Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
They kept going.
But then I needed to get to my feet, and I felt liquid going down my arms. Pain lit up the entire right side of my body. I couldn't focus on that. I got up, struggling, my head was pounding and made my way over to where Aly was struggling to sit up.
I turned around, grabbed her arm and tried to help her up.
It took a little bit. Some struggling. She almost fell twice, but once she got up, and was steady, I looked around.
I didn’t know this town or where we were. I just remembered driving on the road, but we were surrounded by trees.
Aly made a moaning sound, tugging on me to follow her.
One side went south. The other side was north, and up a hill. Manny’s was behind us and on the south side of the road. That’s where Aly was tugging me, but I stopped her. Those guys would come back and they’d guess where we would go. I shook my head, and pulled her the other way. We’d go up, north and hope to find someone who had a phone and would be willing to help us. I didn’t think those guys would think to go up the hill for us.
I had no idea if it was best friend telepathy or not, but she went with me, and as soon as she did, I felt a burst of energy go through me. I tore out of there. There was no way in hell I’d be here when those guys came back, and they would. That was a given.
We tore up through the woods, climbing up until we were a safe enough distance from the road.
Aly pulled on my shirt, stopping me, and then went to her knees. I felt her teeth trying to cut through whatever they’d used to tie my hands together. It might’ve been tape because when she started pulling on it, it was peeling off my skin. I gritted my teeth until she made enough headway before I could move my wrists around, pulling the rest off myself. As soon as I did, I turned her around and was pulling at her wrists.
She moved around, some moans leaving her bound mouth.
Finally! I tore it free and then I was pulling off the tape around my whole entire head. Assholes.
I swallowed a cry as I pulled it free, feeling my hair getting caught up with it too. But then I spat out whatever was in my mouth, sweeping everything up and stuffing it into my pockets because you bet your ass I wanted police to grab some evidence off of them against these dicks.
“They’re going to be coming back. We have to keep moving.”
God. It hurt my ribs to talk. My voice felt funny too. It sounded funny.
I felt funny.
I couldn’t feel my feet.
Or my one shoulder.
I couldn’t think about that. None of it.
“Who were those guys?”
“I have no clue, but we have to go.” I grabbed for her shirt and began moving forward. “Come on.”
Aly let me take the lead. Her and Harper weren’t the tough sorts like I was. I was rough and tumble, needed to be growing up with my sister, but we spent a good amount of time out in the woods and around the lake. I figured we had a while before Aly’s shock would really set in. Mine too, but I’d bear through mine. Been through worse shit than this, or, well… no. I’d never been kidnapped so no. This was the worst I’d been through, but spending time in Chicago where my dad worked and being biracial, yeah. There’d been some scary times there too. Nothing in Friendly. Thought the whole place was scared of getting on the bad side of Ruby and Claudia, which had me feeling a certain way about my mother and sister now that I was thinking on it.
What was I doing? I didn’t have time to suss this out, but that was me thinking. Keeping my brain busy so I didn’t have to focus on those guys coming back and finding us.
I kept moving forward. My plan had been to go up north, get on a hill over that road and then follow it down back to Manny’s. Or wait until we heard Harley engines roaring through the street and sprint as fast as I could down there to flag down Shane. So I wanted to be away from the road enough that if those guys came back, we could hide easily, but not too far where I’d miss the road if I heard Shane.
Did that make sense?
It made sense in my head.
…I think the shock was starting to set in.
We kept going. Branches tore at us.
I probably had a nest in my hair, but I kept going. Had to. Needed to.