Chapter 3
Kipp
“ You’re not allowed to die before me, ” grunts my boyfriend, relief and worry simultaneously burning rubber in his expression. “ Understood? ”
I try to smile, but it hurts.
Fuckme, everything hurts.
My head.
Jaw.
Neck.
An attempt to lift myself up unleashes new waves of pain in my upper chest.
Side.
Hip.
What the fuck did he do to me?
Thump me like he was checking his goddamn tires?
Becoming overwhelmed by the increasing aches leads to me closing my eyes once more, yet the slight sting of Nolan’s cold palm slapping my cheek convinces them to stay open.
“ Don’t you fuckin’ dare, Kid. ” Another pop to the area is delivered. “ You wake the fuck up and stay the fuck up. ”
He’s right.
I need to wake up.
Stay up.
Get up.
Get moving.
Get to our girl.
“ Bunny ,” slips free in a crackled croak at the same time I lean into his assistance. “ Where? ”
“ Idontknow ,” he defeatedly murmurs as we successfully shift me into a sitting position. “But we’re gonna fuckin’ find her, Kid.” His eyes firmly lock onto mine. “We’re gonna save her.”
“Swear?”
“Swear.” One hand runs along my spine for support. “He’s not taking her away from us.” Nolan’s glare bores deeper into mine in tandem with his palm stiffening. “ He’s not fuckin’ leaving our town alive.”
There’s no hesitation to nod in agreement.
This shit ends tonight.
By any means necessary.
“First shit first.” He tips his chin in my direction. “Diagnostic report?”
Appreciation over his choice of wording pulls the corners of my lips completely upward in spite of the agony. “Operable.”
“Good.” My boyfriend rises to his feet and immediately extends his hand out for me to take.
“I wanna keep it that way.” Transitioning from sitting to standing is accompanied by uncomfortable grumbles and huffs and groans, all of which prompt him to mirthfully point out, “You sound like a ‘95 Buick.”
“You would too if you got fuckin’ tased on the NOS setting.”
“That fuckface tased you?!”
“I take it he didn’t tase you?” Giving the contact site a small touch results in a giant hiss. “ Fuck! ” I bunch up the edge of my shirt to reveal the two marks from where the device latched into me. “ Did that shit burn me?! ”
Nolan hunches forward to better examine the injury. “Pretty bad.” He takes over holding my clothing during his continued assessment. “We need to get this cleaned. ASAP .”
“ We need to find Bunny. ”
“We don’t need this shit to get infected.”
“We need to find our girl!”
“And we need you alive to fucking do that!”
Another huff of irritation is followed by me snatching my shirt out of his grasp. “ Fine. ”
“Come on, Rambo. ” My boyfriend clamps his hand lovingly around the back of my scraped-up neck. “We’ll make it quick. I’ve got a first-aid kit in the truck.”
Against my own volition, an amused grunt escapes.
Shit.
Now is not the time for laughing.
Or flirting.
Or fucking bandages.
Our girlfriend is missing.
Our pregnant girlfriend is fucking missing.
Our pregnant girlfriend is fucking missing and being hunted by a psychopath!
Fuck my injuries!
Fuck my possible broken rib!
Fuck everything else that isn’t finding and rescuing her!
“ Kid, ” Nolan calls to me alongside a hard squeeze, “we’re gonna go save her.”
“Then fuck the first aid kit!”
“ K- ”
“Fuck getting me cleaned up!”
“ K-”
“Fuck everything!” Removing myself from his hold swiftly occurs again. “Let’s get the fuck out there! Let’s go fucking looking! Searching! Hunting!” One finger jabs the direction I’m fairly certain they went. “Let’s get outta fucking park and start driving!”
“We will,” he states in a voice much too calm for my liking. “Right after we clean you up.”
“We need to save her!”
“Saving her doesn’t mean sacrificing you .” My mouth twitches in objection only to be bluntly cut off. “Now, shut up, and wait here while I get the kit.”
Thrusting myself backward onto the driver’s side door of his truck accidentally knocks the wind out of me.
Cargodsshowalittlemercy.
It’s bad enough I don’t know where Bunny is.
That I didn’t keep my word.
That I didn’t protect her.
Them.
I failed.
I epically failed.
Because of me…because I left her side…left her unprotected…she’s out there somewhere fighting for her life – their lives – all alone.
