I curled myself up into a ball and tried to slither my body around so I could grab the cables. The trunk wasn’t exactly built for a human body or anything, but it was still large enough for me to maneuver in. I scrambled for a moment, got my hands around the cables, and paused, my ears perked up and listening.
If Derrick found me out of place, he’d start to wonder what I was doing. And I didn’t want to find out what his reaction would be in that case—especially if I was still bound with the duct tape.
Finally, I had them securely in my hands.
I swallowed hard as I moved them around towards the ends, and squeezed the handles to open up the teeth.
As I began to saw through the duct tape, though, I stopped.
The door opened as Derrick came back outside.
Panic nearly froze me, but I kept going, deciding that whatever fate awaited me at the end of this trip couldn’t be any worse than the consequences of him catching me. Almost there, I thought, almost there.
The screen door swung open and he paused on the deck, or stairs, or whatever.
I continued to saw. Continued to try and gain my freedom.
“No, Ma! No! I told you, I’ll be home soon, okay? Meatloaf after I get home, okay? Promise!”
I swallowed hard and tossed the cables aside.
I heard heavy footfalls on wood as he came back down to the gravel drive.
I scrambled as softly as I could, trying to get back into place, muffling my grunts as I shifted back around by one hundred-eighty degrees, to the position I’d been in before.
I heard more footsteps on the gravel as he came back around to the trunk.
I swallowed hard, consciously tried to look meek and broken, instead of on the verge of escape.
He inserted the keys in the trunk of my car and popped the latch.
I closed my eyes and tried to turn away from the blinding light that I knew was coming.
The smell of kerosene, or diesel, hit my nose. I wasn’t sure which.
I opened one eye and looked up at him.
He was still silhouetted against the bright, Colorado sky, the faded blue forming a deceiving halo around him. He held a red metal gas canister in one hand, the kind you used when you were going out to get gas for your snowmobile or lawn mower.
I kept my face slightly turned away in fear. It wasn’t like I had to pretend to pull that off.
He stared down at me and sniffed once. The canister in his hand shifted, the liquid inside sloshing, as he looked down on me with disdain.
“Wh-wh-what’s that?” I asked, my voice trembling. I knew full well what it was, though, and the terror was coursing through me like the Colorado River.
“D-d-diesel,” he mocked as he shoved the canister in next to my head, before slamming the door shut with another thunderous bang.
I breathed a shaky sigh of relief, my whole body on edge as he walked back around to the driver’s side.
On his way to the driver’s seat, though, I could clearly him muttering. “Stupid bitch,” he said. “Stupid fucking bitch.” He got in the car, slammed the door shut, and started it up.
Carefully, I tore the bonds holding my wrists together, separating my arms for the first time in what had felt like hours. I held back my groan of relief.
He flipped the radio back on and turned the music all the way up.
I rubbed my wrists quietly, a soft whine escaping my throat as I tried to figure out my next move. Once we got onto the road, I’d have to wait for him to pull over again. If he drove on the highway like all the other locals during the summer, jumping from the trunk wasn’t going to be an option.
I might not have known why he was doing this, but I knew one thing for sure. This was not going to end well.
Chapter Forty-seven – Matthew
“Think, Chief,” I said. “Where the hell would he go?”
“Back home, maybe? He kidnapped her, right? Maybe he’d want to take her some place he could…well, you know.”
I bit the inside of my mouth, not wanting to even consider what the chief had been alluding to. Jake, our resident ex-detective had told some horror stories from his days on the force, and I didn’t want Rebecca anywhere close to a recreation of any of those files.
“No,” I said firmly, “there’s something here we’re missing. When I told him that I thought it was about him being in love with her, he called me stupid. Said I didn’t get it.”
Up ahead on the left, we could see the smoke from the burning fire engine. A thick column of smoke, thick as a smokestack, rose into the sky over the area, and a lesser haze blanketed the whole region. We slowed down a little as we passed, checking to make sure everything was handled, but kept moving.
Sheriff Peak had caught a glance at us as we went driving by, and he radioed the chief to see what the hell was going on. Why weren’t we stopping? Why weren’t we at the Stokes’ place?
The chief reached down to the center of the dash and turned off his radio.
“Thanks,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. Having to deal with coordinating all the cops on this, and all the people who would want to help, would have just been too damned much. You put too many cooks in the kitchen, and you’re bound to come up with something that barely even resembles a damn meal.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Besides, figured you’d wanna handle this your own way once you find him.”
“Thought had crossed my mind,” I admitted, slightly ashamed.
“So, not at home?” Chief Beckett mused after a moment. “Maybe he stopped out that way, though, to grab some stuff?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s just up here on the left,” he said, “about a mile out. Dropped him off out here one time when his Jeep was in the shop and he was coming off a shift. Think we should pop in and say hi to his mom?”
I shook my head at first, trying to recall if he’d ever mentioned anything in passing. “He ever talk to you about his childhood? Anything like that? Places he might go?”
“Ah hell, Matt, I don’t know. I probably know you the best out of these guys, and I know jack shit about you. Just that you like fighting fires more than the next guy, and you served in the military. That’s about it.”
