Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
It was dark and they were still moving when Darcy came to.
He bit back his groan and cautiously opened his eyes a crack.
The big guy was still next to him, head back against the seat, two wads of either tissue or toilet paper blocking up his nostrils.
So, Darcy had managed to do some damage. Good. He only wished it had been more.
He couldn’t see much outside due to the darkness, but he thought maybe there were trees on the side of the road.
And it didn’t sound like there was a lot of traffic on the road they were travelling.
So even if he did manage to scramble out—of a truck moving at a good clip—it didn’t seem like there was anywhere to go and nobody to flag down.
He was sure to be retaken even if he didn’t hurt himself too badly to run.
He was going to have to wait for them to stop moving before he tried to escape.
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the upset in his stomach.
Although if he did have to throw up, he was going to do it all over the guy next to him.
Or even better, the driver or the other guy up front.
At least Charma hadn’t been taken with him, and he had to believe that his lover was not only safe and unhurt, but that he had called the cops and was trying to find him.
He had no clue who these guys were or what they wanted.
Surely, they didn’t believe he or Charma had money.
Although, if they’d seen him and Charma leaving the compound…
well, it seemed like it was a swanky place.
Maybe they’d taken him thinking he was the shifter, and they were going to ransom him back to Charma’s people?
It was quiet for a long time, and then, “We need to stop for gas,” the driver noted. “He still out?”
Darcy kept his breathing slow.
A hand pushed at him, and he couldn’t help his soft groan but otherwise didn’t move or make any sound.
“Yeah. You hit him pretty good.” The guy sounded happy about that. Asshole.
“Okay. We’ll stop long enough to fill up.”
“I need to take a piss. Wouldn’t mind a bite to eat,” the guy in the passenger seat noted.
“Father Peter said no stops until we get him to Good Hope.”
Darcy’s blood went cold. Father Peter was his parents’ minister, and Good Hope had been the name of the conversion camp run by the church that they’d wanted to send him to. Holy fuck. His parents were behind this. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
“How’s he gonna know we did more than just fill up the truck?”
“We’ll know. You can do your business and grab some Slim Jims or something, but we aren’t staying longer than that.”
“Fine.”
They were quiet after that, so Darcy didn’t know how long it was he had to formulate a plan for what to do when they stopped, but he knew he had to come up with something. He was not going to that conversion camp. He’d rather die in the woods first. And he meant that literally.
He’d keep pretending to be asleep when they got there and when everyone was out of the truck, he’d make his escape.
God, he hoped there were other people there; he really didn’t want to have to resort to scrambling through the woods.
He had a hunch his kidnappers were better at that sort of thing than he was.
Charma’s cousin Nik sat on the couch, watching a basketball game or something while Charma paced the small apartment.
It was late and he would have tried getting some sleep except he knew it would be futile.
There’d been no news yet about Darcy or his kidnappers—from anybody—and he was going out of his mind.
If it was Darcy’s folks behind this kidnapping, Charma could only imagine what that would mean for Darcy, and he didn’t think it was anything good.
He had to force his brain away from all the various tortures a conversion camp might entail, or what a strict religious man might to do his son in an effort to turn him straight.
Or what he might do to ‘save his soul’ if making him straight didn’t work.
Locking Darcy in the basement was the least of the evils Charma could think of.
His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, hope flaring at seeing “Mom” on the screen. He answered it right away. “Did you find him?”
“We’ve had a spotting on the I80—so definitely headed back to Idaho. Two vehicles are on their way there as we speak. We will find him, son. Any news from the police?”
“I haven’t heard back from them at all. The officer said they’d keep me updated, but I haven’t heard anything since he left.”
“I imagine they don’t have anything to update you on. They won’t do anything unless they find the truck within the confines of the city and we know the kidnappers are already long gone.”
“Yeah.” He tried not to let that deflate him even further.
“You hold it together. Have you had anything to eat?”
