Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Really, I just… wasn’t thinking.
I wasn’t using all that knowledge I’d acquired to assess the situation, to see the things that I should have noticed.
Like I hadn’t gotten the usual text saying that my delivery was on the way, or the one saying it was arriving.
Like there were no bags by my door.
Like the man was still leaning over the trunk, a hat pulled low down over his face.
I reached for the insulated bag, and brought it out of the car with me as I moved out.
I was walking down the side of his very common silver sedan, opening my bag, my gaze turned down.
In fact, I didn’t lift it and look at the delivery guy until I was right at the back of his car.
My heart seized in my chest.
The over-garage light had him cast partly in shadow, but that wasn’t what made his features so crazy.
Oh, no.
That was the fact that he had something pulled down over his face, smushing his nose, making his features indistinguishable.
A stocking.
It was skin-tone and tight.
I sucked in a breath to scream before my body could even start to react, try to respond, to turn and run. To a neighbor. Down the street, praying Wells would see me and save me.
But before I could do any of that, there was a movement so fast that it blurred. Then pain.
Then… nothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mari
The world came back to me slowly.
It was the pounding in my head at first.
Then the aching of my shoulder as it bounced hard against… something.
After that, the coppery scent of blood met my nose.
It wasn’t until I felt the sticky heat of it slide down my neck that I seemed to fully snap awake and back to reality.
The driveway.
The car.
The man with the hat and the stocking on his face.
The pain.
He’d hit me with something to knock me out.
The jostling I felt and the pain in my shoulder… that was because I was in the trunk.
Even before my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could tell I was in a small space.
My arms and legs moved out, finding the borders of the trunk.
But something was wrong.
It wasn’t that weird, scratchy material that you always found in trunks that grazed the palms of my hands.
Oh, no.
It was hard and cold and… cylindrical.
My hands moved along the side of the trunk, finding more of them. Bars. They were bars.
Panic welled in my system.
Because all true crime girlies knew there were a few ways out of a trunk.
One, you pull the lever.
I felt around, but it wasn’t there.
Two, you pushed at the back seats to see if they folded down for an easy escape.
And three, you kicked out the tail light, and threw your hand out to hope to alert another driver to your being inside.
The problem was, I couldn’t do two or three with the bars closing me in.
The bars were below me as well. The source of the pain in my shoulder.
I rolled onto my back, feeling my heartbeat quicken and my breath get faster and more shallow.
Panic, I knew, would get me nowhere.
I had to calm down, to focus.
There was still a chance to survive this.
I had to survive this.
I had to get back to Wells, to the relationship we were starting to build, to the life I was hoping to build with him.
I sucked in a slow, deep breath through my nose, holding it, then slowly releasing it. It caught on a gasp a few times, but slowly but surely, I felt my heartbeat slow and my chest loosen up.
Okay.
I couldn’t escape the trunk.
That didn’t mean I was helpless.
Maybe I could get one of the bars loose to use as a weapon.
Mind set to that, I started reaching around with both hands, tugging at each bar, but finding them all tightly fused into whatever frame this damn cage had.
Okay.
Alright.
What did I have on me?
I was in my work uniform. Which meant khaki pants, a scrub top with my name embroidered into it, and sneakers.
Could laces be used as a weapon?
I mean, they took them from prisoners, so they couldn’t hang themselves. They had to be strong enough to do some damage.
Glad for something to set my mind to, I reached downward, working the laces free, then tying them into a solid knot in the center, so there was enough room to wrap around someone’s throat and my hands.
It wasn’t the ideal weapon. It would require getting behind my attacker and keeping control over someone a lot larger than me.
But it was something.
I tucked the laces in my pocket, and started using the heel of my foot to kick at the bars.
Pain ricocheted up my ankle and leg at the impact. Still, the bars wouldn’t budge.
On a whimper, I let my hand move out between the bars, feeling around the edges of the trunk, hoping for something, anything.