A maniacal laugh escapes her dark red lips. “No.”
Taking another step forward, she grabs my cheeks and squeezes hard, digging her nails into my skin. “I never understood what he saw in you.”
I glare at her, wishing she’d drop dead.
“Gabe never had the best taste in women,” I throw back.
Her fist connects with my stomach so fast that she knocks the wind out of me. My pain only causes her to laugh. As I suck in air, she tells the guy who’s holding me to bring me to her Suburban.
“Why are you doing this?” I croak.
She opens the back door, then crosses her arms and stares at me. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re the ticket that will lead Noah directly to me. Honestly, I should've taken this route a lot sooner.”
“You don’t have to do this, Brittany. Just let me go, and we can pretend none of this happened,” I say, thinking about Noah and how Owen’s with my mother. They’ll all be looking for me if they aren’t already.
“Don’t think so. There’s no turning back now.” She reaches into the back and grabs a roll of duct tape.
The sound of her pulling it from the roll nearly pierces my ears.
“Please,” I beg again. “My son is with me.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your kid.” She rips the tape and slaps it hard over my mouth. I struggle to break free, but it’s no use.
“Nicolas, don’t you fucking let her get away.”
Moving behind me, Brittany tapes my wrists together, then wraps it around my thighs and ankles until I can hardly move. I try to scream, but it’s so muffled no one would ever be able to hear me. Tears stream down my face as I come to terms with what she’s done. Adrenaline courses through my veins, and I wish I would’ve let Noah accompany me like he wanted. But I was stupid and insisted he stay.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and Brittany grabs it and smirks. It’s Noah. She turns it off, then slams it on the pavement. The screen immediately shatters, and she picks it up and throws it in her vehicle.
“I’m gonna kill him,” she seethes. “Then this will all be over.”
Sweat forms on my brow as I try to scream through the tape. My stomach is so upset, and I’m scared that I’ll throw up with my mouth secured closed. This is the worst possible time to be sick.
“We need to get going,” she tells Nicolas. “They’ll be looking for her soon.”
With all her strength, Brittany punches me in the stomach again and brings her knee in too. “That’s for being a bitch toward me.”
I lose my balance and fall to the ground, where Brittany kicks me until I nearly lose consciousness.
“And that’s for fucking the man who killed Gabe.”
After a minute of her physically taking her anger out on me, Nicolas grabs me by the hair and throws me in the back of her SUV. After the doors slam closed, the engine rumbles, and we’re quickly speeding away.
I wonder how long it’ll take Noah to realize I’m gone. After I didn’t answer the first time, I know he’s already searching for me. I just hope to God he has Eric with him because I don’t doubt Brittany’s words for one second.
She speaks to Nicolas in a high-pitched tone, like she’s happy about what she’s accomplished. I try to turn my body to see out the window but can’t manage to twist around. My eyes burn with hot tears, and I try to take myself out of the situation until I hear Brittany tell Nicolas she’s calling Noah.
A lump the size of Texas forms in my throat as I hang on to every word she says.
“Noah,” she purrs. “How are you?”
I can only imagine what he said to her and wish the phone was on speaker.
“Ah. Okay. Playing hardball. Got it. Well, as you’ve probably figured out, I have your girlfriend.”
She’s silent for a moment. “We’re not playing macho man today, Noah. You’re not in control here; I am. Now you’re gonna listen to me very carefully and follow every fucking one of my directions, or I’ll kill her. And trust me when I say it would satisfy me beyond belief to end this cunt’s life.”
I wish I could see her reaction, but based on her tone, she’s unamused.
“So if you want your precious girlfriend back, I need you to meet me alone at the storage units outside of town,” she says. “You know which ones.”
For a second, I think she’s ended the call because she’s quiet. All I can hear is the hum of the tires against the road. She eventually speaks up and forces me back to this reality. “Because I want you to suffer for murdering the love of my life. This is only fair, Noah. There are consequences to every action, and this is yours. You took away the only man I loved, so I’ll take away the only woman you’ve ever loved. At first, I wondered how I’d be able to pull this off. Honestly, you made it too easy.”
The tears begin to fall again. I never wanted to put Noah in danger, and now, I’m the reason he’ll go straight to Brittany.
“I’ll tell Nicolas to let her live,” she says with a laugh, then continues. “Don’t worry about it.”
I try to scream and tell him to stay away.
She speaks up again. “Oh, I’d much rather see you bleed out than her. You have thirty minutes. If you arrive a minute late, she’ll have a bullet in her head. And I won’t stop until you do too.”
She hangs up, and I can only imagine the satisfied look on her face. “It will all be over soon,” she confirms.
“It will,” Nicolas agrees. “I told you it’d all work out.”
Eventually, the SUV makes a hard turn onto gravel, then comes to an abrupt stop. Brittany and Nicolas get out, and I’m convinced they’re going to leave me in the hot vehicle. It’s already hard enough to breathe, but the heat seems to make it worse.
A long time seems to pass before the back opens. Nicolas grabs my arm and drags me across the gravel toward a storage unit.
I’m thrown into a metal chair, and I try to adjust my body the best I can without slipping off it. I glare at Brittany, wishing my internal anger could magically strike her down. By the grin on her face, I know she’s enjoying this a little too much. Psycho bitch.
The large garage door of the storage building is closed to a crack. Nicolas flicks on the overhead lighting that seems to buzz with intimidation as they load their guns.
Right now, I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life. The last thing I want to do is bring any attention to myself, but it doesn’t matter because her beady eyes zero in on me.
Brittany stands before me and shakes her head with disgust. Another step forward is all it takes for her to grab a fistful of my hair and pull it as hard as she can. I nearly slide off the chair, so Nicolas finds a way to secure me to it as if the duct tape isn’t enough.
I wish I could tell her to go fuck herself. Excitement seems to roll off her.
With great exaggeration, she sticks out her bottom lip, mocking me. “Poor baby is upset. She didn’t get to hang out with the murderer all day.”
I let out a muffled scream as she paces in front of me, playing with her gun.
“We’ve got twelve minutes,” Nicolas says before stepping outside and closing the garage door again.
Brittany acknowledges his words with a nod but keeps her focus on me.