Chapter 37 #2
The little side stretch between The Hollow and the next row of shops isn’t fully dark, but it’s dimmer here. Fewer windows. No direct line of sight from the front cameras. The nearest pool of light is behind me.
I slow.
Only a little.
My body notices before my mind does… that same small, sharp pull low in the stomach, that quiet internal shift.
Attention.
I tell myself I’m being dramatic until I hear footsteps behind me.
Fast.
Purposeful.
I turn…
And something drops over my head.
A hand.
Fabric.
Darkness.
My scream gets swallowed before it’s fully born.
One arm slams across my chest, wrenching me backward so hard my heels skid on the pavement.
Panic detonates in my ribs all at once, huge and white hot and absolute.
I thrash instinctively, clawing at whatever is over my face, twisting, kicking, trying to get air, trying to get purchase, trying to get out.
“Let me go…”
The words come out muffled and broken against rough fabric.
A body hits mine from behind, solid and controlled. Too strong. Too prepared. My pulse goes feral. I drive my elbow back, feel it connect with something hard enough to hurt me more than him.
He barely reacts.
No no no…
I try to plant my feet. Try to drop my weight the way Zane showed me once, half joking and half absolutely not, when he was teaching me what to do if someone ever grabbed me.
Make yourself difficult.
Make yourself heavy.
Make them work for it.
I do.
For one half second, it almost helps.
Then a voice, low against my ear. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Everything in me goes cold.
My stomach drops so hard it feels like missing a stair in the dark.
Is this… Cole?
I fight harder.
I slam my heel backward, aiming blind. He curses, and his grip tightens viciously.
“There she is,” he murmurs. “Knew you had some teeth.”
I suck in a ragged breath that tastes like cloth and cold and panic. My hands tear at the covering over my head, nails catching fabric, skin, anything. I twist hard enough that we stagger sideways into a wall.
Pain sparks through my shoulder.
I don’t care.
I open my mouth and scream anyway.
It comes out muffled, useless, and ends up swallowed again.
His hand clamps over the lower half of my face through the fabric, and suddenly, breathing is work.
“Don’t,” he says softly, and there’s something so much worse about the softness of it. “You’ll make this ugly.”
My heart is slamming so hard it hurts.
I kick again. Miss. Kick again.
Think.
Think.
Zane’s voice in my head, calm and practical:
Make noise. Leave evidence. Don’t make it easy.
I go limp without warning.
Dead weight.
It’s instinct and strategy colliding in one desperate move.
His grip shifts automatically to compensate.
And that tiny adjustment gives me enough room to rip one hand free and grab for anything, his wrist, the fabric, the air, anything.
My fingers catch the chain at my throat instead.
Evie’s locket.
The one I almost lost. The one I’ve touched a hundred times without thinking.
I yank it free so hard it bites my skin, curl it into my fist, and when I drop it, I aim blind toward that thin strip of light near the back door.
Let it fall.
Let a part of me stay behind.
Then the world tilts.
He lifts me.
One arm under my knees, the other crushing my upper body tight against him, the hood still blinding me, smothering me. I buck wildly, kicking, twisting, but he’s already moving fast.
I hear a vehicle door open.
My pulse spikes so hard I nearly black out with it.
No.
No, no, no…
I thrash with everything I have left, catching the edge of the doorframe with my boot hard enough to jar my whole leg. He swears, shoves me harder, and I go down awkwardly into what feels like the back seat or cargo space, my shoulder slamming into metal, my hip into rubber matting.
Hands on my wrists.
Plastic biting skin.
Zip ties.
I jerk, twist, try to wrench free before they cinch tight, but he’s faster.
Always faster.
The first tie locks.
Then the second.
Too tight.
My breathing goes ragged and ugly under the hood, every inhale hot and trapped and not enough. My boots scrape uselessly against the floor. I hear him climb in after me for one second, close enough that his breath reaches my cheek through the fabric.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, conversational like we’re discussing weather and not the complete collapse of my life. “You’re going to stay quiet. You’re going to stay useful. And if you make me work harder than necessary, I’ll stop being polite.”
My whole body is shaking.
I force air in.
Force it out.
Think.
Outside, I hear a burst of laughter from farther up the street.
A car door somewhere else.
The ordinary sounds of a town still existing.
So close.
So close and not enough.
Then the engine starts.
The vibration shudders through the floor under me.
I throw myself sideways, slam my shoulder into the door, kick wildly, try to make noise, make impact, make anything happen.
Cole catches my ankle and yanks hard enough to wrench a cry out of me.
“Careful,” he says. “Wouldn’t want you hurt before they get to see you.”
He’s right… they will come.
That thought should calm me.
Instead, it breaks me open right down the middle.
Because this is what Cole wants.
I’m a message, nothing more.