Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(22)

I run, forearms first, fighting the underbrush. Stay alive.

I can hear him back there. Which means he’s close enough to hear me, and maybe close enough to see me in my bright blue sweater.

The siren is gone. Did it get turned off, or did the cop keep driving? I dart right, change direction, but I hear him again. I have no idea where I am, where the highway is, nothing. All I know is that I have to survive.

When I enter a particularly thick, dark stand of trees, I decide to play my last card. I slip behind the first trunk, trying to keep my breathing under control.

I hear him slow.

And then nothing. I wait, back flat against the nubby bark, shin screaming with pain, pulse whooshing in my ears. My sweaty fingers are wrapped around the canister of pepper spray that’s so old I have no idea if it even works.

It’s all I have left.

Silence. He’s back there somewhere, just waiting. Watching. I picture his hulking muscular form.

I swallow, trying to remember where the last sound from him was. Two feet away? Twenty feet away? The waiting is getting excruciating. I look around for other weapons—maybe a rock to smash him with in case the pepper spray doesn’t work.

Nothing.

A twig breaks nearby. I stiffen.

Then another. Soft footsteps.

Then his voice. “Ms. Winslowwww,” he says softly. It’s almost a whisper. I shouldn’t be able to hear something that quiet, but the woods are strangely amplifying. It makes me wonder if he can hear my heart pounding.

My breath sounds hoarse in my ears; I will it under control.

Another soft crunch. It comes to me that I should throw something, to make a sound elsewhere and divert him, the way they do in the movies, but I’m afraid even to move. I curse my skirt with no pockets—no coins, no keys.

I think about throwing my glasses. I could probably make it through the woods without them, but I can’t part with them. My glasses are my security, and I have so little now to protect me.

Another step. He’s closer.

Silence.

Crunch.

Quietly as can be, I bend over, pick up a stone, and hurl it.

It hits a nearby tree.

I stiffen at the sound, a soft rustle. I don’t hear anything else for a long while.

And suddenly he’s in front of me. I hold up the spray and pump the nozzle. It hits him right in the eyes.

“Fuck!” He grabs me by the shoulders, eyes shut tight, coughing. He can’t see me, but he’s got me anyway. Tears run down his cheeks. I try to jerk out of his arms, but he won’t let go. I try to kick him in the balls, but I end up hitting his thigh. He swears and jerks me closer.

I feel my throat seize up like I can’t breathe. My lungs clench, desperate for air.

I spray again, getting him in the shirt. Still with his eyes closed tightly, he presses me against the tree with his big body. I writhe and twist, but he’s a big warm boulder, pinning me, pressing me with his body.

I’m coughing uncontrollably now, eyes watering. Tree bark juts into my back, and with him on me, I can barely breathe. He feels down my arm until he finds the spray and wrenches it out of my hand.

He’s blinded, or at least he can’t open his eyes. “Fuck!” he says again, tossing it.

I try to knee him, but all I can do is stomp his foot, writhing wildly, gasping for air.

“Damn it!” He twists me around, and my glasses fall off.

His eyes are still closed, but that hasn’t diminished his ability to hang on to me and control me like a rag doll. He puts a leg in front of mine and pushes me forward. All I can do is fall, but he’s got me. He’s lowering me, face-first, to the forest floor. He presses his knee into my back, one hand fisted in my hair, the other around both of my wrists. Sticks and pine needles feel rough against my cheek as his weight crushes me.

“Calm down,” he grates. “Give it up.”

I’m coughing, wheezing. I had asthma as a kid, and that’s what it feels like now as the pepper spray stings me all the way down. “Get off!” I gasp. “You’re too heavy—I can’t—get air.”

“It’s the spray,” he says. “Breathe normal.”

I gasp for air, panicking. “I can’t!” Is this how I die? Suffocation?

“Pretend,” he says, letting up his knee. He shifts so that he’s straddling my back. He grips my wrists now, pressing them above my head, and I feel his boots locked over my thighs. His weight is off my back. “It’s something every thug like me knows, how to not breathe in the f*cking Mace. It’s cop killer 101.”

“You’re not a cop killer.” Or is he?

He snorts.

I choke and cough. I still can’t breathe. It’s not working! He’s going to let me die.

“Relax,” he says softly. “You’re making it worse by panicking.”

Hoarsely, I try to get air. The sounds scare me. I really can’t breathe. I suck faster as the panic rises.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Shhh.” He brings his head near mine, breath tickling the back of my neck. “Pepper spray is an inflammatory agent, okay? It swells your throat and sinuses, but it doesn’t shut them.”

I gasp.

He continues to speak in his calm, strangely soothing voice. Why is he soothing me? I can feel him rattling against my defenses with every word. “You’re still getting air, okay? Focus on that, Ms. Winslow. That little passage of air you can still breathe through. Slow it down now, got it?”