Chapter 2 #10
Chase studied his face, then glanced at me. His breath caught, and his Adam’s apple shifted, his jaw tightening. When he turned back to my teacher, there was a dark fire in his eyes, as if someone had cranked the heat to maximum in the middle of summer.
He shoved himself away from the door and slammed it shut. Locking me in.
I heard something thud against the side of the van. I screamed.
What the hell?
I released the interior latch, pushed the doors open, and tumbled out of the cargo hold. I hit the hot, sand-covered ground.
A warm, sticky liquid pooled beneath my fingers. I shook my head, forcing my hair out of my eyes.
Mr. Miller lay motionless on the ground, a deep gash—more than an inch long—split across his head. Dark blood poured from the wound.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, nausea crawling up my throat, tears stinging my eyes.
“What have you done?” I screamed.
“Grace.”
He stepped toward me, blocking my escape. I scrambled away on the ground like a worm, but I didn’t get far. My palm throbbed, and my head spun, full of adrenaline threatening to make it explode. After only a few feet, Chase scooped me up as if I were a child.
“Let me go! Put me down!” I screamed, pounding my fists against him.
The next moment, I was in the air.
Chase hurled me back into the van’s cargo space, beside Mr. Miller, whose eyes had opened. His vacant, lifeless stare fixed on me.
My stomach twisted violently. Bitter bile surged up my throat and flooded my mouth. I gagged—and vomited loudly onto Mr. Miller’s white pants, sobbing and coughing at the same time.
Chase stepped on the gas, and took a sharp turn, throwing me against the metal wall of the cargo space. Mr. Miller’s limp body crashed into my bicycle.
My body convulsed. Vomit—and Mr. Miller’s blood—splattered my face. I was trembling with shock, until the only sound I was capable of making left my mouth.
“Help!”
But the roar of the engine swallowed my voice. My mouth burned with bitterness, and my vocal cords felt raw as acid scorched my esophagus. I was covered in bodily fluids, I felt filthy. Still, I forced myself to focus and managed to pry the latch open. I wanted to jump from the moving vehicle.
Chase must have seen the door flailing in the wind. He pulled over abruptly, sprinted to the back, and yanked me into the cargo space.
“Let me go!” I screamed.
I kicked and thrashed wildly, accomplishing nothing except making him angry.
Something hard struck the back of my head. Everything went black.
When I came to my senses, a sharp, unbearable pain shuddered through my body. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was a blinding flash in the dim light.
My body was numb.
I was dizzy.
He’s kidnapped me.
The realization sent my heart racing.
I looked around, blinking. The back of my head throbbed, my eyes burned, and my body felt rigid and senseless, like a piece of dry bark—dry bark imprisoning my soul.
The walls around me were gray, and the room smelled of wet soil and musty furniture, mixed with the disgusting odor of moldy rags. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling, casting a dim light over the room.
I was lying on something soft. I wasn’t bound. My arms and legs lifted, then fell back onto the worn, smelly mattress.
Then… our eyes met.
I was weak and afraid, my heart racing, my body trembling. As I was watching him, hot tears streaked down my cool face.
He was sitting on a chair at the end of my bed. Watching me. Without blinking. He was looking at me as if I were a work of art made just for him.
I stared up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. My face twisted, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears pooled in my ears—I tasted their salt on my tongue, then felt the moisture slide down my parched throat.
I gasped for air, my lungs burning, my lips trembling.
“Where am I? Where did you bring me? Let me go!” I demanded, my voice cracking. I clenched my fist and slammed it into the mattress.
“You can’t do this! You are… a murderer! You killed him!”
“I saved you,” he said in a deep, calm voice, then stood up.
“I saved you, Grace.”
He took a step toward me. I jumped out of the bed.
I was unsteady on my feet from the adrenaline, my face contorting in pain. I sagged against the cool wall. My whole body was in pain.
Chase stopped.
“You saw the way he looked at you. He wanted you. Your innocence.” He grasped for excuses.
He confused me. My stomach churned. I couldn’t reconcile the two men inhabiting the same body. The protector… and the kidnapper.
“You can’t know that,” I protested weakly.
“He might never have touched me. And you…” My voice broke. “You’ve killed a person. And kidnapped me. You really must have smoked your brain away!”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go.”
“Why, Chase?” I cried, trembling.
“You can’t do this to me! You can’t imprison me! You can’t take my freedom—my life—away!” I shouted.
“You are an eyewitness.”
