Never Far Away (The Never #2)(90)

“Stop making so much damned noise, Ella,” he said as he clamped a hand over her mouth. There was a cloth in his hand and panic came over her and she couldn’t control the breathing that she now knew would bring on her own demise. As she felt herself slipping away, she heard him utter one last sentence.

“We’re headed back to where this all should have ended months ago.”





Chapter Twenty-One


Ella


The darkness had been all consuming. She remembered the darkness from before; it was the last thing she saw before she woke up in the hospital where the darkness turned into blinding light. Either way, light or dark, she knew she was in trouble.

She could tell she laid on a soft surface, but something was wrong with her arms. She tried to move to sit up but her hands were stuck together and when she tried to pry them apart she felt the cutting sting of the rope that tied them together.

Her eyes blinked open and she was glad to see that there was only a dim light in the room she was in. Her head pounded and she didn’t need bright lights adding to her discomfort. When her eyes finally adjusted to the light and she could get a good look at her surroundings, she found herself sitting in the living room of the rental house at Lincoln City where she’d spent her birthday week. Her face scrunched up in confusion and she could feel the adrenaline start to move through her system. She tried to think back, trying to piece together how she had gotten here and why her hands were tied up behind her.

She heard a crash come from the door to the basement and heard his voice.

“Shit!” Kyle exclaimed from behind the door.

Her eyes grew wide with fear as the events of the evening came rushing back to her. He’d broken into the house in Salem and kidnapped her. She looked around frantically, trying to figure out her next move.

She clumsily got up from the couch, still wavering back and forth, concentrating on trying to keep her balance even though it felt like she was walking in a fun house with moving floors. Whatever he had used to knock her out was still affecting her, making it difficult to even walk in a straight line. She made her way to the kitchen but clipped her hip on the corner of the kitchen counter on her way in. She pressed her lips together like a vice to try and keep the painful shriek from coming out.

Awkwardly, she used her hands to frantically pull open drawers of the kitchen, trying to remember where the knives were kept from her stay all those months ago, trying to maneuver the drawer pulls with her hands tied behind her back. She tried to keep in the scared sobs, knowing she had only moments before Kyle came back into the kitchen to do only God knows what to her.

Finally she found the drawer with the knives and grabbed a small one by the handle and held it so the blade was hidden between her wrists and then darted towards the door, hoping to get outside. Once she made it to the door, she found it locked. She let out a small cry of frustration, her emotions starting to overwhelm her ability to keep quiet. The longer it took her to grasp the lock with her fingers, made nearly impossible simply by being tied up, the more frantic she became. Her fingers could find the lock, but she couldn’t turn it in the right way to get it open. She was so focused on the door lock, she didn’t notice the door to the basement open.

“So, you’re awake.” The sound of his voice made her blood turn to ice, her body freezing, and her mind racing. She looked up to see him standing a few feet in front of her.

“Kyle, let me go, please.” He cocked his head to one side, examining her carefully, his brow scrunched as though he were considering her pleas.

“El, if I let you leave here, I’d be spending the rest of my life in jail. Why would I do that? I’ve got so much to live for,” he said as a sickening smile spread across his face. She grimaced at the use of his old nickname for her. Nothing about the man in front of her reminded her of the man she’d spent four years of her life with.

“Who are you? What happened to you?” She asked honestly, still trying not to cry. He chuckled a little and rubbed his chain with his hand.

“I’m exactly the same person I’ve been since you met me. You are just a really bad judge of character. Now, get away from the door and go sit back down on the couch.”

She didn’t move. The farther she was from the door, the farther she was from escaping. She continued to stare at him, trying to emit an aura of fearlessness, trying to give him the impression that she wasn’t afraid, even though she had never been more terrified in her life. His blonde hair was longer than she remembered and it looked dirty. In fact, as she took a moment to really look at him, he looked terrible. He was thinner, his cheeks hollowed out, dark circles were under his eyes, and his clothes were wrinkled and baggy.

“You look awful,” she said before she could stop the words from coming out.

“What do you expect? I hauled your ass all the way in the house. Now go and sit on the couch,” he said angrily.

“No,” she said firmly. He reached behind his back and when his arm came forward he was aiming a gun directly at her.

“Say no one more f*cking time Ella and I swear to God I will put a bullet in you so fast you’ll never even get to scream.”

This was the second time Ella had seen a gun pointing at her and in that moment something inside of her clicked on. She should be scared with the silver gleaming barrel winking at her, but instead she was angry. She was not going to let someone else determine what happened to her anymore. She was no one’s victim. She calmly walked past him and his gun, not looking him in the eye, and sat back down on the couch. As she sat she slowly rotated the knife in her hands until she could tell the blade was against the rope. She began to slightly run the edge of the blade along the rope, hoping that she was putting enough pressure on the knife to make a difference.