Chapter 17 #4
“Could be,” Ghost nodded, feeling the first sparks of hope in nearly five days. He needed to get back to Keys. “Somewhere with light shining through.” Like those depictions of Heaven with tall gates sitting on fluffy clouds surrounded by golden light.
Tessa did not seem to feel the same growing excitement as Ghost did. “You do realize the possibilities of somewhere like that are endless, right? That’s so vague.”
Ghost didn’t care. He’d search every place on a list Keys gave him, no matter how many places or how long the list. He finally had a starting point, and he wouldn’t stop. Not until Becks was back in his arms.
“You lying bitch!”
Becks cried out, bringing her arms up to protect her face against the next punch. She’d gotten her wish. They’d released Liam the night before last. Her deception had worked…until it hadn’t.
Yesterday, Cameron had spent the day making Becks ‘pretty’. They let her take an actual shower before Cameron did her hair and makeup in a style that Cameron called ‘passible presentable’ and Becks called ‘raccoon whore’.
Then they traveled four and a half hours away in a car that was neither Cameron’s Camry nor Ritchie’s Camaro.
Becks’ hands had been bound with fuzzy pink handcuffs behind her back for the entire drive.
For the first time in five days, Becks had been grateful they hadn’t been shoving food and water down her throat, because she was fairly certain they weren’t stopping for bathroom breaks.
Then again, if she’d peed herself, maybe it would have forced them to stop, because there was no way they could have walked her into that bank with pee-soaked pants.
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, though, and Becks had been concentrating on breathing through her panic rather than spy movie-worthy escape attempts.
At the bank, which was an out of state branch of hers, the two marched Becks inside as casually as two people could when one was high on coke and the other was dreaming of her new beach house on a non-extradition country’s beach.
Becks had been all prepared to mouth ‘help me’ to the security guard, but the man never even looked up from his fucking newspaper. Then it was their turn at the counter.
Ritchie had Cameron stay back while he took Becks up to the counter.
“My fiancée would like to make a withdrawal, please,” he’d said in a sweet voice.
Becks had flinched, because it reminded her of the tone he used to use on her.
“And since we haven’t set up our new account yet, it’d be helpful if we could get it in a cashier’s check too. ”
Her compliance wasn’t just out of holding up her end of the deal.
She wasn’t that good of a person. For the first time, she was out in public with her kidnappers, and she had every intention of getting someone’s attention that could help her.
But Ritchie’s hand around her waist and over her hip wasn’t just there as a show of affection to their audience.
In his sleeve was a syringe, filled to the brim with heroin.
Becks knew from watching them inject Liam for four days that it was easily three times the dose they’d given her brother.
And if Ritchie so much as suspected she was trying to get away or to signal to someone to get the police, he would inject her with it.
Becks didn’t know enough about heroin usage to know if he was lying or not when he said it would kill her in seconds, and she wasn’t willing to take that chance.
The woman at the counter smiled at them like she thought they were a lovely couple.
She’d been mid-sentence in asking Becks for her ID—which Becks only just then realized she did not have—when the woman paused to read something on her screen.
Unfortunately, her large glasses reflected the large letters right back to Becks and Ritchie.
STALL
Ritchie took Becks’ arm, and pulled her from the bank so quickly, Becks broke a heel over the threshold.
Cameron was slower to follow, and ended up kicking the security guard, who finally got off his ass, in the balls to make her escape.
Sirens echoed in the distance as Ritchie pulled his car out of the parking lot.
From there, Ritchie had taken them into the mountains. He ditched the car and the burner phones he and Cameron had been using to communicate. Now they were at a rundown campground with wooden structures that barely counted as a rustic cabin.
Cameron would not stop bitching about the lack of indoor plumbing.
Through the night, every noise Becks heard, she prayed was the roar of motorcycles approaching, but it was either thunder, a branch snapping in the distance, or a plane passing by overhead.
Ritchie had dumped out a shit ton of white powder on the card table the campground called a kitchen table, used a credit card to make practiced lines, and then snorted line after line up his nose.
Unlike when they had injected Liam, though, Ritchie was now a hyper-ball of energy.
He kept punching the air, letting out war cries, and pacing like he was a caged animal.
The worst part, though, was when he threatened her with that needle.
She had no idea if it was the same syringe that they’d used on Liam, though she doubted these two cared that much about infection.
Then again, if there really was that much heroin in there to kill her in seconds, infection would be the least of her worries.
“Who did you tell? Why did they want the teller to stall? I shouldn’t have run! I could have taken them! Taken them all! Weak pussy bikers, they have no idea who they’re dealing with! It would have been easy. Bring them on! And the police. I’ll take them on too!”
Ritchie’s ramblings continued on and on, until Cameron threw a toaster oven that looked circa 1950s at his head.
Becks didn’t care. Let them fight, and not pay attention to her.
She’d stay on her corner cot and listen…
Because she had no doubt that that message had come from Keys.
Which meant he knew where she’d been, and that meant the club was coming.
Something was different about Ritchie the next morning. Even high on cocaine, Ritchie was calculating and charismatic. But by the time the sun rose, and Becks started to rouse, he was short-tempered, fidgety, and erratic.
He got it into his head to borrow the campground owner or manager’s laptop. Becks wasn’t sure how he pulled that one off, but then again, she wasn’t sure the owner was all that caring, so long as Ritchie lined his pocket with cash.