“I won’t say a word to anyone, I promise! Okay? Not a word, I swear! Please—let me go!”
“Oh, Grace…” He shook his head with a cruel playfulness, his eyes burning with inhuman desire.
“Your teacher was only an uncomfortable complication that had to be dealt with. Sooner or later, I would have brought you here anyway.”
Why?”
“I’ve already told you why. To protect you from monsters.”
“To protect me from monsters? Chase, you are a monster!”
A dark smile played on his lips.
“Yeah. But I’m the better kind.”
“Chase… please. I beg you. My parents, my siblings—and…”
“Billy?” he asked, smiling, one eyebrow lifting in question. “He’s the one you want to give yourself to?”
“None of your business. You’re insane!”
I tried to bolt past him, but he shoved me back easily.
I slammed into the metal frame of the bed.
I moaned and started crying from the pain.
The spot where he’d hit my head earlier began to throb.
My head, my back, my leg—everything hurt.
And my heart… broke when I thought of Mom and Dad.
They would worry themselves sick because of me.
Chase crouched down beside me.
He wasn’t cute.
Or nice.
Or understanding.
He was frightening. And selfish.
A real monster.
Suddenly, noises cut through the gloomy silence—moaning, cries of pain, someone moving around in the next room.
“Jesus, he is alive!”
I ignored the pain and surged to my feet with such force that Chase fell back onto his ass.
I tore the door open.
When I saw Mr. Miller’s bloody, chalk-white face, I screamed.
I fell onto all fours on the old-fashioned, waterlogged, musty wooden floorboards, which had no sealing layer beneath them. Wet, black soil was wedged between the split planks.
Mr. Miller raised his arms, holding something hard. He was about to swing, but when he saw me, his hands froze.
“Run, Grace, run!” he shouted.
And when Chase appeared in the doorway, he struck.
The object hit Chase’s skull with a sickening crack. Blood sprayed onto the gray wall—and across Mr. Miller’s face. Chase collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Tears filled my eyes, and the adrenaline surging through my body dulled the pain. I gasped for air. When I saw Mr. Miller kick Chase’s motionless body, my chest tightened.
I got to my feet and broke into a run.
As soon as I tore the door open, the smell of cool, wet, musty soil grew stronger. The damp staircase had the typical smell of a cellar.
I stumbled upward, one hand sliding along the wall. Cobwebs clung to my fingers and tangled in my hair. Any other time, I would’ve freaked out—but at that moment, spiders were the least of my worries: an iron door blocked my way.
I managed to push it partly open, squeezed through the narrow gap, and started running into the unknown.
I didn’t get far before strong hands seized my arms. My feet tangled with my attacker’s, and I screamed as we fell. I thrashed and kicked wildly.
“Relax, Grace!”
“What are you doing?” I screamed into the night. “We have to run!” I sobbed, while Mr. Miller hushed me and stroked my hair.
“I hit him in the head. He’s dead. Everything is covered in blood down there.”
“Please, Mr. Miller…” I felt weak, but I fought like a cornered animal—clawing, pinching, tearing at his clothes, biting his finger.
His fist slammed into me with a crunch. My jaw cracked but didn’t break. For a second, I lost consciousness. But when his erection pressed to my pubic mound, I screamed into his palm.
“Shhh. Shush,” he whispered as he tore at the fabric between my legs.
It gave way with a ripping sound.
His fingers hooked into my panties and ripped them apart. I heard the clink of his belt buckle, then the grind of his zipper—more than just a sound, it almost felt like a buzz against my skin.
I pressed my hands against his shoulders, trying to push him off me, but his weight pinned me to the ground.
When I felt his penis on the bare skin of my vagina, my eyes widened and I gasped for air.
He spit into his palm—probably intending to use it as lubricant—he stroked his throbbing manhood.
Hot tears stung my eyes. I cried and moaned, and when his hardness touched the place no one had touched before, pressing forward, I tried to scream.
Above the iron door, a lamp flickered on, drawing flying insects in at once. A dark shadow loomed over us—the right side of his face a mask of blood, a lock of dark hair plastered to it, hellfire in his eyes. His wet white T-shirt clung to his body.
I might not have spoken the words aloud, but my eyes—locked in his—begged him to help me. To save me.
As I stared into those lifeless, deep brown eyes, I prayed he hadn’t taken the word monster personally.
Chase raised a sharp knife in his hand and—before Mr. Miller could enter my body—struck. Without a trace of mercy.