AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When the girls came to a fork in the path, Valentina looked at Gia and shook her head sadly. “Separating is probably the smart thing to do, he can’t come after both of us. It’s not going to be long before that sting wears off his eyes, and he can stand upright again. Then he’s gonna come looking for us. I’m only going to slow you down.”
“For the last time, we are sticking this out together.” Gia put her hands on her hips and looked at their options. Then she pointed to a break in the trees some yards ahead. “Do you see that in the space between those two huge pines? I think it might be the highway.”
Valentina looked to where Gia pointed, “I think we’re too far out for it to be a highway, although there does look like there might be some sort of paved road over there.”
Both girls let out a small scream when they heard the distant rumble of an engine turning over.
“He’s coming!” Gia looked at Valentina in horror.
They dove back into the shadows of the trees and watched from behind a fallen log as Rooster rode past them on a tricked-out dirt bike. They barely had time to catch their breath when he stopped the bike and turned off the motor about a quarter a mile up the dirt path. Then Rooster lifted a pack of smokes out of his tee shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and casually lit it.
He stared straight at the fallen log that Valentina and Gia were hiding behind.
Minutes passed, and the girls barely dared to breathe as Rooster took his time and drew deep on the tobacco. Then he leaned back on the bike and pulled something else out of his pocket. He held it in one hand while the other tapped it repeatedly.
When the cell that Gia was holding rang out loud and clear in the deep stillness, they watched on in horror as Rooster cocked his head towards the sound and smiled. Then the ringing stopped and Gia looked down at the one-word text that came flashing on the screen.
Gotcha.
“That bastard is tracking us with the phone. We need to separate, Gia. It’s the only way,” Valentina whispered urgently to a petrified Gia. Then she took the phone and threw it deep into the woods. “I’m gonna go out first and lead him away from you. Wait until he starts coming after me then head towards that road.”
“Valentina...” Gia started to protest.
“Do it, Gia. Get to that road. It’s the only chance we have.” Valentina closed her eyes and counted to ten then took a painfully deep breath and began to run noisily through the woods. When she heard the roar of the engine kick over she knew Rooster had taken the bait. Valentina ran as fast as she could while her heart pounded loudly in her ears. It didn’t help that just as she cleared the first tree line, a dark, heavy raincloud threatened overhead. Valentina’s limbs ached, the pain in her chest stabbed at her, and her lungs wanted to explode as the agony of running fast and hard overwhelmed her.
Keep going. Keep going, she told herself. Every instinct warned Valentina that if she stopped she would die.
Each step was agony, every breathe was torture, and each moment saw Valentina running frantically deeper and deeper into the woods. Valentina would run several yards, then pause to listen for sounds of a highway—the honk of a horn or the squeal of tires— anything to indicate that she was heading in the right direction. But to Valentina’s deep despair, the only thing she heard was the occasional screech of birds taking flight or the wind through the trees. She had hoped and prayed that somehow her frantic trek would eventually lead her to the road, but it seemed unlikely now. Not even the sound of Rooster’s dirt bike broke the eerie quiet; thank god Valentina had somehow managed to throw him off her scent.
Now, if only her cousin had made it—Gia making it to that road and to safety was the only hope that Valentina had. Gia was smart and brave and had strong survival instincts. Her cousin would find a way to save them, Valentina knew she would. She just had to be given the time to do that. Valentina hoped with all her heart that their plan to separate and run in different directions had given Gia that opportunity.
“Boo!”
Like a nightmare that just wouldn’t stop, Rooster jumped from out of nowhere like some demonic jack-in-the-box and landed right in front of Valentina. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and he had a bizarre grin on his face. Valentina galvanized her exhausted body into action and ran like hell back in the opposite direction —but on her best day, Valentina was no match for his speed or his strength.
Rooster caught Valentina easily. In a punishing embrace, he wrapped his arms around her sore ribs with a boa constrictor-like grip until she almost passed out from the pain. Then Rooster whispered close and low into Valentina’s ear, “Bitch, if I had known you had such a bad sense of direction, I would have saved us both a whole lot of trouble and just waited for you on the front porch.”
Rooster dragged a kicking and screaming Valentina a few yards through a thick row of scrub pine trees. The moment they broke through the living fence, Valentina let out howl of frustration and despair. She had spent all that time and energy andcouragenavigating herself through the very dense and scary forest only to end up right back where she started from. The only difference was that now she had somehow landed in the back of the cabin instead of the front of it. Valentina and her great escape plan.
Well, at least the plan had given Gia a head start. She really hoped that her cousin had made it, because Valentina was pretty certain that without intervention, she would be dead within the next twenty-four hours.
But that dream of rescue was short lived; when Rooster dragged Valentina around the corner, she realized all hope was lost. Because there knelt Valentina’sonly chanceon the front porch with her head bowed as if in prayer. A set of rosary beads were entwined between Gia’s clasped hands, and a semi-automatic was pointed to the back of her head.
Sebastian Abbiati looked up from where he was preparing to shoot Gia execution style. Then he leveled the gun at Rooster’s chest. “You told me these bitches were dead.”
Standing on the side of the road, Hal pulled out his smokes. His hands were shaking so bad it took him three times to light the damn thing. He took a deep hit of the rich tobacco and kept his eyes glued to the rescue team working on the car at the bottom of the ravine.
It was the Lincoln Town Car that had left those deep skid marks on the grey asphalt of the highway. It was Sal who had plowed through that guard rail and down that deadly ravine. It was the vehicle that Hal had strapped Valentina in that was sending up billows of black smoke from the wreckage site. Hal knew it, he felt it in every fiber of his being—no matter that the car itself was unrecognizable. What was left of the twisted metal was pinned against a massive tree trunk and turned on its side. The vehicle was completely obliterated, and pieces of it were strewn all the way down the steep, rocky embankment. The windows of the car had been blown out from the impact and thick, splintered layers of glass glittered on rocks, on the leaves of broken tree limbs, and all along the bed of the ravine. The whole area looked like the inside of a broken glitter globe.
Coming upon that scene of road blocks, ambulances, and fire trucks was something Hal should have prepared himself for— but he had been so intent on finding Valentina that the end game of having her safe again in his arms was the only possibility he had allowed for. He hadn’t let himself consider anything else, but now his thoughts were running wild and frantic as he watched the rescue crew work with the Jaws of Life.
Valentina had spoken to her father, she survived this crash to be taken somewhere else. That’s the only thing that makes sense, it’s the only thing that would match the timeline — she had told her father that she was being held in an area beyond this place…the locater showed that she was being held beyond this place. She had survived this. She had…she had…she had…Hal clenched his jaw and shifted his weight back and forth and from one foot to another— like a boxer getting ready for a fight. His body clenched and fisted and strained in a state of perpetual motion while his eyes remained fixed on the rescue attempt below. Peripheral sounds and shapes and smells faded to gray as all of Hal’s senses lasered in on the metal wreckage. Hal’s hyper-vigilance was in overdrive and fixated on that crash site. Coherent thought was becoming more and more elusive. All of the space in Hal’s mind was occupied by Valentina’ survival. He paced and fretted and worried along the side of the road. Then in the next breath, his eyes would hit upon the twisted car lying in the deep gully.
“Holy fucking shit,” Reno murmured and nodded to where the rescue team was working feverishly. “That is one poor overcooked bastard right there.”
Hal had to look twice to be sure that the lump the rescue team was now extracting from the wreckage was actually human. It was a faceless figure — charred and slick and covered with the deep, dark sheen of visceral blood.
Hal made a strangled sound as he felt his throat tighten. He saw that one of the members of the response team was busy vomiting in the bushes.