What if something’s already happened to her?
What if she’s somewhere bleeding and pleading and crying out for us?
What if she’s dying?
Dread rolls around the pit of my stomach as my eyes are forced shut by an even darker thought.
What if she’s already dead?
Tears bind together in my throat, creating a knot of fear and horror that’s not only impossible to swallow, but stops me from being able to get the tiniest amount of air into my lungs.
Deep gasps precede heavy pounds to my chest as anxiety and apprehension mutate into an unstoppable weight determined to park themselves permanently right on top of my airway.
She can’t die.
I can’t lose her too.
I don’t wanna lose her.
I don’t wanna lose our family.
“ Kid ,” Nolan airily croaks, dropping the small, black emergency bag near our feet in order to cup both sides of my face, “ look at me. ”
I can’t stop my head from rapidly shaking.
Knees from knocking together.
Body from threatening to collapse.
“ You gotta breathe, Kid ,” he desperately demands. “ You gotta stay awake. ”
“ Wh-wh, ” leaves me in airy whine, words too painful to complete outside my own mind.
“Fuck that,” the man I can’t live without grumbles and grips my face tighter. “Get focused.” He boldly invades my space. “We gotta get to Rabbit and our baby boy.”
There’s no stopping my eyebrows from darting down. “But what if they’re-”
“ They’re not. ”
“But-”
“ They’re. Not. ”
“How do you know!?”
“Because we’d feel it here.” He firmly pats me on top of my heart. “ Right. Fucking. Here. ”
To my surprise, the trembling in my jaw doesn’t stop me from eagerly nodding.
He’s right.
Again.
We’d… know …if they were… gone.
It’s just one of those things we’d feel.
Like when your car suddenly just “drives” differently.
You can’t quite put it into words, but you know that it is.
You know that something’s off.
You know because of that check engine light inside of you that only you understand.
That’s what he’s talking about.
That’s how he knows she’s still out there.
Fighting.
Hoping.
Believing.
“Lift your shirt,” my boyfriend instructs while lowering himself to the medical bag we need.
I immediately do as I’m told.
“There’s my good, filthy, little fuck,” Nolan warmly acknowledges during the unzipping process. “Keep being good for me, and I’ll let you lick my lollipop later.”
Yet again, laughter creeps up in spite of the life-or-death timing. “How the fuck are you so calm right now?”
“You’re alive.” He grabs a thin package and rips it open.
“I’m alive.” The dampness of the material is made colder by a random gust of wind.
“I know Rabbit’s alive.” Cleaning gently and quickly continues.
“And the calmer we are, the better fucking plan we can come up with.” His stare briefly shifts to mine.
“What’s the problem with havin’ foggy headlights? ”
“Reduced visibility.”
“And reduced visibility means?”
“Harder to see what’s ahead.”
Nolan nods while tossing aside the used material. “Exactly.”
This time, I let myself fully grin.
He’s earned at least that much.
I’ve been nothing but hell on two wheels since I fucking woke up.
But what does he expect?!
One minute I’m looking in his truck window, convinced he’s fallen asleep while waiting for us, and the next I’m the one waking up with him looking at me, convinced I’m dead.
A little stalling between gear shifting isn’t that outrageous.
Images of him being passed out in the space directly behind me are what prompt my investigating, “What happened to your zip ties?”
“I was zip tied?” One fluid motion is all it takes to rip off the back of the bandage. “When?”
“When I first got to your truck.”
There’s no hesitation to stick the covering in place.
“You were passed out with your hands zip tied between your legs.”
He cluelessly shrugs at the same time he secures the bag closed. “I don’t remember shit after he covered my face with a rag.”
“Chloroform?!” My shirt falls down as I squawk even louder. “That motherfucker chloroformed you?!” Disbelief violently races through my expression. “Who the fuck has chloroform that isn’t the villain in a fucking Mission Impossible movie?!”
Nolan struggles to swallow his snickers upon rising to his feet.
“Where the hell do you even get that shit?”
“Probably the same place he got the drugs he used to force Rabbit to take.”
Rage, which had momentarily been idling, quickly gets shifted back into gear, “ I want him like Le Mans. ”
“One step at a time, McQueen.” Post a firm pat to my shoulder, he inches over to the bed of his truck.
“We have to find the sonofabitch first.” The medical bag gets carelessly returned to where it came from.