Though she was nowhere near as presentable as the day before, Ritchie got it into his head that he could video call a former client to make a wire transfer from Becks’ account to his.
The client argued with him for close to ten minutes before finally hanging up.
Apparently that wasn’t how bank transfers worked.
Cameron and Ritchie started fighting, shouting at each other, and even threw the occasional punch.
It took Becks far too long to realize that neither one was paying any attention to her.
As slowly as she could, Becks closed the laptop, waited a few seconds to see if they noticed, and then stood.
Again, neither one made any indication that they saw her.
She picked up the laptop, and waited. Heart hammering, she watched as the stepsiblings started shoving at one another like they were on an elementary school playground.
She backed towards the door. They were surrounded by woods and the very unhelpful owner, but he was still a person and a witness.
Maybe he would even have a phone. She’d have to call her own because she didn’t have any other numbers memorized, but she had to believe that Keys was monitoring her calls too.
Somehow, he’d found her at the bank. And if the owner did not help her, then she would use the laptop.
Maybe it was stupid to take, but it was the closest thing she had to her and it could also be turned into a makeshift weapon.
Hopefully.
Becks tore open the door, and ran. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t care.
She followed the gravel path down the hill, surrounded by nothing but trees and brush.
Adrenaline helped cover the pain of the stones in her soles, though not as much as she hoped.
Every step was agony, causing her to trip and stumble.
And when she heard shouting from behind her, Becks looked over her shoulder before she cursed herself for making the very mistake she made fun of characters in horror movies for doing.
Yet, she now understood the instinct in a way she never had before.
She might have to reconsider her stance on horror films being so unrealistic.
She’d never been kidnapped before, and yet she was sure she made all sorts of mistakes and errors that anyone not in her shoes would judge her for.
But without training or experience, how could she possibly know or predict how she would ever react to her own kidnapping?
She was human, and survival was a very strong instinct.
Thankfully, Becks did not trip and fall as the girl running in films always seemed to. She also fought the powerful urge to look behind her to see if Ritchie or Cameron or both were following her. Based on the sounds of crunching gravel, at least one was, and they were closing in on her.
Becks barely made it to the shack Ritchie had entered when he’d checked them in the night before. And of fucking course the door was locked. Becks shouted and pounded on it, screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to help her.
A hand grabbed her hair, and threw her backwards. Becks fell from the top of the three steps leading up to the shack, down, down onto the gravel below. Rocks and pebbles embedded into her skin as her head smacked into the unforgiving ground.
“You lying bitch!”
Becks shouted in fury and pain as Ritchie approached her on the ground.
Not knowing what else to do, she flung the laptop she’d somehow kept ahold of during her fall at his head.
Ritchie sidestepped, and the laptop went flying right by his head.
It hit the stairs behind him, clattered, and rolled down to the gravel below.
It was stupid. That laptop was not a gun or a knife. It wouldn’t have saved her, but she felt the hope inside her die as it lay in pieces behind Ritchie.
“Nice try,” he sneered, advancing on her.
Unlike Becks, Ritchie was wearing shoes.
He kicked and stomped on her. Becks tried to scurry away, but he got her hair again.
Standing over her, he pummeled her with punch after punch.
Her nose, her temple, her cheek, her ear…
They all took hits as she tried to curl into a fetal position to protect her head and belly.
Thunder rumbled overhead, getting louder with each passing second.
At times, she did manage to crawl away and put some distance between them, but never enough where she was able to get to her feet before the beatings started again. Something cold touched Becks’ arm just as a shout rang out. It was different than Ritchie’s, nor did it sound like Cameron’s.
“What the fuck is going on here?” The voice was rough, older, and male.
The hits stopped. Becks did not move, only curling further into herself. She didn’t even look up as Ritchie spoke.
“Just teaching my bitch a lesson about stepping out on me.”
A laugh filled the air, sending shivers up and down Becks’ back. “Women need a firm hand, brother, but that don’t give you the right to hurt my computer.”
There was a step in the gravel by her ear, and Becks felt that cold, smoothness leave her arm. The laptop! She and Ritchie must have somehow circled each other, and now she was at the bottom of the shack’s steps.
“My apologies,” she heard Ritchie say, no doubt handing the laptop back over to the owner. “How about I make it up to you? My woman wants to act like a slut, might as well make her one. Why don’t you have a go, and we’ll call the damage to the laptop even?”
Becks’ eyes flew open, her arms still covering her face. She expected to hear outrage from the man, even disgust, at the offer. That’s how she would hope a normal person would react when offered to rape a woman in exchange for a broken computer.
Instead, she heard that fucking laugh again, followed by the clank of a belt. Becks didn’t care how much pain she was in. She was not going to just lay here, frozen, as some stranger unzipped his pants.
She kicked out with her heel. She had no idea what she hit, but she hit something.
Rain started to fall in heavy sheets, making her slip and slide on the rocks as she got to her feet.
Her vision was blurry. Even with the rain, it seemed off, and with each blink felt as if her head was about to explode.
But somehow, someway, she found the strength to get to her feet.
Something red streaked past her, just barely brushing her arm, as thunder filled the air. But she didn’t stop. Running was no longer an option. Something was wrong with her right leg. Hobbling and hopping, she made her way into the woods.