Chapter Twenty-seven #2
“Help? Is that what you wanted me to get when you wrote your letter?” Nathan rubbed his hands up and down his arms as he stared at her. “Do you want to know what kind of help you get in prison? ’Cause I can tell you what kind of help you have to give and take in there.”
“Don’t do this, please, Nathan.” Harper tried to tamp down the panic, override the adrenaline causing her heart to race. She closed her eyes and focused on words from one of her first sessions with Frankie … a place of control, not a place of fear.
She looked for something sharp she could lean against to cut the tape binding her hands. A rusted chair frame sat up against the wall only inches away, the leg bent and broken.
Silently, she waited until Nathan was pacing away from her and then shuffled the short distance toward the chair.
He was too far gone to notice. If she could get her arms free, she had options.
Possibly the phone, or at least a chance to run.
Even fight if she had to. He may have been able to destroy her last time, but he wouldn’t get the chance again.
* * *
“Frankie, how’s it going?” Trent lifted a finger to Dred and mouthed, “Sorry.” He didn’t usually answer his phone when working on a client but Harper had said she would ring from there.
There was a long pause and the piercing sound of a child crying. “Hey man, there’s a problem.” Frankie’s voice was panicked. The usually cool and collected fighter was distraught. “The guy Harper was running from, Nathan, I think he got her.”
“What the—what do you mean?” Trent jumped up out of his stool, rubbing the back of his gloved hand across his forehead.
“Anton just ran into the gym, shouting about a guy grabbing Harper. He made her get into a van. Harper called him Nathan.”
Trent kicked the stool he had been sitting on and sent it crashing across the studio floor.
“Did he hurt her? Did you call the police?” he asked, aware of the studio grinding to a halt around him. Dred had stood, and Cujo had come over, putting a hand on his shoulder. Fortunately the studio was close to closing and Dred was the only client still getting inked.
“Yeah, they’re on their way here.” Trent could hear Anton’s sobs in the background and heard Frankie mumble words of comfort. “I’m sorry, man, but Anton said Nathan was acting all crazy and was packin’ a large knife.”
“Had he hurt her? When Anton saw them leave, was she still … was she…?”
“She wasn’t hurt when she got in the van.”
Trent wasn’t certain his legs would continue to hold him.
He put his arm out and leaned forward, the tattoo chair taking his weight.
He’d be able to think clearly if the fucking spinning in his head would just stop.
Images of Harper with a blade to her throat skittered through his mind making it hard to focus.
“Trent, you still there, man?”
“Yeah, I’m here, which way did he take her? Did Anton see?”
“No, he just started running as soon as Nathan got in the van. But Harper is smart; she still had Anton’s schoolbag. I installed a GPS app on Anton’s phone. It shows the phone is over by that abandoned strip on the way to Veterans Park. Units are on their way over there.”
“On my way, call me if it moves.”
Trent ran into the back and grabbed his jacket and keys from the office, relieved to find himself flanked by Cujo and Dred as he made for the back door. Not that he would need their help destroying that motherfucker.
Cujo grabbed the keys from his hand.
“Cuj, I don’t have time for this, give me the keys.”
“No can do, brother. You aren’t in any fit state to drive. Get in or I’ll go without you.”
“Cujo, give me the fucking keys.” Cujo got in the car and started the engine, the Plymouth’s engine revving loudly.
Trent felt a shove from behind.
“Get in the car, Trent,” Dred said, pushing him toward the door. With no further time to argue, he climbed in and Dred followed, the three of them crammed onto the bench seat.
“North on Collins, up toward Veterans Park.”
Cujo careened out of the Second Circle parking lot and Trent leaned forward, head in both hands.
“She’s gonna be fine,” Cujo said as he fired the Plymouth through Miami.
Trent hoped with all his heart that Cujo was right.
Because if she wasn’t …
Fuck.
* * *
The blood trickled down her wrists, collecting in the palms of her hands.
Her first failed attempt at cutting the binding on the rusted leg had resulted in a painful gash, but Harper forced the pain to the back of her mind and continued more cautiously than in her first attempt.
She pushed her hands back toward the rough edge, feeling the friction as it dug into the tape.