“You remember anything else about the situation that might be useful?” By the grating sound, it’s safe to assume he’s now dragging over his toolbox.
“Where he was parked? If he had a weapon? Was he alone?”
I take a second to search my brain for that information only to come up empty.
Completely.
Empty.
Is that…is that normal?
Does being electrocuted erase your memory?
Holy shit.
Did he fry my AOS?!
“I…I…I…” my head slowly shakes in bewilderment, “can’t…
remember…anything…else…” Disappointment speeds around my system over and over and over again until my mind is left spinning more than it originally was.
“I mean I want to…” the scrunching of my face unconsciously occurs, “obviously, I fucking want to, but…there’s…
nothing…” I force the new knot of tears in my throat down to my stomach, “ there. Just…seeing…you…like that…and then…waking up…to you…over me.”
Nolan uses his left hand to warmly stroke the side of my throat. “ It’s okay, Kid. ”
“It doesn’t feel okay.”
“It will when we bash McAdams’ brains in.” He flashes me a villainous grin and resumes reaching into the container. “Now, what do you wanna do that with ? Wrench? Hammer? Bolt cutters? Extension bar?”
“Bolt cutters.” I sniffle away the unwanted emotions prior to declaring much firmer, “Definitely bolt cutters.”
The bright red tool is swiftly offered to me. “Solid choice.”
As he shifts them from his grip to mine, I inquire, “You?”
“Crowbar.”
“Classic.”
My boyfriend briefly displays the object in front of my face. “ Rusty. ”
“Literal insult to injury.”
An arrogant wink is the only response he delivers.
Moving away from his truck towards where my car is still parked reveals to us relieving information.
There are no additional vehicles or people.
No signs other ones have come or gone.
Even the temperature feels around the same frostbite to the balls cold it did when we were disco dancing an hour ago.
Hours ago.
Fuck…how much time has passed?
How much of a head start does this asshole really have?
“Glass,” calls out my best friend, halting me with a hard hand to my chest while using the crowbar wielding one to gesture to something else. “ Blood. ” Disregarding the shattered pieces of Miss X’s window is easy due to the red spots we veer away to follow. “Trail looks steady.”
Laudahavemercy.
Please don’t let that be Bunny’s.
Please don’t let our girl be bleeding to death.
“Is that a pen?” Questions Nolan during our approach to a slightly bigger puddle. “A bloody pen?”
Both of our stares high beam on it in unison, yet it’s me that excitedly croaks, “That’s one of mine! That’s one from my car!” Scrambling closer to get a better look is followed by me joyfully shrieking, “That’s the pen she was using to write on herself!”
“Huh,” grunts the man beside me. “Didn’t think that habit would ever come in handy.”
Me either.
But at least we know how to handle it if our son ends up having it.
And that it’ll basically keep him equipped with an emergency defense weapon.
Like Bond’s machine gun headlights.
“Assuming she stabbed him-”
“Is that another pen?!” I point into the far distance at the objection in question. “Is she leaving them for us to follow?!”
Darting away for the edge of the road makes it slightly more difficult to hear him attempting to reply, “I don’t think that’s-”
“ Fuckkkkk …” cryptically crawls from my chest as I stumble to a stop. “ This can’t be good. ”
“What?!” Nolan jogs the short distance to be by my side. “What can’t be-” He cuts himself off to defeatedly declare, “That’s her Mickey pen…” The side of his face gets an uncomfortable scrub. “She doesn’t go anywhere without that damn thing.”
“Not on purpose.”
Panic over the mangled accessory prepares to set in when he unexpectedly folds his frame forward to investigate something that’s near the now contorted spring.
“What…” More craning movements continue.
“What the fuck is that shit?” Lowering himself to a squat occurs next.
“Is that…” he uses the edge of his tool to move dirt around, “ a bug? ”
“Why the hell do we care if a bug is crawling around on her fucked-up pen?!”
“Not an insect, Kid.” He dusts away a little more debris and drags it closer at the same time he states, “ A tracking device. ”
Oh.
Oh…
Oh!
“Holy shit!” thoughtlessly jumps out of me. “Is that how-”
“ Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!! ” a feminine voice abruptly screams at the top of their lungs from somewhere deep in the woods prompting us to sprint off towards it.
“ Bunny! ” We instantly shout in unison against all logic and concerns for our own safety. “ We’re coming! ”