Chapter Twenty-Seven
Andi
I find a bat at the bottom of a tattered box, so I start swinging it as hard as I can against the doorknob and metal lock
until one of them gives. I scream bloody murder as I hack away at the door. I heard the truck come back, so I know someone’s
here, but I can’t see who it is. They parked out of view. I know Tom will hear me but . . . Raffy is there, too. Maybe he’ll
hear me and save me. He looked perplexed when Tom’s voice called him earlier. Maybe he’s not involved in all of this but a
victim, too.
In that case, there is another person here Tom is focused on, so maybe I can take the chance to escape.
But I really have no idea what’s happening.
All I can do is pray, close my eyes and swing away.
When the doorknob cracks, it falls to the ground, and I kick open the wooden shed door and I’m outside.
Mercifully, I’m outside. I try to quickly assess where I am, but I have no idea.
I can tell it’s a rural homestead on a cliffside.
These cliffs run for miles to the east, and I can see through a clearing of trees in the distance where it drops off.
But whose house is this? Whose truck, whose shed?
I see the firepit a few yards away, and the fire Raffy was sitting by is just embers now. My bag is there. Clearly tossed
in the fire and mostly melted into a clump of waxy makeup and charred leather, but the strap hangs over onto the ground, which
is how I recognized it, and there’s my phone! It’s there. Inside the brick surround of the pit, it lies in the ash away from
the fire. It must have tumbled out as it was thrown. A lifeline.
I rush over to it and snatch it as quickly as I can. I stab my finger at the screen and it lights up. The relief that washes
over me almost brings me to my knees. The last person I called in the flurry of phone calls I made before I drove over to
Sasha’s was Regan. When I open my call app to push 911, her number blinks at me, so I just tap on it and share my location
with her. Then before I can even begin to dial 911, the phone is soaring into the air and skidding across the muddy grass . . .
and Tom is there. He has a hard grip on my wrists, and he ties them behind me again before I can fight back. It’s so fast.
Then he snatches the phone from the ground and drops it onto what’s left of the burning embers in the fire, and I watch it
melt.
“Why?” I scream in his face. “What do you want from me?” He doesn’t respond, which is even more frightening. He just pushes
me back toward the shed, and I feel desperate.
“I won’t tell anyone I was here if you just let me go,” I say, because all I can think is that I got in the way.
He thinks I know more than I do—those papers hold his secret, which is why he had to silence me, but I don’t know anything.
The papers were nothing but confusing to me, and if they did point to him, I missed it.
And anyway, he has the file now, so why keep me if I have no proof?
“I don’t know why I’m here. Whatever was in that file, whatever you think I know about you, I don’t. I don’t understand any
of it. I’m not gonna go to the police, I promise,” I plead, but he just keeps silent and when we reach the shed door, he pushes
me hard, trying to get me over the threshold, but I’m not going back in there. I resist and push my weight back against his
shove as hard as I can, and I stumble forward. Just as he thinks I’ll fall into the dark, awful room, I grab the door frame
and I don’t fall, I fight.
He didn’t expect me to be strong; I can tell by the look on his face.
“Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do,” he says, and I lunge at him, swiping at his face with my hand, catching his
skin under my nails. He holds his hand up to his face, surprised, and looks at the spot of blood on his fingers when he pulls
his hand away. Then he looks at me. He has me trapped with my back to the threshold and no weapon, and I see rage flash in
his eyes, so I duck under his arm and I run.
There’s a long dirt drive that leads to a narrow two-lane road several yards down a muddy, sloped yard, and I sprint toward
that road, without a moment to think about what I’ll do if I reach it or how far away any other houses or help might be. I
just focus on escaping this psychopath, but he’s only a few steps behind me.
I round the side of the house, struggling not to slip and fall in the wet, slick grass, and just before I reach the driveway, I feel his hand swiping at my back.
He gets a hold on my sweatshirt, and it stops me cold.
I hit the ground, and he loses his grip.
I scramble to my feet, but he’s already hovering over me, and that’s when I see the gun.
He pulls it out from where it’s been stuffed in the back of the waistband of his jeans. He doesn’t want to use it, I tell
myself. He doesn’t want to kill me or he already would have. He looks flustered and panicked.
I can’t run because all that goes through my head is being shot in the back before I can reach the road. I have to reason
with him. I have to believe he doesn’t want this.
“Tom, please,” I say, inching back, showing my palms in surrender, covered in cold mud and shaking. What else can I do but
plead? He seems annoyed at the use of his name, so I change tack.
“Just tell me what you want,” I say, and I feel the tears climbing my throat as I think about Rox and Dez, and the fear that
I won’t make it out of this alive becomes real as I’m staring down the barrel of a gun, having no idea why I’m here—what I
did, what he wants. “I’ll give you anything you want. I have two kids at home—I have to go home. Please. Anything. Just . . .”
And then I make a snap decision that I have to keep fighting, because his face is hard and emotionless and he won’t fucking
speak, so I have to guess at his next move and his motives and I have to try . . . so I just lunge at him, and because he
doesn’t expect that, I manage to bump the gun from his hand and it hits the ground and fires.
The sound is shocking, but I don’t hesitate. I clamber over to where it fell, just a few feet from where Tom is standing,
dropping to his knees to grab it, but I get it into my hand just a fraction of a second before him. He grips my arm and tries
to pry it away from me.
I scream in his face. “Fuck you. Let me go, you psycho!” But he bends my arm and it contorts so painfully that I’m forced to drop the gun and then .
. . everything that happens after that is a blur of colors and light because it’s all so fast, so surreal, it feels like slow motion.
Before I can process any of it, the gun is back in his hand and I hear the shot, and it takes a moment to realize I’m bleeding.
I look down and see bright red spreading across my sweatshirt.
I hold my hands over my stomach in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, and then everything starts to fade.
Bursts of white light flash behind my eyes and then I feel impossibly cold and calm as I collapse to the wet muddy earth.
I feel the blood pooling underneath me, and I know I don’t have much time.