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When I got halfway through cutting the duct tape, it actually tore a little bit. Creating a split-second sound of fabric spearing open.
Franco stopped speaking to whoever was on the phone and swiveled his head to me. I tried to hide the destabilization of my breathing, knowing if he looked closer, he would see what I had done. Since I wasn’t even free yet, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself against his vengeful blows.
His stare was a guillotine dangling from a frail string, but I managed to shift and grunt slightly, as if trying to get more comfortable, in hopes of convincing him that this was the sound he’d heard. His gaze remained on me for one second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
But finally, he looked away and resumed talking to whoever was on the other end of that phone.
It afforded me the last few seconds I needed to cut through my bindings. Though the duct tape was cut, there were still pieces of it fashioned to my left wrist, and I had to slowly pull them from my skin.
But once I did, my wrists separated.
I shot out of the chair and sprinted behind me, to my left. The warehouse was dark and impossible to see the best escape route until I caught sight of an illuminated Exit sign hanging above a doorway forty feet from me.
“The fuck!” one of the men shouted.
“Don’t shoot her yet,” Franco barked.
I never considered myself a particularly good runner, but holy shit, it was amazing what wonders adrenaline could do in a life-threatening situation. Footsteps pummeled behind me, but based on the sound, I was closer to the door than they were to me. And now, I was almost home free.
Oxygen pumped in and out of my lungs so rapidly, it burned, and my thighs were on fire.
I opened the metal door and escaped the main area of the warehouse, slamming the door behind me as I ran down a long hallway toward another Exit sign. I could only pray that this exit would lead me outside, because this hallway offered no place to hide.
The Exit sign was only seventy-five feet ahead, but it felt like a thousand.
Behind me, a metallic groan, followed by footsteps, emerged, followed by rising voices of men shouting at each other.
Fifty feet from the exit, I pushed myself harder, running faster.
I risked a quick glance over my shoulder and noted the men barreling toward me, but once I made it outside, I could scream, I could call 911, I could run toward a road if there was one nearby.
So, I ran even faster.
My God, I’m going to make it.
They weren’t going to catch me in time. The door was only thirty feet away now, then twenty.
Closing the final distance, I reached my arm up toward its handle so I could shove it open without hesitation.
But suddenly, a figure blocked the door.
He’d come from what I could only assume was a different exit path from the warehouse.
I stopped in my tracks, nearly falling to the ground from the momentum. I quickly glanced around for another escape route or for someplace to hide, but there was nothing.
I was sandwiched between my captors.
Who had just herded their prey.
“That was a very stupid thing to do, you bitch,” the man in front of me said just before he cracked me over the head with his gun.
CHAPTER53
Hunter
