Page 33 of Outcast

A rush of anger pushed my fear aside, flexing the muscles in my jaw and neck. I would never have ended up into this shitty predicament if he hadn’t negotiated a fake ceasefire. I jerked in my bonds, and bumped my ass on the wall of the trunk. “That’s rich, coming from the man who left me duct taped in a sleeping bag to be eaten alive by sheep!”

“I had nothing to do with that,” he hissed.

“You could have stopped them, but you did nothing!” I hissed back.

Henry didn’t reply because it was true. Even though he hardly participated in the bullying, he was always there with the others, observing me as though everything I’d suffered was some big TV social experiment. Not laughing along with his friends didn’t make him innocent. At any time, he could have expressed his disapproval but he was probably too concerned with fitting into the triumvirate or didn’t care enough to speak up. Either way, he was guilty by association.

He cleared his throat. “That prank would—”

“You call leaving someone to the elements a prank?” I shook my bound fists into his face. “Some pervert cornered me in a hedgerow and wanted to take me back to his shed for whiskey!”

He flinched. What did he think was going to happen to a young woman on her own? “I’m… are you alright?”

“No thanks to you! And now I’m kidnapped with a head that won’t stop throbbing.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have broadcasted Underhill’s—”

“That wasn’t me.” I thrashed about and accidentally kicked him in the shins.

“Shhh! It’s best that they think you’re unconscious, or they’ll drug you again.”

All the blood and anger drained from my face, leaving me with a mouth and throat as dry as sand. “D-drug?”

“Just after they taped you up, one of them injected you with something. They said it was to keep you calm for the journey.”

I swallowed hard and stared at the dark walls of the trunk. No wonder it had taken so long to awaken. I’d thought it was a combination of pain and the mother of all concussions, but drugs? I shuddered. What if it was heroin or some other kind of addictive substance? What if they gave me an overdose?

Twisting around in the darkened space, I rasped, “W-we have to get out of here.”

“This boot is secure. I tried kicking it open earlier. It wouldn’t budge, and the kidnappers stopped at the roadside and said they’d kill you if I tried again.”

A bone-deep shudder rocked my entire body. Drugs, murder, and a large getaway vehicle? These kidnappers were the real deal. “T-they did?”

He gave me a grim nod. “So, I’d keep quiet and cooperate, in case they work out you’re more trouble than you’re worth as a hostage.”

“Is that what they want?” I asked. “Ransom?”

“Most likely. I can’t see them abducting me and taking me this far for my body.”

My gaze swept down his muscled chest. I couldn’t see much of it in the dark, but if I was the kidnapping type and wanted to keep someone chained to a hideout for a little guilty pleasure, it would probably be a guy with a physique like Henry’s. I pushed away the stray thought. Obviously, the drugs they’d injected into me were trying to derail my plans of escape.

The only way I could survive this ordeal was to become a hostage in my own right, not the hostage’s whipping girl. “Did you tell them I was Rudolph Trommel’s stepdaughter?”

“I kept quiet about that,” he replied.

“Why?” It was a struggle to keep the screech out of my voice.

“If Trommel valued you enough as a daughter, you’d be in an American school, close to your family. Obviously, he shipped you to England because he didn’t want you getting in the way of his beautiful, new wife.”

His words hit harder than Charlotte’s boot to the stomach, and I flinched. That was exactly why Rudolph sent me here. He’d just added the crap about studying overseas being character-building so he could impress Mom. Had Henry gleaned all this from his careful observations, or did the whole school know I’d been thrown away like trash? My throat thickened, and a tingling heat crept up my cheeks, settled around my eyes, and made them well with tears. Even if we’d been abducted by violent, drug-wielding kidnappers, I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I rolled onto my other side and blinked the tears away.

“Hobson?”

I closed my eyes. As far as I was concerned, his trunk-time entertainment was over.

“Hobson.”

I ignored his nudge.