Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Slow?
Terrifying?
Or would it be fast?
Easy?
I had to stop it.
It wasn’t going to happen, so I didn’t need to worry about it.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the window again, but this time put my whole weight into it.
The window moved upward.
But it did so with an awful shrieking sound.
The talking in the other room silenced.
Then there were footsteps.
The hand jiggled the knob.
The savage curse.
I didn’t have a lot of time.
However long it would take to locate a screwdriver, then come back and twist the lock.
I leaned into the window opening, my arms hanging out, hopefully still capable of breaking my fall, even bound.
I didn’t factor in that not everyone would stop and do the logical thing like unlock the door.
That some people were all action and little thought.
There was the sound of a body slamming into the door, then a crashing.
He’d broken down the door.
“She’s getting out the window!” a woman called, but I couldn’t see her. Or him. Just the ground beneath me.
Stomach flip-flopping, I tried to throw myself forward.
Only to have the back of my shirt grabbed in a fist and yanked backward. Hard.
My head slammed into the window instead of sliding back in, the pain blacking out my vision for a moment as my body was flung to the floor. Where I sat on my knees, crying out against my gag.
“Get her out of here,” the woman hissed.
I struggled.
No one could say I didn’t.
I thrashed and whacked my head around. I tried to kick. I scratched.
But at the end of the day, I was smaller. He was stronger. And I was being dragged through the bedroom, then into the main living space.
And that was when I saw her.
The woman who’d been on the other side of the door.
The one who’d sounded vaguely familiar.
It wasn’t until I saw her blonde hair and her blue eyes and her familiar face that I finally understood why I couldn’t place it.
Because I’d never actually heard her real voice. I’d heard her fake soothing voice. The one she used while coaching us to put our bodies into interesting positions and use them to create long, lean muscles.
Melissa.
My pilates instructor.
It all seemed to start clicking then.
Gray brought in the merch where the drugs were hidden. I moved the boxes into storage where I always assumed Gav cut them open to inspect the new merch.
But it was never Gav.
It was Melissa.
And then she, what? Dealt the drugs? At the gym?
That part, I didn’t know.
I couldn’t know.
And pretty soon, there was no more wondering about Melissa, because I was being dragged right out the front door.
My gaze shot around, sure someone would see this, would do something, say something, call the police, something, anything.
The trailer I was inside was wedged in the sharp corner of a cul-de-sac. The one across the street looked abandoned, judging by the high grass and broken windows. The closest one to the side was cut off by a long line of tall arborvitae.
There was no one.
No one who could see anyway.
Not as I was pulled too fast, and stumbled over my own feet, sending me down onto my knees on the steps.
The impact had me crying out loudly against my gag.
“Fucking Christ,” Gray hissed, yanking me up so hard that my shoulder screamed.
I blinked away tears, trying not to fall into hopelessness.
There was always hope. Always. So long as you were still alive, there was hope.
I just had to focus, stay sharp.
I could find a way out of this.
Gray yanked me one more time before he popped his trunk, then stooped down, scooped me up, and tossed me inside.
The air was knocked out of me, and the trunk was slammed shut before I could suck in a new breath.
Alone in the trunk, I tried to focus.
I lifted my arms, angling them to the side to start pulling at edge of the duct tape on my face, whimpering at the sting as I freed my skin inch by inch.
I stopped when my mouth was exposed, leaving it stuck to my other cheek.
I tried to move my hands up and down, trying to make some space between the duct tape, so I could free my hands. All it did, though, was bite into my skin, rub it raw.
Tears sprang again, and this time, I didn’t bother to try to stop them. They flowed freely down my face as I tried to keep freeing my hands.
I heard it then.
The rumble of bikes.
It seemed to be getting closer.
Hope swelled.
Sure, other people owned bikes in Shady Valley. But I had to believe that this wasn’t them. This had to be Detroit. Detroit and his brothers. Men coming to save me.
But then the sound cut off.
Desperate, I sucked in a breath and screamed.
It got me nowhere. Save for the car I was in speeding up.
It wasn’t a long ride. And I could barely make any room for my hands when the car suddenly stopped.