His long dark hair is tied together at the nape of his neck under his hat. I feel like I know this man, somehow, or maybe it’s just deja vu.
Regardless, I begin to relax. I have no business with the police. Not that they could possibly know of, anyway. Whatever the officer is here for is probably just a misunderstanding of some sort.
Maybe, it’s about one of my neighbors. One side is a drug den, and the other side is occupied by a couple who fight all hours of the day and night and scream more than they talk. It’s more likely that one killed the other and they’re looking for witnesses than me being in any sort of trouble.
Or so I think.
“I’ll leave you two alone to discuss this matter,” Principal Gregory says, reminding me of her presence. “I’ll be here to escort you out when you’re ready.” She flashes me a tight-lipped smile. An apology.
The officer waits until the door clicks shut to turn around to face me. I recognize him instantly as the man from the service station. Only now I can see his face more clearly. His dark gleaming eyes. The scar above his right eye. I’m intrigued by him the same way I was when I first spotted him.
The officer puts his hands on his belt and smirks. I return his smile, but drop it just as quickly when he speaks, his voice deep and raspy. “Hello, Frankie.”
My heart stops. My blood turns to ice. I can’t swallow. I can’t breathe.
He used my real name. He used my real fucking name.
I drop my books on the floor and dart back toward the door. I open my mouth to scream, but before a single sound escapes, he’s on me, covering my mouth with a hand that’s so large it covers most of my face. He pulls me back from the door, my hand still outstretched toward the handle that’s growing further and further away as he pulls me back. Tears prick at the back of my eyes, both from fright and from not being able to draw enough oxygen in through my nose.
My thoughts scramble together and bounce off the inside of my skull as my pulse spikes, and I grow dizzier and dizzier.
“Scream, and you’ll die,” he warns, his deep voice digging its way into my bones. “Make any noise at all, and you’ll die. Cross me, and you’ll fucking die.”
Something hard pokes me in my lower back. It only takes one glance at the reflection in the framed United States flag above Principal Gregory’s desk to see that the hard something he’s pressing into my spine is a gun.
This can’t be happening. Not now. Not yet. I made promises. I have things to finish.
I struggle against him, but he only pulls me tighter against his hard, massive chest. He pulls on my arm and cuffs my wrist behind my back with one hand while the other stays firmly over my mouth. I pull my wrist away but am only rewarded with a yanking of my other hand and a tightening off the cuffs as the other is wrenched behind my back.
His lips are next to my ear. Never have whispered words carried such warning.
“You can either walk out of here with me SILENTLY and without incident or you can scream and call for help. Either way, you’ll still be leaving this school with me. One way is neat and clean. Nobody gets hurt. The other will have me shooting our way out. Everyone gets hurt. Your choice, hellion. You understand?” he asks.
When I don’t answer, he yanks on my cuffs, pulling me away from the wall. “You understand?”
I nod because I’m too afraid to speak. This man’s threat is as real as the sky is fucking blue.
“Let’s go,” he barks, tugging me toward the door.
My knees give out, and I feel myself sagging. The man isn’t having it. He roughly hauls me to my feet before I hit the floor.
“Walk,” he demands, shoving me forward.
He has me. He has me, and I have no choice but to comply. There’s no way I will allow innocent people to be hurt when this man is obviously only here for me. The door opens, and the hand over my mouth disappears. I swallow a huge gulp of air, forcing much needed oxygen back into my lungs.
Principal Gregory’s standing outside the door. Her eyes go to my tear-stained cheeks first and then the handcuffs now binding my wrists together behind my back. “Is there anyone you’d like me to call for you, Miss Jackson?” she asks. “Your father, perhaps?”
The man tightens his grip around my bicep in warning.
“That won’t be necessary,” he answers for me. “Her father is already waiting for us at the station.”
Principal Gregory nods her understanding, easily believing the lie. She shoots me a sympathetic look as she leads us through the hallway. Students part like the Red Sea to give us room to pass. I don’t know what she thinks I’ve done to deserve being arrested, but it’s the least of my worries.
I keep my eyes on the floor. Whispers and quiet laughter follow closely behind. We exit through the glass front doors, and Principal Gregory follows us to the police cruiser waiting at the curb.
“Have your father call me,” Principal Gregory says with so much sadness in her voice I feel like I should be the one comforting her.
The fake police officer shoves me into the backseat of the police cruiser and slams the door. Again, I remain silent.
“Hey! Where are you taking her? What happened? What the fuck’s going on?” someone calls out.
I freeze as I recognize Duke’s voice.
