by Jane Blythe
“What are you doing here in the middle of the day?” Maggie asked.
“We have a crime scene,” Abe replied, and from the look in his hazel eyes it was a bad one. “I don’t know what time I’m going to be back so I’m going to leave the car here so you can go home when you’re finished your shift,” he told her.
“Oh,” she said. Disappointment flooded through her to know he wouldn’t be picking her up and they wouldn’t be spending the evening together. “Okay.”
“The house is unlocked, make yourself at home. I don’t know what time I’ll be back tonight, it might be late. If you feel safer you can lock the doors when you go to bed. I have a key on me,” he rattled off. “Are you going to be okay on your own?”
Was she going to be okay on her own?
What kind of question was that for someone who had been on their own for as long as they could remember?
She would be okay, and yet … she’d miss him.
It was silly, he would be home at some point, and when she ran it hadn’t been expecting to find someone who would very quickly mean something to her. But she had. Abe could be everything she had ever wanted, but the truth was she still didn’t really know him, and she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes she had before.
So it was time to pull up her big girl panties again.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured Abe, and for some strange reason she actually believed it. Maybe the kind words he had spoken to her in the car this morning were starting to seep in. Maybe she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. Maybe it wasn’t the be-all and end-all that she find someone to love her. Maybe she could be on her own and still be okay.
* * * * *
2:16 P.M.
Carla strained her ears.
Silence.
But was it real silence or a deceptive silence?
Sometimes when you tried really hard to listen out for sounds your mind created them out of thin air to confuse you.
She hated that.
It was like her own body was working against her, the betrayal stung almost more deeply than his had.
She strained some more, she was positive it was quiet. He was gone, but for how long? He could come back at any second, and if he found out what she was going to do, he was likely to beat her into a bloody pulp, killing her just because she wanted to cling to her life.
He would think it was funny.
Carla could imagine him standing over her dead body, chuckling to himself that her will to live had caused her death.
Well, she wasn’t going to give him that pleasure.
She wasn’t going to give him any more pleasure.
She wasn’t going to just sit here and wait for him to play with her until he got bored and then kill her. For all his talk of wanting to train her to make her just the way he wanted her to be, she didn’t really see him lasting that long.
He wanted to take her life.
He wanted to claim her soul, and he was too angry to wait long to do it.
Carla had never seen a person as angry as him. He hid it well, she hadn’t caught even a glimpse of it before she had willingly gone to him, but once he got her alone it had shone through so brightly it was blinding. His anger was like the sun, it burned your skin, it stole your sight if you looked at it, it made you want to shrivel in a ball, seeking any sort of shade you could just to hide from its strength.
Five days.
Had it really been only five days?
It felt like she had been his prisoner for a lifetime. She had certainly aged a lifetime in those five days.
But five days were enough.
When he had left earlier, he left her restrained, naked, her hands tied together and then to the bar above the bath where the shower curtain hung. He had filled the bath with ice water and left her to stand in it, thinking it would torture her.
And it would have.
If she was standing in it.
But she was a gymnast, her small stature and the hours of training she had put into it meant she was good. Good enough that she had been able to lift her body weight up and out of the water, now she balanced on the edge of the bath, and the extra height had allowed her to see her bound hands. It had taken much longer than she had hoped, but she had managed to get the ropes mostly untied.
Any moment now she was going to be free.
And there it was.
With one more tug, the rope came undone.
There was no time to waste, he could return at any second, and if he didn’t find her standing with her feet in a bath filled with ice, he was going to be furious.
Between his beatings and whippings and the vicious way he had raped her, Carla was sore and stiff and moving was hard, but she wasn’t stopping, not for anything. If she wanted her life then she was going to have to fight for it.
The clothes she had been wearing five days ago when she walked into the lion’s den were long since gone, and he hadn’t given her anything else to wear so she was going to have to run naked. Humiliation and embarrassment had no place in her current situation so she shoved them away. This was about saving her life, and right now, nothing else mattered.
Ever since the night he had taken her they had been traveling. She wasn’t sure where and she didn’t really care, all she wanted was out of this room. He kept her drugged, bound, gagged and blindfolded in the trunk of his car when they traveled. She guessed he didn’t want to take any chances of her alerting anyone to her presence, so she had no idea where they were. She always woke up inside a cheap motel room.
From the way he made her scream the motel rooms he chose must be remote, so when she managed to stagger out of the small, dirty bathroom, and then through the small, dirty bedroom, she wasn’t surprised to find nothing but forest surrounding her. Carla didn’t care, there had to be people around someplace fairly close by so all she had to do was run.
She would gladly run for hours, naked, through the cold forest if it just meant that she found safety and the end of her journey.
