Chapter 48
Alyssia
“Please, I have to go to the bathroom,” I say for the second time to whoever this deranged man is.
At this point, I can’t even see him since he’s covered my eyes with a blindfold. I haven’t been able to see anything since the moment he ordered me to close my eyes once he brought me to a small sedan parked behind the apartment building.
He drove for what felt like an eternity, but was more likely less than an hour. During which time I fought to keep my mind from imagining the worst of the worst.
We stopped somewhere that sounded far away from any city and he, again, dragged me by my arm, up a set of stairs and into a room or a house, forcing me to sit in a creaky wooden chair. From all of that, I assume we’re in an abandoned house.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, squirming in the chair with my hands tied at the wrists behind my back.
“Shut up,” he barks out, pacing. “Shut up!”
I jump at what sounds like a fist pounding against something. The floor beneath me shakes.
“Okay, okay,” I assure him. “I’ll be quiet.”
A beat of silence passes before the pacing starts again. My wriggling has shifted the blindfold, allowing me to watch his footsteps as he clomps back and forth against the cracked, dilapidated floorboards.
Nervous energy fills the room, pressing into every surface of my skin. My breathing shallows as a result, at the same time a streak of pain races across my lower belly.
This pain is sharper than any Braxton-Hicks contraction I’ve had before.
Oh no, please not now!
The man’s muffled murmurs draw my attention back to him.
I can’t stay silent for much longer. Something inside of me is telling me to use whatever I have at my disposal to fight back.
“I r-really do have to use the bathroom, p-please,” I stutter out.
He pushes out a frustrated groan before stomping toward me. My body tenses in anticipation of his response for my speaking again.
He doesn’t hit me.
But he does wrap a hand around my arm again, lifting me to stand.
“Let’s go.”
I trip over my feet as he pulls me along. A light switch flicks on, and I can tell light has just illuminated the room he’s brought me to.
“Toilet. Go!” he orders.
“I-I can’t see.”
Another frustrated huff and then he roughly pulls the blindfold from my eyes. I blink a couple of times, until my vision clears. The bathroom is tiny, barely able to hold the toilet and sink.
“Go! Bathroom,” he orders, pointing at the toilet.
I shift and do my best to hold up my tied hands. “I-I can’t.”
His face reddens and he huffs. A frown forms as he looks from my face to my hands and back again. I use this time to study his face. Yes, it was the gala where I saw him. He was talking to someone right before Travis introduced me to them.
He points a finger in my face. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I shake my head to tell him that I wouldn’t dare. It stings as he pulls at the ties around my wrist, but eventually they loosen and fall away. He snatches the string from the floor and shoots me one final glare before slamming the door behind him.
I rub at the abrasions on my wrists while I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember that night.
Skyland Grant.
That’s who he was talking to before almost disappearing for the evening. Travis’ teammate, but his entire team is in the Netherlands right now.
Blinking my eyes open, I shake those questions free as they won’t help me right now. I begin frantically searching for something, anything that could help me out in this situation.
There’s not much.
The only item in the room besides the sink and toilet, is a used toothbrush that sits on the sink next to the faucet. Not even a roll of toilet paper. Nevertheless, I grab the toothbrush and stuff it into the pocket of my sundress.
Then I flush the toilet and run the water from the sink to make it sound as if I’m washing my hands. Before I can turn the water off, the guy pushes the door open.
“Come out,” he demands.
“Please don’t,” I ask when he brings out the tie for my hands again. “My wrists are already bruised enough and what type of fight could I give you in this condition.” I gesture toward my belly.
His frown deepens.
“Shit,” he grumbles. “This better be worth it,” I think he says.
So this wasn’t an accident. Whoever this guy is, intentionally sought me out. Which, of course he did. He came to my apartment, asked for me specifically by name. But I have no idea why.
“Sit,” he orders, pointing at the chair I was just in.
When seated, I look around the room. It’s a small space, not much aside from the chair, a stained and ripped armchair across the room from me, a dusty wooden armoire where he’s placed his gun.
“Thank you for letting me use the bathroom,” I tell him.
“Don’t thank me,” he spits back. “I’m going to get a lot of money for you.”
“I don’t have any money to give you,” I lie.
He sneers at me. “I don’t want your fucking money. As soon as Townsend loses that race because he knows you were taken, my bets are going to pay off.”
My head spins. I don’t know anything about sports betting.
The thoughts slow enough that I recognize he said this is about Travis losing a race.
Travis.
He’d called me just before his race. I wonder if he heard what happened. He must be terrified from whatever he managed to hear on his end.
I pray that he can alert the authorities.
My heart sinks when I recall that Travis is in a different country right now.
And this bastard stomped out my phone, so tracking my location is not going to happen.
The ache in my heart to see Travis grows, causing a physical pain that I have to fight off to force myself to focus on the here and now.
“Do you know Skyland Grant?” I ask the man. “Travis’ teammate?”
His eyes grow so wide they look ready to pop out.
“Skyland is none of your fucking business!” he barks as he approaches, making me cower deeper into my chair.
All I see is the gun sitting on the armoire. “O-Okay, okay,” I shriek.
He backs off and begins pacing again. I silently watch as he mumbles something to himself.
“This was supposed to be easy,” he says, talking to no one. “All he had to do was lose a couple races. Sky could win some podiums, and I could pay off my debts.”
