Chapter 29
Elbows Up
Pain and agony roll through me, and I’m fighting to breathe as my diaphragm spasms. A pair of boots steps into my field of vision, and one slides under my ribs, flipping me over.
The agony turns into a sharp stabbing sensation, and I suck in a breath as my diaphragm finally relaxes.
The breath turns into a choking cough that I instantly regret as the taste of iron, copper, and salt floods my mouth, clogging my throat, leaving me feeling like I’m being waterboarded with my own blood.
My ribs are definitely broken, and I can’t breathe. Can’t…
Garret Fischer comes into focus above me.
There’s a brief moment where I think he’s going to stomp on my face, and my mind supplies an image of my head popping like a water balloon before he drops to a crouch beside me.
His blue eyes look glacial, and a sense of futility washes over me as my brain tells me I’m going to die.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, reaching out to poke at my nose, which is still pouring blood down the back of my throat.
His finger makes contact with my skin, and I gasp.
I feel like I might throw up as a garbled groan escapes from my throat.
I need to get away. I need to… He stands and moves to my feet.
I feebly kick at him as his hands reach for me, but he just grabs my ankles.
I try to shake them off, but they’re vises, and he drags me back toward the front of the building.
He’s supposed to be at the team meeting.
Everyone is supposed to be at the meeting, I think unhelpfully as my head bounces over the asphalt, and my coat scrapes across the ground, filling my ears.
The sky overhead is unfathomably black beyond the parking lot lights, and I wonder where he’s taking me.
Why he’s taking me. He could just kill me here.
The police would most likely assume it was a robbery gone wrong and blame it on the homeless population.
The lot is so empty that there’s no one to see what’s happening. No one to stop him from killing me or abducting me or whatever he’s doing. I turn my head to the side, spitting blood onto the pavement as I try once again to kick his hands off me.
“Piss me off and it’s going to go worse for you,” he throws over his shoulder.
Worse than what? I wonder, struggling harder. If I don’t get away from him, I’m dead either way. It doesn’t do any good, though. I have no leverage.
I open my mouth to scream, and then decide against it. There’s no one around to hear, and if I start screaming he might gag me, and then I’d choke to death on my own blood.
Instead, I try to get my elbows under me.
I need to get his hands off me. I need to give myself a fighting chance.
I need to put some distance between us. Only before I can do any of that, he stops next to a van emblazoned with the words Rent Me!
and drops my feet as he turns to face me.
I try to scurry backward, but I’m not fast enough, and he drops a knee to my stomach, sending the air whooshing from my lungs.
Darkness floods my vision as pain ricochets through my abdomen and across my ribs. My ribs that are so, so broken.
He says nothing for a second, apparently waiting for the pain to recede enough that my eyes focus on him. “Hands,” he orders, extending a zip tie that already has the tail looped through the opening.
“No,” I growl.
He sighs as if I’m making things difficult.
As if he’s not the one trying to abduct me, because it seems like that’s what’s happening.
He leans more weight onto the knee that’s digging into my gut and grabs my left wrist, wrenching it toward him.
I wait a second until he’s focused on forcing it into the circle of the zip tie, and then I try to gouge his eyes out with my right hand.
He lets go of my wrist and backhands me, sending my head rocking to the side before I can make contact.
By the time I’m capable of reacting, he’s tightening the zip tie down on my wrists. It bites into my skin. Then his knee vanishes from my stomach, and I suck in a breath.
“If you so much as twitch, Alyssa,” he hisses, moving to my feet, “I will knock you out, and we both know you don’t want that. Be a good girl and nod if you understand.”
I give a tight nod and make what I hope is the smart choice, deciding to bide my time because, unfortunately, he’s right. I don’t want that. As long as I’m conscious, I have a chance. Maybe not right this second. But soon. I hope.
A zip tie goes around my ankles, and the noise it makes as it tightens down sounds like a death sentence. He just cut off any hope I had of running, and I try to control my breathing as the realization slaps me in the face harder than his hand did a minute ago.
Then he’s back at my side, digging through my pockets. He pulls out the folded pages I put in there who knows how long ago. The ones about Mark. And as he unfolds them, his eyes scanning across the paper, I want nothing more than to rip his nose from his face with my teeth.
