AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The line goes quiet again, but I hear one of them say something every so often.
Finally, I can’t take the quietness anymore.
“Are you guys in my house yet?” I wonder.
“Yeah,” Jax answers. “Zay’s setting up a camera in the kitchen, Hunter almost has one up in the living room, and I just put one up in the upstairs hallway.”
Crap. There’s one in the upstairs hallway? That could be close enough to my room where they might overhear something. But I know if I say anything about it, he’ll question why.
“Which one’s your room?” he asks.
I chew on my bottom lip. “Um … Why?”
“I was just curious what it looked like,” he tells me. “It’s okay if you don’t want me to go in there.”
I relax a smidgeon. “No, it’s fine if you want to go in there … It’s the second door on the right.”
Jax doesn’t say anything right away and, for some dumbass reason, that makes me nervous.
“There’s not a lot of stuff in here,” he finally says.
“I know … My aunt and uncle made me get rid of a lot of stuff when I moved in with them. And I haven’t really gotten a lot of new stuff, so …” I shrug, even though he can’t see me.
“You should have more stuff,” he mutters, but I’m unsure if he’s talking to me or himself.
“It’s fine … I mean, I wish I had some of my old stuff, like my dad’s old record collection, but that’s long g—”
“Where did you get this photo?” he suddenly cuts me off, his tone trembling.
I’m beyond confused, not just by his question, but by his reaction. “What photo?”
“This one with the man and woman and a little girl in a purple dress?” His tone is equally, if not more, shaky now.
“That’s a photo of my parents and me, when I was little, obviously. It’s the only one I have left of them. My aunt threw away the rest, said I didn’t need to dwell on the past or some shit like that.” Tears burn my eyes as I remember how angry I was when I watched her toss all the boxes of my family photos in the trash. She said it was making me too emotional whenever I looked at them. “She didn’t know I kept that one. I hid it in my shoe. If she did, she’d probably freak out.” I give a short pause as something dawns on me. “Jax, you don’t think she made me toss them because I’m off the grid or whatever, do you?”
“I don’t know.” His voice is barely a whisper now, and I’m not positive why, what’s making him so upset.
“Jax, are you okay …?” I trail off as the driver’s side door opens.
At first, I assume it’s one of the guys since I didn’t see a car pull up to the house, but when the person ducks their head into the car, I know I’m in deep shit.
Because they’re wearing a ski mask.
I immediately scoot over to the other side of the car to hightail it out the passenger side, but that door opens up, too, and that person is also donning a ski mask. Panic soars through me as I put the phone back to my ear.
“Jax,” I hiss but get no response, so I open my mouth and shout, “Jax—”
The person on the driver’s side dives over the seat and smacks my face hard enough that my ears pop and I drop the phone onto the floor. I’m fuming with rage as I hurriedly fumble to pick up the phone, but the people have already flipped the seats up and are grabbing at me from both sides. I put up a fight, kicking and screaming, throwing punches. I manage to clock one of them in the face, and they curse, leaning back for a moment. I try to shove around them, but the person behind me wraps their fingers around my throat while pinning me against them.
Before this point, I wasn’t quite certain what was going on, but now I get it. Whoever these people are, they are trying to kill me. I scramble to get free, but the person I punched has recovered and climbs on top of me. I attempt to kick them, to no avail.
In the back of my mind, I question why Jax didn’t answer me when I screamed into the phone, and while I don’t want to think it, I wonder if perhaps they’re behind this. I mean, they are the ones who had me sit out in the car. I didn’t see anyone pull up to the house and the car is hidden in the forest, so how did these people know I was here? Unless this was a setup.
“Shh … sweetheart,” the person who’s holding my neck whispers. “No one’s gonna hurt you as long Jaxon, Hunter, and Zayden give me what I want.”
Okay, maybe the guys didn’t have anything to do with this—
Suddenly, the person basically sitting on top of me shoves a pill into my mouth. I start to spit it out, but they hold my mouth shut. I wiggle and thrash around, trying to get the fucker off me while keeping the pill in my mouth. It dissolves, and then I start to feel a little dizzy.
