling around for a rock or another stick.
He gripped the front of my shirt and yanked me up so his face was inches from mine. “What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.” I lied. “I couldn’t get through. Your phone is a piece of shit.”
He shoved me back onto the ground. My ears rang when my head recoiled off the ground. He was doing something on the phone again… I knew I needed to distract him.
Using all the energy I could muster, I twisted my entire body like I was rolling over. I knocked him over a bit and I jerked up, trying to get out from under him.
He leaned down, lying on top of me, using his entire body as a weight. His breath was hot against my ear. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he began. “I’m already very angry.”
I froze beneath him. Feeling his entire body against mine was disgusting. I was pinned down, completely at his will, and it made me sick.
He stoked my hair as he scrolled through the phone. Every once in a while, he would lick my ear. After a few minutes, his body went rigid.
I knew he found the texts.
Why hadn’t I deleted them after I sent them?
His teeth closed over the sensitive flesh of my ear and he bit down. Hard.
I let loose a scream before I could stop myself. I felt my skin break and blood begin to ooze.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he shouted, rearing up.
He scrambled up and yanked me to my feet. I tried to run, but he pulled me back.
“You just sealed your fate,” he spat. “What a pity too. I was so looking forward to getting to know that body of yours.”
He hit me again, sending me flying backward onto the ground. I reached out for a stick, a rock, or something, but he leaped on me. He straddled my middle and then threw the phone behind my head. It hit a tree, and I heard it break.
The shattering of that phone took away any last hope of survival I had.
He reached behind him and pulled out something.
A very long, very sharp-looking knife.
“This is going to hurt,” he promised.
My arms were pinned at my sides beneath his legs and my hands dug into the earth as he dragged the blade down the center of my chest.
I kicked up my legs, trying to bring them high enough to kick him in the back of the head. He laughed and pushed the blade against me harder.
I swallowed thickly and squeezed my eyes shut.
Death was here.
14
Nathan
The sound of her scream had me spinning away from the direction I was heading and sent me running.
She was here. She was close. She screamed for a reason.
I prayed I wasn’t too late and I moved stealthily over the uneven ground, dodging trees and branches as I ran. My heart rate wasn’t erratic. My breathing was steady.
I was trained for this. I was trained to search through the woods, to find my way. I was trained to keep cool in bad situations. I was trained to run toward the danger and not away.
I heard Lex yell, his voice sounding more maniacal than I ever thought he was capable of, and I drew up, stopping my mad dash. I crept through the night, keeping my eyes peeled for a flash of movement, for the outline of a man.
Lightning cracked overhead, illuminating the sky, and it reflected off the wicked-looking blade of a knife.
In that split second, my brain processed the scene before me and sketched it out in my head as the sky went dark once more.
Lex had her pinned to the ground as she kicked her legs to no avail. He produced a knife, one that I had no doubt he had nefarious plans for. I thought about pulling out my pistol and taking a shot.
But the girl was wiggling too much; she was kickin
g too hard. What if I accidentally shot her? She was already wounded enough. I left my gun tucked in the waistband of my jeans and rushed forward. I had the element of surprise and the fact he was distracted immensely on my side.
I was on him before he realized his mistake. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and yanked him off her, tossing him onto the ground and then driving my fist into his jaw. It felt really good to punch this sick bastard in the face.
I got in another really good hit before Lex recovered and realized what was happening. With a great roar, he swiped at me with the knife. I pulled back in time to avoid the blade, and he leapt to his feet.
I heard movement behind me and I knew it was Honor, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I kept my eyes trained on Lex and his knife.
“You should have stayed out of it,” he spat.
“It’s over. Just put the knife down.”
In response, he lunged forward, swinging the blade. I spun away, but not before the edge caught on the sleeve of my jacket. The fabric made a sharp ripping sound.
I moved quickly, slamming my arm down across his elbow and making the knife drop to the ground. Then I kicked him in the kneecap and he stumbled.
Both of us pulled out a pistol at the same time. I trained mine on his chest. He trained his on Honor.
“Drop the gun,” I demanded.
“I’ll shoot her before you even pull the trigger,” he said around a sick smile.
“Run,” I told Honor.
When I didn’t hear the scuffle of rushing feet, I yelled, “Run!”
I heard her then, retreating away from us.
Lex pulled the trigger. The sound of a bullet discharging from his weapon filled the air around us. Then he swung the gun at me and squeezed off a shot. I dove to the side and shot off a bullet of my own.
He went down at the same time I did. His bullet missed me, but I prayed to God mine hit him. He didn’t move, and I hoped that meant he was injured.
I heard Honor yell my name, and I pushed off the ground and ran toward her yell. The chances of her being shot were high. If she was injured, I would need to get her out of here stat.
I saw the flash of her white shirt just ahead, and I dropped to my knees beside her.
“Are you hit?”
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