Carla spun in a circle, trying to figure out which way was the best direction to go if she wanted to find someone quickly. She picked a direction at random when she couldn’t figure out a better plan. She had never really been an outdoorsy girl, and the forest all looked the same to her.
Just as she started running she heard it.
The rev of a car engine.
He was back.
Sparing only a second to throw a glance over her shoulder to confirm that indeed her abductor had arrived and was climbing out of his car right this very second, she ran.
The thundering behind her said that he was following, and close on her tail.
She didn’t stop, she didn’t even slow. She was pumped so high on adrenalin that she didn’t feel the sticks and stones that tore at her feet, or the branches that ripped at her hair and her skin as she darted around trees.
The footsteps got louder.
He was gaining on her.
She had barely eaten in five days, been drugged numerous times, raped and tortured, she was no match for him.
He was going to win.
Carla knew that and yet she didn’t falter in her drive.
Drive had made her be the best gymnast she could be, it had led her to study hard and make grades good enough to get a college scholarship. Drive had helped her through everything she had ever done in her life and she wasn’t giving up now, it wasn’t in her nature.
Her abductor didn’t say anything, he didn’t yell at her to stop, he didn’t threaten her, he just ran, and Carla took that to mean that they were close enough to people that he was worried about someone overhearing him.
People were around here somewhere, she was sure of it.
There.
Up ahead.
The trees were thinning out a little.
As she got closer she saw a building with a light on inside it. She could see the glow of it in the overcast day.
So close.
She was so close, but just as
she thought she truly stood a chance at getting away he slammed into her, knocking them both to the ground.
The landing was hard, and his big body landing on top of her shoved the air from her lungs. Pain shot up through her wrists and knees, flooding her whole body until she was just one great big burning pile of agony.
“I didn’t find that amusing,” he growled in her ear. He was breathing hard, and she could feel his chest heaving, Carla took some satisfaction from the fact that she had made him work to take her life.
He flipped her around onto her back, pinning her down as he straddled her hips. Carla glared up at him defiantly, she was done begging, she was done trying to please him in the vain hope that he would let her go.
That wasn’t happening.
If he was going to kill her, she would rather he hurry up and get it over and done with.
Somehow he must have sensed that because he nodded. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, and easily replaceable,” he sneered. “You want death so badly then you can have it.” Standing, he dragged her up with him and then he yanked rope—which he seemed to have an unending supply of—from his pocket. He looped it around her neck in such a way that when he prodded her to start walking it pulled tight, strangling her if she got too far ahead of him.
He walked her back through the forest the way they had come, and now that she wasn’t running for her life she noticed how beautiful it was out there. Carla wished she had spent more time out in nature, letting the beauty of the natural world inspire her.
It was too late now.
It was too late for a lot of things, but at least she knew her family would be proud of how hard she had fought. She was strong, not strong enough to defeat this evil man, but strong enough to know that he hadn’t destroyed her.
It wasn’t much, but it was something to take with her to whatever lay beyond this world.
* * * * *
4:25 P.M.
Meadow yawned.
It had to be the thousandth time today.
She was exhausted, too much stress these last few days, and too many horrors these last few years, and it felt like all at once it was catching up with her. She felt like she could lie down—anywhere—close her eyes and sleep for about a month.
A small delighted moan escaped her lips at the thought of it.
It had probably been five years since she had last had a good night’s sleep, a night that hadn't been filled with fear and nightmares and the anxiety that she had done something wrong even though she was asleep and not in control of her actions.
Would that fear ever leave her?
It had been six days since she had run, and so far, that fear had only gotten worse. She kept expecting that at any second she would turn around and see him standing there.
Waiting for her.
Ready to grab her and drag her back to that house where she and her baby would be forced to stay the rest of their lives. Captives. His captives. Powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do to them.
Maybe with time things would improve. It hadn’t even been a week yet, of course she was still on edge, anxious, twitchy, nervous. That was perfectly normal, but in time, maybe after months or years had passed that fear would fade, and she wouldn’t have to live her life looking over her shoulder.
It was a nice thought but …
She wasn’t sure that it would ever happen.
She had been with him for too long, his prisoner, his pet, his favorite toy, and his hold on her was probably too strong to ever be broken.
But it couldn’t hurt to hope.
Another yawn caught her by surprise and the knife which she was using to dice tomatoes ready for tonight’s dinner at the hotel slipped and nicked her finger. It wasn’t deep, but it was deep enough to start bleeding, and she quickly hurried over to the sink, grabbing a piece of paper towel on the way.
“That’s it, you’re going home,” Maggie announced, appearing behind her.
“What?” Meadow ran cold water over the cut and watched as the blood joined the water and dribbled down the sink.
“You’ve been standing here for hours yawning, and now you cut yourself. You’re pregnant and exhausted and scared that whoever you’re running from will track you down, you should go home, go to bed, try to sleep.”
