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Fucking asshole.
“No. You don’t understand. I need to use the bathroom, like right now.” I widen my eyes, hoping he will pick up what I’m putting down, but his dumbstruck face tells me he’s still not getting it. “Look, unless you want to add cleaning up diarrhea to your list of duties, I suggest you untie me so I can use the bathroom.”
His face curls in disgust before he stomps over to the bed. “Jesus fucking Christ.” He begins untying my hands and feet, more aggressively than necessary, of course, and pushes me down the hall and into the bathroom.
I stop and look over my shoulder when he doesn’t follow me. “You’re not coming in?” I try to keep the excitement out of my voice.
“No, I’m not fucking coming in. Just do what you’ve gotta do and hurry the hell up.” I move to close the door when he stops it with his foot. “I will be right here, though, so don’t even think of trying anything.”
Outside of the bathroom is better than in it.
He moves his boot, and I calmly close the door when I hear him yell, “And turn the fucking fan on!”
I flip the switch for the fan and lean against the sink, mentally preparing myself for what I’m about to do. “You can do this, Harp. You have to do this. You have to get out,” I whisper to myself, talking low enough so that he can’t hear me over the roar of the fan. I take a deep breath before pushing off the counter and moving toward the towel rack on the opposite wall.
Pulling the towel off, I wrap it around my arm just above my elbow. I know that as soon as I do this, the noise will be loud enough that he’ll come busting in here. I have to get it on the first try.
I summon every last bit of strength I have in my body before bringing my arm up and crashing it into the wooden bar, using the towel to help cushion the blow against my arm. The wood breaks free of the wall from the force of my hit and falls to the ground. In rapid succession, I pick up the largest piece as Logan bursts through the door. I don’t hesitate, I don’t waste a single second, I don’t doubt myself for a moment. As Logan lunges at me, I drive the piece of wood right into the center of his abdomen. Blood begins rapidly staining his shirt around the wound. Logan hits the floor, both hands wrapped around the piece of wood lodged inside him. I don’t wait to see if he dies. I can’t risk it. I have to move.
Lunging over him, I run toward the kitchen, looking for the van keys. When I can’t immediately find him, I don’t stop. At this rate, risking the wilderness is a far better option than whatever they have planned for me. The door is still locked, and I have no idea where the keys are. I grab a log of the stack of wood by the fireplace and bust open the window next to it, just like I intended to do all those nights ago.
The glass shatters, and I use the log to knock off the pieces left around the frame. I hear Logan’s gurgled groans as I crawl out the window and run straight toward the treeline. I can’t risk running along the road on the off chance that Logan gets up and climbs in his van. My best bet is to run through the woods a few hundred yards from the road and pray I don’t get hopelessly lost in the endless abyss of Pennsylvania wilderness.
I pump my legs as fast as I possibly can, trying to ignore how utterly exhausted my body feels. I can feel the sticks and stones tearing away at the skin at the bottom of my feet, the branches cutting my bare arms and legs, the way my stomach cramps from being so incredibly hungry, but I ignore it all. I have to keep moving and get as far away from here as possible.
I have to keep moving.
“Run, Baby. Run.”
13
Mac
“Right down here,” I point to the left, directing Mac to where there’s nothing but a small gravel drive. We’ve been driving as fast as physically possible, breaking every speed limit and only stopping once for gas, but it’s still taken us five hours to get here. However, as the miles grew between us and the city, the undeniable feeling in my gut has only grown—she’s here.
I know it.
I look in the side mirror as Enzo and Dante make the same turn behind us. “The house should be just up here,” I instruct my big brother. Where most people would drive cautiously down the gravel drive, Ronan doesn’t let off the gas—speeding and kicking up rocks as we go.
“If you kick a rock up at their car, Dante will kill you,” Finn pipes up from the back seat.
“I’ll buy them a new one,” Ronan grumbles in annoyance. Even though we all know Finn means nothing by it. He’s just nervous, we all are. “Hell, if we find Harper, I’ll buy them each a new one.”
“I heard that, and I’m gonna hold you to it,” Enzo’s voice echoes through our car.
“There it is!” I point at the small cabin just appearing just around the trees. Ronan slams on the brakes, not bothering to drive up to the house. Enzo skids to a stop behind us, and with no time to spare, we’re all out of the cars and ready to move. We had a plan to stealthily move into the cabin, but judging by the way Ronan’s sprinting toward the cabin, that plan is out the window. Not that I blame him anyway.
We run to catch up to Ronan, only for him to stop about ten feet in front of the deck. A trail of blood leads out of the still-open front door to a smaller puddle where we’re standing, where a set of read marks lead back down the gravel trail we came from.
Ronan looks from the ground up at me, white as a ghost with tears in his eyes. I’m right there with him, but I shove the worry and fear deep down like I have been the last two weeks. “We don’t know if that’s hers, brother.”
Like he’s shaking himself out of a stupor, Ronan shakes his head and blinks back the tears that were about to fall. Clearing his voice, he looks at all of us. “Enzo and Dante, scan the area and see if you can find anything. You two,” he looks at Finn and me, “with me.”
The three of us hesitantly move into the cabin, terrified of what we may, or may not, find. As soon as we enter, we follow the trail of blood to a bathroom in the hallway, where a much bigger pile awaits. I look around the small space to find a busted towel rack. A large piece of it, coated in blood, lays in the sink along with several blood-soaked towels.
“We don’t know if that’s hers,” I repeat my words from outside. Trying to convince them and myself. “We don’t stop until we find her.”
“We have to clear the rest of the house.” Ronan commands. We move down the hallway, and my heart stops when I see the room at the end. It’s nothing more than an empty bed with a rope and cuff attached to each corner. Small traces of blood are scattered across the mattress, some darker than others, indicating how long they’ve been there.
