Chapter Seventy-Six
Jules fades in and out of consciousness.
In: She’s in the trunk of a vehicle. Her head is pounding, hair wet with blood.
Out.
In: She hears the sound of tires humming on the road.
Out.
In: She tries to stay conscious, focused. She’s struck by a memory from when he took her before. The sound of the road changing from asphalt to rocks, a dirt road.
Out.
In: Still in the dark, still curled in the small space. Stay awake. Stay awake. She feels for her handbag where she keeps her gun. But it’s not in the trunk.
Out.
In: She jolts awake when the car juts to a stop. Fear seizes every part of her.
She curses herself. She should’ve fought back at the bar. But it all happened so fast: the gun jammed in her side, him walking her outside like they were together, him popping the car’s trunk in the dark lot, then the blow to the head and things going black.
In the haze, she decides she has to harness her fear and fight for her life. She stretches to reach her ankle where she keeps her holstered pepper spray. She manages to release the tiny vial and grips it in her hand, concealing it.
She squeezes her eyes shut when she hears keys jangling on the trunk’s lock. Play dead.
The trunk opens and another memory makes her almost gasp, but she fights it. The sound of the wind howling across the flatlands. But she stays still, pretending to be unconscious.
“Dammit.”
The voice sends another ripple of terror through her.
When she spotted him at the pub earlier, he was flipping a coin, the sound of the quarter twirling in the air, hitting the table causing her body to uncontrollably tremor.
“Heads or tails.” The same words he’d said to her on May 1st, 1992, when he’d pulled the car over and she’d thought he was going to kill her.
She’d been blindfolded, but she never forgot that sinister voice: I said, heads or tails, sweetheart?
When she didn’t reply, he yanked her by the hair, got his mouth close to hers, his breath sickening.
“Heads,” she whimpered.
“You’re one of the Lucky Ones.”
Her Death Day.
But not today.
He smacks her face lightly a few times, trying to wake her.
She plays this out in her mind. Keep pretending to be unconscious or come to?
If she stays knocked out he’ll try to carry her out of the car.
That’s not optimal for an escape. She makes a decision: feign coming to. She cracks open her eyes, groans.
She feels a hand gripping her arm. Smells alcohol emanating from him.
“Let’s go.”
She moans again but manages to climb out of the trunk as he tugs on her arm. Sweat slides down her back.
Goose bumps rise from another memory from that night: the feel of the gun jammed into her back as she’s marched on the soft ground of a field.
She had been blindfolded before but she knows that this is the same place.
The barrel jabbed into her back, they walk past a structure jutting from the ground, like an old bunker that looks like a large igloo covered in dirt and grass. She sees the silhouette of another one up ahead. And another.
“Please,” she says.
“How’d you know it was me?” he asks. “I could tell by the look on your face.”
She doesn’t reply.
“You were a sweet one.” He makes a vile smacking noise with his mouth. “Mmm, mmm, mmm.”
She feels like she’s dissociating, somehow seeing everything from above. Out of her body, she asks the question: “My sister?”
“She was an even sweeter one. She didn’t win the coin toss, though.”
The words make her vomit.
He tells her to keep moving, swallow it down. But she’s bent over, hands on her knees.
“Don’t make me say it again.”
Jules musters every ounce of courage she has. Thinks of Clare, thinks of Lucy, thinks of Carrie, thinks of every lost soul on her office’s crime walls.
She stands, staggers. He grabs for her arm to catch her from falling. That’s when she twists around and sprays the entire contents of the pepper spray into his eyes. The only thing louder than his scream is her cry of rage.
Then she turns.
And she runs.