We sat there in a frustrated silence as I continued to go through all the evidence I’d collected.
Derrick had gone out of his way to hurt the people around Rebecca. First Zeke and his livelihood, then me. It’s like he was torturing her, trying to make her life miserable before he finally made his move.
“I know he didn’t want to come back,” Chief Beckett said finally. “He hated the Rock, hated his family.”
“He told you that?”
“Well, I got that feel from him, you know? I mean, we’d be in the kitchen or the dining room, just sitting around talking sometimes, and I could tell he’d been a lot happier working in the oil fields. Hell, even Fred asked him one time. ‘Hey, Derrick, you hate being here so much, why the hell are you here?’”
“What’d he say?”
“Family obligations.”
I scratched my chin as the wheels and gears slowly began to grind and turn inside my head. I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block, apparently, but eventually my mind would work things out. “That’s it,” I said. “I know where he’s taking her.”
“You sure?” the chief asked, giving me a sideways look.
“Positive. I know exactly where he’s going. But I need you to remember how to get there.”
Chapter Forty-eight – Rebecca
I swallowed hard as my car came to another stop, the tires crunching on the gravel beneath them. We’d pulled off the main road again, this time onto pavement for a moment or two, then crunched onto more gravel as we slowly took a steep incline.
We had gone over ruts and dips and potholes in the road, and I’d cringed and almost cried as my poor Civic bottomed out with a loud scrape of metal on stone. “My poor baby,” I whispered after a particularly bad one. “I’m so sorry.”
Now, though, we sat there for a minute longer, Derrick still in the driver’s seat. Maybe he was gathering his wits, or his will, and trying to convince himself to go through with this? As he sat there, doing whatever it was he was doing, I listened carefully to the bubbling of a nearby creek. There was only one creek this far south, and there was a point where the highway had to cross over it.
I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I had a plan. I tightened my grip on the jumper cables and gritted my teeth in preparation. I just had to make sure I didn’t freeze up.
The car door opened and shut, and he came back around to the trunk.
I shifted a little, trying to get my feet beneath me as quietly as possible.
He popped the key into the hole, turning it. The latch thunked and the lid began to rise, light creeping in around the edges just like before.
I took a deep breath as the lid rose and screamed as I leaped out, the metal clamps of the jumper cables swinging like the end of a rubber and metal whip.
He flung himself back, a look of absolute shock on his face.
I struck him hard across the face with the cables, tearing a gruesome cut into his cheek.
He yelled as he wheeled away, his hand on his cheek as crimson gore bled down his face and onto his shirt. “Fucking whore!” he screamed as he stood there, half-bent over, fist clenched to his face and the slab of meat that hung down. “Stupid fucking bitch!”
My mouth went dry and my body went cold. The whole time, my brain was screaming for me to run, run, run. And don’t look back!
“Jesus Christ,” he said, taking his hand away and looking down at it. A low groan rattled from his throat as he saw the blood covering his hand. “Fuck’s sake.” And then his eyes shifted from his bloody hand to my face.
I finally listened to my brain. I turned on my heel and sprinted across the gravel, rocks stabbing at my bare feet, flying out behind me as my soles pummeled them.
Behind me, he sprang into life. I heard the sound of heavy boots on rocks as he came charging, screaming my name.
I kept going, my lungs already burning hotter and hotter with each breath, my legs leaden and sagging beneath me.
Ahead of me, the gravel ended and gave way to thick pines and yellowing grass. Wildflowers, late bloomers for the season, were sprinkled throughout.
I ran straight for the pines, pushing through their needles and branches, my hot breath as loud in my ear as a locomotive, the chugging and puffing my own.
The pines scraped at my face and cut at my skin.
I barreled through, stumbling on an exposed root and twisting my ankle.
“Becks!” Derrick growled from behind me, closer than I’d expected. God, he was fast. Shit, he was too fast.
I crawled to my feet and kept going. When I put weight on the ankle, though, it gave out.
“Becks!”
I climbed back to my sore feet, teeth clenched through the searing pain that seemed to blot away everything else, and limped forward. One step, two steps.
More noise behind. “Becks!”
I didn’t look back. I just kept going. “Help me!” I screamed. “Someone help!”
More rustling and cursing at my back. A rod, or piece of hard steel, slapped across the side of my head.
Pain and fireworks exploded behind my eyes as the world seemed to momentarily go as dark as it had been in the trunk of my car. I tumbled to the ground, my hands cradling and protecting my head. I hit the forest floor, the pine needles sticking in my hair and stabbing my face as I rolled over on my side. God, what had he hit me with?
“You could have done this the easy way, Becks,” Derrick growled as he came to stand over me, his face a death masque of blood and exposed flesh that ran down to his neck and onto the collar of his shirt. In his right hand hung a pistol, slackly, as he heaved out his own agonizing breaths. “Could have done it the easy fucking way, but you just had to go for full marks on this, didn’t you? Just had to put up a fucking fight.”
“Derrick,” I groaned, my head throbbing. “Derrick, you don’t have to do any of this.”