No. No. No. I chant in my head.
I glance out the corner of my eye through a part in my hair. Principal Gregory has her hand flat on Duke’s chest, preventing him from coming any closer. She shakes her head and guides him back up the stairs into the school.
“Sarah!” he calls over his shoulder. “Sarah!”
I say nothing as the car pulls away from the school. Away from my life.
It isn’t a real life, but it’s all I have.
HAD.
It’s not just my life that’s over.
I may have spared the lives of the people in that school with my silence, but if I can’t complete my work, others will die.
The only question now is, how many?
Chapter Seven
I pretend to be crying,bawling loudly complete with sniffles and moans so that the brute in the front seat can’t hear what I’m really doing, which is picking the lock on the handcuffs with the small nail file I keep taped to the inside cuff of my sweater.
I knew my end was near, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been preparing for it.
My kidnapper doesn’t seem annoyed by my tears. He doesn’t react at all. After sending a text message, his eyes are on the road without sparing so much as a glance at me in the rearview mirror.
When I’ve got the lock picked, I let out an exceptionally loud wail to disguise the click of the cuffs as they open, and my wrists are finally free, but I keep them behind my back.
The cop car I’m riding in has the cage thing that separates the backseat from the front. There is no handle because like most cop cars, the doors only open from the outside. Fortunately, it’s a newer model cruiser, and I spot the red emergency release lever by my foot poking out from under the floor mat. I slip off my shoe, maneuver my foot, and lift the edge of the mat. It takes some work, especially because I can’t move any other part of my body while doing it, but I finally manage to slip my big toe through the fabric of the handle.
Most logical people would choose to make a run for it while the car is stopped at a stop sign or a light. But this man is massive. His legs are long and strong, and I have no doubt that if I escape while we are stopped that he’ll catch me before I have a chance to get further than a few feet.
On the other hand, while the car is in motion, is a whole other ballgame. I can push open the door and leap. If I don’t crack my skull on the pavement or break a limb in the process, I can make a run for it while he’s still slowing to a stop.
It’s the best chance I’ve got.
It’s the only chance I’ve got.
We enter the highway on-ramp. I sit up and watch the needle on the speedometer rise. Forty miles per hour. Fifty. Sixty.
It’s now o
r never.
I take a deep breath and pull the release lever up with my foot. The door lock clicks its release, and I push on it with all my might.
“Fuck!” the man curses as I dive out of the vehicle. The painted yellow lines blur together beneath me as I aim for the patch grass lining the highway.
It’s the last thing I remember.
Chapter Eight
Any and allthoughts I had about Frankie Helburn being smart leap with her from the fucking car.
Stupid bitch.
I yank the wheel and cross the grassy median, the tires vibrating beneath me as I speed through the unpaved terrain. I skid back onto the asphalt in a plume of smoke from the burning rubber. The door she somehow managed to open slams shut with the force of the turn. I slam my foot on the gas pedal and cross the median yet again, circling back around to where she ate pavement at over sixty miles per house. Seconds later I slam on the brakes and screech to a stop on the side of the road.
I spot her before I get out of the car—trying to hide in the tall grass in the center of the ditch with her face down. Her glossy main of black hair is what gives her away, doing nothing to conceal her in the green and brown weeds, hiding as well as an ostrich with its head in the sand.
I stomp over with a curse on my lips and a scowl on my face. That is, until I realize why her attempt to hide is so fucking bad.
It’s because she isn’t hiding.
Shit.
I don’t even know if the bitch is breathing.
Chapter Nine
The smell hits me first.
It reeks like laundry left in the washer too long. Stale. Moldy. And something else. Something that stings my nostrils. Urine perhaps.
I struggle to open my eyes. After a few attempts they’re open, but barely.
It’s daylight. I know this much because dust is swirling around like a slow-moving cyclone within a beam of sunlight shining from under a torn window shade.
Where the hell am I?
But the answer doesn’t come.
All I know is that I’m alone in what appears to be a run-down motel room. An old TV with a cracked screen sits on top of a wooden dresser missing two of its four drawers. The horrid floral wallpaper is more torn than not. Someone has even gone so far as to color in the gaps with pink marker as if no one will be able to tell wallpaper from the scribble of a highlighter.
A battering ram of pain crashes into my chest with a strength that causes my vision to blur as I try to roll over. I freeze and shut my eyes tightly as if that can squelch the burning of my ribs. My every muscle joins in, protesting my consciousness. My right arm aches and throbs. My thoughts are jumbled together, and my heartbeat is drumming against my skull as if I’d spent last night chugging tequila.