But I don’t. I hold still as he murmurs a soft, “Hmm.” He refolds the pages, shoving them into his coat, and then his hands are back in my pockets. He takes my phone, shuts it off, and stuffs it in with the pages.
Dread wraps around my chest, but his hands don’t return to rifling through my pockets.
Instead, he grabs my wrists, yanking me upright.
My right elbow screams in pain, and I don’t know if it’s from him wrenching it when he zip-tied me, or if I reinjured it when I fell, or maybe when he was dragging me across the parking lot.
Blood is still flowing from my nose as he opens the van’s sliding door and shoves me through it.
I land hard, my left hip taking the brunt of the impact, and I yank my feet out of the way as he whips the panel door closed.
There’s a metal grill separating the back—which is empty aside from me—from the front.
A few seconds pass, and then Garret climbs behind the wheel, slamming the driver’s side door too.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, sounding like I’ve developed a bad head cold, but he doesn’t answer.
The engine starts, and the van lurches into motion, sending me rocking sideways, unable to brace myself.
I pinch my nose shut, staring at my feet as I try to stop the bleeding.
I know there’s a way to break zip ties using shoelaces, only I’m wearing Chelsea boots, which doesn’t help me at all.
The blood has been confined to my face and coat, and I’d like to keep it that way, so my hands stay on my nose rather than trying to come up with some alternate way to get free.
Luckily, my nose doesn’t feel broken, even if my face really hurts.
Ten minutes later, he’s turning onto the ramp for I-84 East, and I slowly unzip my coat as he merges into traffic, hoping he won’t notice the sound of the zipper over the noise of the blinker. It comes undone just as the blinker switches off, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask again as I try to work my zip-tied hands into my pants pocket. My pants pocket I couldn’t get to because of my stupid coat.
As before, he offers no response.
“Where are your personal rent-a-cops?” I question instead. “Did you sneak away from your guards?”
I’m met with more silence. I let a few minutes pass before trying a different approach.
“You know Rhys told me about all the women you raped. He said it’s the only way you can get off,” I lie, hoping to get a reaction.
But I don’t, so I press a little harder.
I know I can find the right buttons if I keep pushing, and it’s not like anything I say is going to make this situation any worse for me.
“Impotence is a real bitch. You could’ve talked to someone about it, though, Garret,” I taunt, and he taps the brakes, sending me sliding into the metal grill behind his seat.
I groan as pain flares through my body, leaving me feeling more beat up than a pinata right before it bursts apart. But I grin anyway. I found my button.
My fingertips brush against the tranq dart, but it’s not enough to get a solid grip.
I put it in my pants pocket so that I would have it on me regardless of whether I was wearing my coat, which in hindsight might not’ve been the best choice.
I didn’t anticipate winding up zip-tied, and it’s hard to get my hands far enough in to grasp the dart.
The edge of the pocket is biting into my hands, turning my skin a blotchy red-white.
I ignore the mixture of pain and pressure—it’s nowhere near as bad as my head—as I slouch and extend my legs, hoping to create more space between the fabric and my hipbone.
Just enough to shove my hands in and grab the damn dart.
Finally, my hands move a fraction of an inch, leaving behind a layer of skin. But it’s enough to curl my fingers around the dart. Relief floods through me. Things still aren’t great, but I’m not going to die tonight. Or at least if I do, I’ll be sure to take this asshole with me.
It takes a minute to work it all the way out, and I glance down.
The darts didn’t come with any kind of caps or covers, and I didn’t want to walk around with an exposed needle in my pocket.
Fortunately, I found that a Sharpie cap fit over the dart’s tip nicely.
I slide a nail against the edge of the cap, loosening it, but not taking it all the way off, just in case Garret decides to hit the brakes again.
“When did it start? The impotence?” I ask, trying to piss him off, hoping it will make him sloppy later.
“Has it always been a problem?” I get no response, but I continue talking as he drives despite that.
“Was it the first time you were with a girl? That must’ve sucked.
Being sixteen with a limp dick. That’s rough, Garret. ”
“Shut up!” he snaps.