Epilogue #2
He’d also done just that, paid some of his friends in beer to go to her place and pack everything. They’d brought it all to his house, and he’d put a few boxes of clothes into the room where he’d locked Kara, telling her everything else was in the basement.
It was a nightmare—and she’d had no idea how it would end.
When he’d gotten tired of begging her to reconsider, Nolan turned violent. Hitting her, raping her…all the time saying it was because he loved her so much. Declaring she could never leave him. That she’d love him soon enough.
How he’d gone from the slightly nerdy man she’d been dating to a complete monster was beyond Kara.
Just when she thought things couldn’t get worse…it started raining.
And didn’t stop.
Nolan’s house was by a cute little stream, which had quickly overflowed its banks and filled the yard, then nipped at the house itself.
One night—why did bad weather, tornados and hurricanes especially, always seem to be worse in the dark of the night?
—the water rose to the doorway…then continued rising.
It was the sound of water lapping at the bed she was lying on that had Kara leaping up and stepping into six inches of water. She’d pounded on the door of her prison, begging Nolan to let her out. But she’d heard nothing. He either wasn’t home or was ignoring her.
So much for his declaration of undying love. Not that beating and raping her said any-damn-thing about love.
As she continued to shout for Nolan, to pound on the door, the water got higher and higher. Just when she was sure she was going to drown in that room, the door popped off its hinges.
Kara made her way through the waist-deep water toward the front door.
The water swirled around her, and Nolan’s belongings were floating everywhere, making it difficult to reach the door.
It wouldn’t budge, and once again, Kara was afraid she was a dead woman.
But then she realized she couldn’t open it because the water was surging through the cracks.
She couldn’t compete against the power of the water, so she turned and made her way back through the house toward the back door.
By the time she got there, the water was almost to her chest, and she wasn’t short by any stretch. She was nearly six feet tall. Five-eleven. The door was rattling with the pressure of the water, and with shaking hands, Kara undid the dead bolt and turned the knob.
It swung open almost violently, the water in the house rushing out to join the rest of the churning waves outside the house, taking Kara with it. She had time to take one deep breath before she was washed into the raging flood.
Remembering something she’d heard once from one of her coworkers, who’d just gotten back from a white-water rafting trip, she tried to put her feet first, so when she hit debris, it would hit her feet and not her head.
That worked, sort of. Kara saw the shadow of something big in front of her, and she hit it with her feet all right, but the force of the impact spun her around. Then she was underwater, fighting through the debris all around her to get back to the surface.
She had to get out of the water if she was going to live. And suddenly, she desperately wanted to live, if only to go to the police and get Nolan arrested for kidnapping.
Even though she was a good swimmer, it was impossible to swim out of the raging river, the current was simply too strong. So all she could do was try to keep her head above water as she was swept along.
She had no idea how long she’d been racing through the water, but through the rain and darkness, she suddenly spotted her best chance to escape certain death by drowning, sticking out of the water ahead of her.
A tree.
And she was headed straight for it.
Bracing herself, Kara reached for one of the branches hanging low over the water and grabbed onto it with all her strength as she passed.
She felt the skin of her hands tearing against the rough bark, but she didn’t let go.
Her body was being pulled downstream, and it took every ounce of her strength to climb the branch against the current until she reached the trunk of the tree.
She rested for a moment as the water pressed her back against the bark. Then she began to climb.
She’d always been a tomboy growing up, and one of her favorite activities was climbing the tree in her front yard and hiding away from the world that hadn’t always been kind to an introverted, awkward little girl.
Thankfully, this tree was built for climbing.
The limbs were close together and she was able to get high enough so she was out of the water.
Kara took a deep breath of relief. She was safe. She’d just hang out here and wait for the water to recede, then she’d find help.
Except, the water didn’t recede. It only got higher. The rain didn’t let up and the wind howled all around her. Kara had to keep climbing to stay out of the raging river below.
Hours later, the tree that seemed like a lifeline, and so sturdy, was finally giving way to the force of the water constantly pushing against it.
Kara closed her eyes. This couldn’t be the end.
She couldn’t have lived through a crappy childhood, studied her ass off in college, survived being beaten, raped, and kidnapped by a man she’d once thought was “cute” and “quite the gentleman,” and made it out of a house and into this tree, only to be dumped right back into that awful muck-filled water to drown after all.
For the thousandth time, Kara wiped the water out of her eyes and raked her hair out of her face.
She was trying not to panic when she heard a sound that seemed out of place.
It wasn’t the scary sound of the angry water, or that of houses somewhere in the dark coming apart under the force of the waves. It was mechanical.
She was confused until she looked up and saw two dark shapes above her, with a powerful spotlight panning back and forth, as if searching for something.
It dawned on her then—they were helicopters, and her best chance of getting out of this deadly situation.
She risked taking one hand from the tree she was holding in a death grip and waving it frantically over her head. Hoping like hell they’d somehow see her.
To her amazement, the choppers stopped. Hovering not too far from her tree.
Had her luck finally changed? Had they seen her?
One of the choppers banked to the right, and she saw that the side door was open. It was hard to believe anyone was crazy enough to be flying in this kind of weather, but she was more than grateful.
The tree under her shifted, and Kara inhaled sharply, coughing when rain got sucked down her throat in the process. Great, now she was going to choke to death right when rescue was imminent.
When she had herself under control again, she looked back up at the helicopter and was almost blinded by the powerful light shining from above.
She couldn’t see anything. Had no idea how the hell someone was going to get her out of this tree, but she trusted whoever was in that chopper with her life.
She relaxed a fraction. This nightmare was about to end.
As she had that thought, the tree she was clinging to shuddered as literally half a house smacked into its side.
One second she was staring up at the man in the helicopter, and the next, the tree she was holding on to like a spider monkey was ripped from the ground by its roots and catapulted into the dangerous raging floodwater.
Damn.
So much for her luck changing.
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