“This is all your fault,” Nathan said, abruptly stopping his pacing. “If you hadn’t tried to leave me, none of this would have happened. You owe me those years back, Taylor. You owe me for every time you fucked your new boyfriend while I was sitting in a cell.”
He ran his thumb sideways over the blade of the knife, testing its sharpness with his thumb, hissing when the edge caught his skin.
“Don’t you even want to know how I found you?” he spat.
Harper shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Of course it fucking matters. I went to a lot of effort to find you. If you’re smart, you’ll respect that.” He walked to the window, peering into the darkness warily.
“You meet all kinds of people with all kinds of interesting talents inside. People who’ll use their talents if they owe you a favor or two. Prison is one huge bartering system, and I was very good at making myself invaluable to the right people.”
Harper raised and lowered her wrists against the chair, pulling them apart simultaneously to keep the fabric taut. The sound of the hard metal cutting the tape sounded like an earthquake in the silence of the room.
“It’s so easy to manipulate desperate, power-hungry people.
Inside, the guys rely on favors. Who can do what for whom?
Good old Winston might have been a fucking useless parent, but he was great at getting charges dismissed and knowing the right judges.
You know, the interesting thing about gangs, they have chapters all over the country.
A little ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ for the right people, and I was able to get your idiot lawyer’s car jacked and laptop hacked.
From her laptop, I could get to yours. She had your address, phone number. ”
Nathan paced again. Harper tried to rip the tape binding her to the chair, but before she could free herself, he returned in front of her, crouching this time. He appeared calmer. He pushed her hair behind her ear, making her shudder.
“Avoiding our yell. Who would have thought that anagrams could be so emotive? Did you like them?” He was confusing her with his emotional back and forth. He sounded nostalgic, loving even. I love you, darling.
“It took me months to come up with the right anagrams for you. Ones that would elicit the right reaction.” He shoved himself back up to his feet. “I wish I could have seen your face. There is nowhere you could go where I wouldn’t find you.”
His pacing resumed, and Harper frantically rubbed the tape on the sharp edge. The moment it started to tear, she felt a wave of relief. It was now or never. Her heart pounded at the thought of what she was about to do.
She waited until Nathan was at the farthest end of the bar, then jumped up, sprinting for the door. She squinted through the dark, scrambling and trying to follow what was left of the broken path.
“Help!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Somebody help me, please.”
“No!” Nathan roared. “Get back here, Taylor.”
The footsteps were gaining on her. Her lungs screamed for oxygen as she ran as fast as she could in the uneven terrain.
Overgrown weeds whipped at her legs and arms, nettles stinging her ankles as she aimed for the front of the hotel.
She screamed until she was hoarse, pushing forward at the sight of the fence.
Arms wrapped around her from behind, forcing her down. The slam of her body into the ground took her breath away, and she gulped in air, trying to regain some semblance of control. There was a loud clang as the knife bounced along what was left of the concrete, out of their reach.
Hardest part to the softest part. Harper did a mental inventory. Nathan was pinned on top of her. Dipping her forehead to the ground, she rammed her head back as fast as she could, feeling Nathan’s nose crack against her skull.
“Argh. You bitch,” he cried out, rolling off her to hold his nose. Harper got to her feet. As she ran toward the street, she heard the screaming siren of a police car.
The fence shook as she started to swing through the gap.
She was so close to the street. A hand grabbed her arm, pulling her back, and Harper felt the blade swipe her shoulder.
Not deep, but enough to bring back that sickening feeling of how four years ago her skin had simply opened up and let the sharp steel in.
The pain brought tears to her eyes. How could she be this close to getting away, only for him to get her again?
She twisted away from him, narrowly missing the sharp jab Nathan aimed at her, feeling relief as it scratched by.
The sirens were getting louder. They had to be coming for her.
Her salvation wrapped up in blue-and-red flashing lights.
“I’m not going to let you do this to me again, Nathan,” she strained through gritted teeth.
If this was the end, she wasn’t going down without a fight. Not this time.
“I’m not going to be your victim again.” Lifting up her knee, she nailed Nathan hard in the groin, causing him to double over in pain. He tried to bring the knife around to cut her leg, but she deflected it with a kick before bringing her foot down hard on his arch.
“Fuck!” he yelled, and doubled over.
She brought her knee up hard against his already bloodied nose. She could feel his bone crunch against her kneecap.