He kicked me hard in the side, right in the kidneys.
Pain blossomed there, too, like some little biological oddity that just wanted to join existence with the throbbing agony in my head. I whimpered softly, trying to protect both of my sensitive spots, the pain joining together with the beat of my heart in a strange tattoo.
“Derrick,” I groaned again before coughing hard, nearly vomiting as the pine needles and dust filled my mouth and nose. “Derrick, just stop. We can go home.”
“Fuck you, Becks.” He reached down and grabbed a handful of my hair.
I screamed as I clutched at his hands, trying to pull his fingers from my locks.
He tightened his grip.
I tried harder to untangle his fingers, but only pulled out more of my own hair.
He began to pull me across the forest floor, back the way we’d come, towards my Civic and the gravel embankment on the shore of the creek. “Now,” he said as he dragged me across the root where I’d stumbled and twisted my ankle, “you’re going to understand what you put me through.”
Chapter Forty-nine – Matthew
“Can’t you drive any fucking faster, Chief?”
“What the hell you think this is? A Steve McQueen movie? I’m going as fast as I fucking can, Matt. This thing has a goddamn governor on it!”
We’d been biting back and forth like that for the last few miles, and it wasn’t doing anyone any good. But the longer we took, the longer Derrick had with my mate. And now I realized this had nothing to do with love or with happiness.
Instead, it had everything to do with misery and people being sucked back into lives they’d been trying to leave behind.
But, more importantly, it was about someone thinking the world owed them a debt. A debt that my true mate was going to be forced to pay.
“There,” Chief Beckett said as we came around a corner on the highway. Down below, where a side road left the main highway following a small creek and headed off towards a small cabin homestead, there was a grove of pines and spruce. “Right there. That’s where we found her car.”
“Well, don’t just fucking tell me,” I yelled, “take the turn!”
We were close, so close. I could practically smell her. I knew that had I been in my wolf form I would have seen her scent hovering over this whole place. But, seeing as how I was in human shape, I just had to go with my gut.
And my gut was saying this was the place. This was the place where everything had gone wrong with Derrick and his life. At least recently.
We plummeted off the highway, hitting the side road so hard the chief’s SUV scraped its muffler. We took the first available turn onto the gravel road.
“Hang on, Rebecca,” I muttered, “Hang on, babe, we’re coming.”
Chapter Fifty – Rebecca
“Why?” I cried as Derrick dropped me to the gravel at the back of my car.
“Because, Becks. You ruined my life.”
“Your life?” I cried, my head a mess of a pain, my ankle on fire, cuts up and down my arms and legs, pine needles and dead grass in my hair. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing to mine?”
“Exactly,” he said, standing above me. He reached up, gingerly touched the gaping wound on his cheek, and hissed. “Scars make you look cool, right?” he asked, looking at me hopefully. “Honestly?”
He was a psychopath. “Fuck you,” I growled, spitting blood on his boots. “Fuck you, Derrick. I wish you were fucking dead, you piece of shit.”
“Well, the feeling’s fucking mutual, Becks.” He stuffed the pistol in the back of his jeans. The pistol, I realized, that belonged to Matthew. He turned to the still-ajar trunk of my Civic and pulled out the red can of diesel. “Has been since you got my Aunt Mabel killed and dragged me right back to this shithole of a town, and that harpy of a woman that calls herself my mother.”
I swallowed hard, shaking my hea
d despite the pain, the rocks digging into my cheek. “Your Aunt Mabel? I didn’t even know you had an Aunt Mabel.”
He turned back to me, canister in hand. “Well, guess you do now.” He set the fuel down next to me and reached down for my hair again.
I tried to scramble away from him, but I was too slow.
He grabbed hold of my hair and began to drag me into a sitting position.
“Derrick!” I screamed, grabbing hold of his hand so he wouldn’t rip my hair out by the roots. “Stop!” I sat there, panting in pain as he set the diesel down next to me.
“Now,” he said, nudging it over the rocks towards me with a foot, “you’re going to pour this over yourself. So you can understand what pain is like.”
I just looked down at the can of fuel, eyeing it through my tears. “Fuck you, Derrick. I don’t even know what this is about!”
“Does it matter?” he asked, nearly spitting the words at me.
“Of course it matters! Why wouldn’t it?”
He sneered. “You know what? I guess you’re right. I want you to know exactly why I’m doing this.” He crouched down in front of me. “Aunt Mabel was going to be your substitute. She was the lady who died in the car accident on the way to your school last winter.”
I blinked slowly, the pain encompassing the entirety of my body. I shifted a little, not understanding, and a fiery streak of agony shot through my neck and scalp.
“What?” I asked, trying to shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
I remembered the accident that happened all those months ago. I’d been sick with the flu and couldn’t go into work. They’d called in a substitute, and some kind of accident had happened.
“Aunt Mabel was my mother’s sister,” he said, his colder-than-winter eyes staring into mine, “and was taking care of her. I was paying her, even. But sometimes she subbed at your school. When she died, there was no one to take care of my mother, so I had to come back.”
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