The pain eases slightly. When I can take a deep breath again, I attempt to rub my temples to soothe the throb in my head, but I’m stopped by the bite of metal into my skin. The tear-inducing pain vibrates up to my elbow. I glance up. My sweater is torn into ribbons, showcasing large angry purple and yellow bruises that take up more space on my arms than skin. My wrists are bound to the headboard by handcuffs.
I freeze as the sharp fangs of fear pierce the skin of my throat. I close my eyes tightly and attempt to see through the fog and panic.
Think, Frankie. Think. What’s the last thing you remember?
The memory is right there within reach but it stays at the edge without so much as dipping a toe in the waters of remembrance. I growl in frustration but the movement causes me to hiss in more pain when the springs of the worn mattress beneath me stab into my back like I’m lying on a bed of knives.
The clanking and scraping of metal against metal echoes in my ears as I try to pull my hands free from the cuffs, to no avail. I try to swallow but my mouth is dry. I roll my tongue around in my mouth and taste the copper of dried blood on my teeth.
I hear a deep familiar voice just outside the closed door. It’s angry and deep. “I’m not bringing her to you. Not fucking yet. Not until I’m through with her.” Another pause. “Give me time and when I’m ready I’ll either bring you the girl or her body.”
“Shit.” I curse when I try to sit up, forgetting for a moment that I’m bound to the bed. Sizzling pain drags along my muscles like a serrated knife. When it finally subsides enough for me to concentrate, I take a deep breath. A memory begins to wiggle free of the fog. A flash of red and blue. A man with dark hair and eyes. The principal’s office at school.
Was it a dream? No. A nightmare.
Only, I’m not even sleeping. The pain is real. The restraints are real.
Everything is real.
It all comes back to me the second I see the blue policeman’s uniform draped over a chair in the corner. School. The walk to the principal’s office. The policeman. The man from the service station. Duke screaming my name.
Jumping from the car on the highway.
“Business is business, asshole,” I hear the man say.
I can make out his large shadow pacing back and forth in front of the window.
“Save that shit for your own people.” he grinds out. “I work alone. If you send someone out to check up on me, I’ll make it so he won’t be coming back.”
He ends the call, and his heavy footsteps stop right in front of the door.
I pull on my cuffs again, ignoring the pain it brings. I glance around the small room for another exit, another means of escape, but even if I could free myself there isn’t anywhere to go. I look again as if I can will another way to appear, but there’s nothing but a small windowless bathroom and the ugly wallpapered walls.
The door creaks open, and heavy footsteps approach the bed. I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep although my heart is hammering in my chest like I’m darting for the finish line in a race I’m not winning. I try not to react as his large hand wraps around my forearm, but I’m panicking inside. He releases my wrists from the cuffs and lets them drop to the bed. I hear him walking about the room. I steal a glance through a slit in my eye. He’s crouched over a black tote bag on the floor to my right.
The door is to my left.
There’s no time to think.
I sit up slowly but the mattress creaks with my movement. The man’s head swings in my direction, and I close my eyes again, hoping he’ll think I’m just moving in my sleep. After a few moments, I dare another glance. His back is to me again. Slow isn’t going to work this time.
I don’t give the thought time to process because time is a luxury I don’t have.
I spring from the bed and bolt across the room. My legs are screaming because something is clawing at them from the inside, raking down my every muscle like jagged knives being dragged across my skin. I run as fast as I can, but I know it’s not fast enough because I’m limping like my feet are anchors I’m struggling to drag behind me.
I’m lifted off my feet and tossed through the air with ease, like a newspaper flippantly tossed onto a porch on Sunday morning. I hit the mattress with such force I bounce off, landing on my stomach onto the dirty carpet on the other side of the bed. The wind is sucked from my lungs on impact. My cheek stings as if I hit concrete instead of wiry shag carpeting.
My captor thuds over to where I’m gasping for breath. He growls, and it’s like I can feel his anger sailing toward me with the dust in the air. I hear it in the way he cracks his knuckles. I see it in the way he cocks his head from one side to the other and his nostrils flare. I can smell it permeating off him like a new Calvin Klein fragrance. Hatred, for men.
He’s dressed like he was when I first saw him at the service station. Tight black t-shirt revealing the vast number of interconnecting colorful tattoos running the length of his muscular arms. Plain black leather vest. Dark low-slung jeans. Black scuffed boots. He’s got two thick silver bracelets adorning both wrists, a chain connecting each pair.
He moves closer. They aren’t bracelets.