“No. I can’t eat. I just can’t.”
“You can and you will. I sent a ton of food home with you—either fix yourself something from that or I will text Nik and have him do it for you.”
Charma rolled his eyes, but he didn’t doubt she’d do it. He still didn’t even know what she’d sent home with them aside from the biscuits—Nik had put everything away for him when he’d gotten there.
“You need to keep your strength up for when Darcy gets home. He’s going to need you.”
She was probably right. And he wasn’t going to be any help to anyone if he wound up weak from hunger.
“Promise me you’ll eat.”
“I promise. But only if you promise me you’ll get him back.”
“We will. I promise.” There was a fierceness in her voice that didn’t leave any room for doubt. His people were going to find Darcy and bring him home.
By the time the truck rolled to a stop, the best Darcy had come up with by way of a plan was to wait until everyone got out of the truck, give them thirty seconds or so, and then check out the lay of the land.
See if anyone else was filling up, see who was behind the cash register, and where he could hide.
Then he’d sneak out via the door that was not on the same side as the gas tank and either go to another person, hide somewhere close or just run like hell into the woods and disappear.
The last option was his least favorite, but trusting anyone who might be at the gas station to actually help him, especially in the face of his three very large kidnappers was problematic too.
He took a deep breath to keep his brain from rabbiting on—he needed to stay sharp if he was actually going to get away.
To his relief, all three of the guys got out.
He’d been a little worried the guy up front who hadn’t said he had to go to the bathroom would just sit and wait in the truck.
They also hadn’t bothered to tie him up, so they really must have believed he was still out.
He checked the window on the driver’s side first, peeking up cautiously.
Then he moved to the other side. The gas tank was on the passenger side, so if he was going to go to the building, he was going to have to expose himself to the guy filling the tank.
There was nobody else at the little station except for the guy at the counter and he was laughing at something one of the kidnappers was saying.
Darcy didn’t think that trying to get help from him was going to be a good option.
So the woods it was.
He moved back to the other side of the truck.
They were only just off the road, and it didn’t look like there was a ditch.
He would slip out and make a run for it, cross the road and into the cover of the woods.
They had driven straight into the gas station and not turned, so home was obviously back to his left.
That’s the direction he would take once he was in the woods.
He couldn’t risk being seen if he checked the other window to see if any of them were on their way back to the truck, so he just gathered every bit of courage he had and opened the truck door only as wide as he needed to slip out.
Then he careful set the door back, not actually closing it as that was likely to make noise, and then he took off as fast as he could, grateful that his sneakers were virtually silent against the ground.
He made it across the road and into the woods, his heart like a jackhammer in his ears.
Once he was several trees deep into the woods, he turned left and really started running.
He didn’t think he’d gone nearly far enough when he heard the commotion from his kidnappers—lots of shouting and swearing—and that was enough to help him find another gear and he ran even faster, moving farther into the woods away from the road.
He ran as hard as he could.
Charma loved his mom’s meatballs, but tonight he was having to force them down.
Nik had eaten his bowlful of the pasta and meat and gone back to watching his game, but Charma couldn’t make himself eat more than tiny bites at a time that he chewed for ages before he swallowed the food down.
It felt like there was a mountain of lead in his belly trying to climb up his throat.
His mom was right, though, he needed to eat.
He was starting to feel lightheaded, and while some of that might have been worry, he knew at least some of it was also hunger.
It took him close to an hour, but he finally managed to finish his little bowl of food. He took it to the sink and washed it up, drying it and putting it away. It felt like everything was a hundred miles away, or like he was seeing the world through gauze. Nothing was quite real.
The sound of his phone ringing was piercingly loud, and it had him jumping in surprise.
It was Mom again. She had to have news or she wouldn’t be calling.
“What?”
“They found the truck.”
“The truck but not him?” That wasn’t good. If Darcy had been moved to a new vehicle, they’d have lost their only lead.