Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Gina’s teeth chattered hard enough to ache.
The cabin—if it could even be called that—where she’d been taken sat somewhere deep in the mountains outside San Francisco. She didn’t know how long they’d driven to get here.
She remembered trying to start her car. Realizing it was dead and that she needed to run.
But she hadn’t made it very far. As soon as she’d stepped into the stairwell, someone had grabbed her.
A rag had been clamped over her mouth, the chemical stink burning her nose and throat.
She’d tried to fight, to claw at him, but her muscles had turned to wet sand.
After that, everything blurred into fragments: the feel of hands dragging her, the slam of a van door, the rumble of an engine on twisting roads.
Darkness swallowing her again and again.
Now she sat on the splintered floorboards of a drafty mountain shack, her clothes offering little protection against the cold that seeped through every seam. Her blazer was torn. Her blouse was filthy. Her hands—zip-tied in front of her—throbbed with bruising.
The man left for hours at a time—so long that she wondered each time he left if he’d return.
He always did.
She’d tried to escape when she first arrived. But the door was locked solid.
The windows were covered with boards. She’d broken two nails and bloodied her fingers trying to pry them off. It was useless.
She’d yelled for help, but it was clear no one was around to hear her.
She was trapped . . . and her future was beginning to feel hopeless.
Worse yet, she still had no idea who this man was or why he’d grabbed her. Was she just a random victim? Why her?
God, why me?
The man was here again now, standing in the shadows and watching her. Asking her questions.
She still couldn’t see his face.
Sometimes it was the angle.
Sometimes it was the hood.
Most times it was the headlamp—bright, focused, aimed directly at her eyes whenever she tried to study him.
That had become its own kind of torture.
He’d fed her earlier—it had been paltry: a stale sandwich and a bag of barbeque chips.
But it was something.
He’d watched every bite she took as he leaned against the wall with an eerie stillness, as though he were observing a test subject instead of a human being.
And he’d asked questions.
So many questions.
About her work.
Her habits.
Her fears.
He had the same gravelly voice from her apartment. He sounded too calm. Too intimate. Too much like he’d been waiting years to speak to her like this.
It had been three days. At least, she thought it had been three days.
She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“Are you warm enough?” the man asked.
“N—no,” she whispered.
Would he actually give her a blanket? She craved warmth.
“Good.” He picked up something from the table. It looked like an old metal kitchen timer, the kind that ticked loudly. “Cold keeps you alert.”
Her stomach dropped. What did that mean? Why did he have a timer?
“What do you want with me?” Her voice cracked.
“Clarity. Most people don’t make it very far. But I have a feeling you’ll be more interesting.”
Most people?
The room around her began to spin.
This guy had done this before.
This wasn’t a random sicko. This man was working on perfecting his crime.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.
“But first, the rules.” He adjusted the timer and set it on the table. “You’ll have a twenty-minute head start.”
Gina froze. “What . . . what does that mean? A head start for what?”
“It means you’ll run,” he said. “And I’ll wait twenty minutes before I come after you.”
The room tilted, and she gripped the floorboards to ground herself.
This was a game, she realized. A sick, twisted game.
The man stepped aside and cracked open the cabin door.
Wind instantly howled inside, carrying the scent of pine, snow, and something older—wild, untouched wilderness.
Beyond the threshold stretched a darkness so complete it felt alive.
Mountains. Endless mountains.
No roads. No sign of anything human.
“Run,” he murmured, “while you can.”
A low chuckle drifted from behind the blinding light.
Gina didn’t think.
She didn’t breathe.
She just bolted through the doorway, stumbled down the creaking steps, and plunged into the night.
The cold hit her like a wall, slicing through her thin blouse and slacks.
Her heels sank into the dirt on the first step, so she kicked them off and kept running barefoot, her breath fogging in frantic bursts.
Behind her, the cabin door creaked shut.
A few steps later, the mountains swallowed her whole.
She was alone.
Unarmed.
Lost.
Behind her—her captor waited for a timer to finish ticking.
Then he would come.
He would hunt her.
Gina forced her legs to move faster.
She had twenty minutes.
Only twenty minutes.
Maybe, just maybe, she could escape.