The growing tightening in my lower belly makes it difficult, but I breathe through it and listen to his ramblings.
This guy, from what I can make out, took me to keep Travis from winning. All at the behest of Skyland. Travis’ teammate.
As soon as I make that connection, I cry out in pain from what feels like a zap of lightning across my lower belly.
“What? What was that?” he demands, standing over me.
“I-I d-don’t know,” I pant, cupping my stomach.
“You’re lying!”
“I-I’m—” I can’t get the word ‘not’ out because a sudden gush of water floods my chair until a stream of fluid starts leaking down my leg. “Oh no,” I groan.
“Stop that,” this guy insists. He grabs my arm and begins shaking me.
“Please,” I beg.
“You’re faking,” he yells, growing angrier with every beat of my heart. “Don’t do this,” he threatens. “I will kill you.”
He starts toward the armoire.
I don’t think about what to do next. I have every intention of believing this guy when he says he’ll kill me, or at least hurt me.
With his back to me, I pull the toothbrush out of my pocket, and kick at the back of his knee, making him stumble. When he turns around, I aim the end of the toothbrush toward his eye.
He cries out in pain as a sickening feeling overcomes me and I know I’ve hit my target.
I pull away, backing up, hoping that the toothbrush now sticking out of his eye will be deterrent enough for him to back off.
I’m mistaken.
“Bitch!” he yells out before belting out a slew of curses while blood pours out of his eye.
He stumbles back, but with one hand covering his eye that has the toothbrush lodged in it, he grasps wildly for the dresser, trying to get the gun, I conclude. Using the chair to keep space between us, I reach for the gun myself.
I’ve never held a gun in my life. It’s heavier than I thought, so I brace it with both hands.
“Don’t come near me!” I yell, holding the gun out in front of me.
The most evil laugh I’ve ever heard topples from his lips.
“You won’t shoot me,” he says.
My gaze moves from him to the gun. From the television shows and movies, I gather that this is the type of gun that I have to pull the metal clicky thing backwards, so I do.
“Don’t!” I yell when the son of a bitch takes a daring step at me.
“Stupid bitch! You’re ruining everything!”
All I see is him coming at me. The baby in my belly starts moving, and I know I have to protect it.
“Stay away!” I yell at the same time I close my eyes and squeeze the trigger.
The loud explosion is closely followed by a ringing in my ears. Then there’s silence. Save for the pounding in my chest.
Slowly, I peel one eye open, followed by the second.
The man is laying in the middle of the floor, his chest rising and falling in a way that I doubt any human can sustain for long. A pool of blood begins to trickle from underneath him.
The gun falls from my hands as my entire body starts to tremble.
I fall to my knees as another wave of pain hits me, making me cry out. I force myself to breathe through it. I must call for help.
I search around for a cell phone. I think of approaching the man, lying in his own blood, but I can’t bear getting that close to him, seeing him like that.
He’s left his cell phone out right next to where he’d left the gun.
It takes me three tries to get the phone to turn on because my fingers shake so badly. I dial the number of the only person I want to talk to right now.
“Who is this?” Travis barks, answering the phone.
Tears flood my eyes.
“Tr-Travis,” I gasp out as another contraction rips through the lower half of my body.
“Alyssia? Baby? Is it you? Please, tell me it’s really you?”
I sniffle and wipe my tears away, glancing over at the now eerily still body at the center of the room.
I inhale and rise to my feet, supporting my weight on the dresser.
“It’s me. I, uh, I have to tell you something.”
“Where are you? We’re—”
“I’m claustrophobic,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“The first time we met, when you asked on the elevator and I said no, I was just scared of tight, confined spaces. The truth really is that I’m claustrophobic,” I say, not even understanding the words coming out of my own mouth.
But it feels perilous to omit this crucial detail about me.
“Yes,” I answer a question he hasn’t asked.
“It’s the same thing, I know, but I needed to tell you the truth because I want you to know me. Truly know me. Because I love you and you’re the person I look for when I’m scared.”
I sniffle and wipe my eyes.
“Travis?”
“Yes, baby?” He breathes heavily.
“I’m really scared right now,” I break off in a sob, clutching my belly with my free hand.
A pain so intense rushes through me that I fall to my knees. I drop the phone from my hands and have to focus on breathing.
“Alyssia? Alyssia? Baby?” Travis yells.
Once the pain subsides, I pick up the phone again.
“Travis, I-I’m here.”
“I’m coming, baby. Do you hear me? I’m coming.”
While his words make sense, I can’t focus on them because my mind is racing about the ways this is going to go terribly wrong.
I can’t have my baby here on some dank, disgusting floor next to what I’m pretty sure is a dead body. Then the horror of what I just did threatens to overtake my mind.
I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t accidentally look across the room and see the man still lying there.
But a beat later, a crashing noise fills my ears. My eyes pop open to see a huge man barreling his way through the door.
No! No! No!
A new terror strikes me, but before it can turn to panic, thinking that another kidnapper has found me, Travis rushes through the door, pushing the larger man out of the way to get to me.
He falls to his knees in front of me. “Alyssia, baby, I’m here.”
I burst into the tears I’ve been holding back. “It hurts,” I tell him as another wave of contractions hit me.
“You’re okay,” he soothes, rubbing my back just like we practiced in our pre-birthing classes.
Immediately, I believe him.
Travis scoops me up into his arms and I curl my face into the crook of his neck, letting him carry me out of that hell hole.