“I’m supposed to be here until five,” she protested, turning the tap off and wrapping the paper towel around her finger.
“It’s okay, we can cover you.”
“You shouldn’t have to cover for me, I’ve only been here two days, and besides I kind of need the money,” she said, dipping her eyes in embarrassment.
Maggie waved off her concerns. “It’s fine, it’s only thirty minutes early, I won’t dock your pay, and really we can cope without you.”
“Are you sure?” As much as she didn’t want to be lazy and a bad employee, especially when she had only been here for two days, and she was in desperate need of the cash, the idea of going back to Abe’s, curling up in the bed in his spare bedroom, and just sleep was very appealing.
“Of course I’m sure. Stick a Band-Aid on that and then go home. I’ll see you in the morning,” Maggie said firmly.
Well, she couldn’t argue with her boss. “Thank you.”
Maggie smiled. “You’re welcome.”
By the time Meadow walked over to the first aid kit and grabbed a Band-Aid the cut had mostly stopped bleeding, so she quickly put it on, threw away the paper towel, and then went to the counter where she’d been working. She sterilized the knife, then the counter, and threw the tomatoes in the bin.
With a weary sigh, she grabbed her coat and purse and headed out the door. It had been a long time since she had driven a car, let alone a large truck, and she was a little anxious about driving Abe’s back to his place. Since she didn't have a choice, she unlocked it, climbed in, and started the engine.
It roared to life, and she almost backed out and decided that she would just stay here until Abe was done with work and could pick her up, but she had already decided that this was a big girl panties kind of day, so she put both hands on the steering wheel and started driving.
Once she got going it wasn’t so bad, and by the time she turned onto Main Street, she was actually feeling pretty pleased with herself. The street was busy today, buzzing with people, and since she had mostly driven along here early in the morning or later at night after most of the stores closed it was nice to see the place busy.
This really was the most adorable town, and if she had to stay somewhere she was glad she’d chosen here. The place was so small that she was sure it really wasn’t possible for him to find her here; if she kept telling herself that then who knows, she might actually come to believe it at some point.
Leaving the main street, she headed up into the forest, it was only another mile and then she would be turning into Abe’s driveway. She wondered if she could figure out how to light a fire. It was cold and sitting beside the crackling wood, watching the flames dance about would be a nice way to fall asleep.
Meadow was distracted, and she didn’t see the car coming in the opposite direction, aiming right for her, until it was almost upon her.
With a shriek she yanked hard on the wheel, sending Abe’s truck skidding off the road and slamming into a tree.
The impact hit her hard.
Her chest yanked against the seatbelt as she was thrown forward, and her head hit the steering wheel with enough force for her to see stars.
He had found her.
She had no idea how that was even possible, but he had.
The truck that had almost run her off the road had pulled to a stop, and she could see someone climbing out.
He was coming for her.
He was going to throw her into his vehicle and drive off with her, and no one would ever see her alive again.
The man—dressed all in black but she knew who he was—was walking toward her.
Stalking would be a more appropriate word.
; Stalking toward her with a pompous arrogance that said he was going to get what he wanted.
He always got what he wanted.
Meadow fought with her seatbelt, trying to get it undone with hands that were shaking too hard to be anything even remotely helpful.
She had to run.
She had to get away from him.
He was getting closer.
Then all of a sudden, another truck stopped in the street, voices spoke, and the man who had run her off the road turned and headed back for his truck. A second later its tires screeched and it took off down the road.
He was gone.
Gone.
Was she really that lucky?
Could he really have taken off?
“Miss?”
A face appeared beside her, and she shrieked.
What if he had sent someone to kidnap her?
“This is Abe’s truck. Are you that girl he has staying with him? The one with the pretty name, Meadow, isn’t it? I’m Darren Sutton. I live on the property next to Abe’s. Are you okay?”
How did he know her?
Was he lying?
No, River’s End was a small town, no doubt the gossip mills had already made sure that every resident in the vicinity knew about her.
“S-someone r-r-ran me o-off th-the r-r-road,” she stuttered. Her heart was hammering so hard in her chest she was sure he must be able to see it. With each beat it sent knifing pain through her chest.
“That guy that took off when we got here?” Mr. Sutton asked.
“Y-yes.”
“Hey, Bill, you get the license of the truck that just took off?” he called over his shoulder.
“Yeah, it fled the scene of an accident,” Bill called back.
“It wasn’t no accident,” Mr. Sutton told him. “He ran Sheriff Abe’s guest off the road. We’ll call an ambulance, miss, get you to the hospital to get checked out.”
No.
She wasn’t going to any hospital.
She had to get to Abe’s.
That was the only place she felt safe.
“No, no, it’s okay, I’m okay,” she said in a rush, finally managing to wrestle the seatbelt undone and stagger out of the car.