Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(27)

Her smile is small. “I know.”

But I know she heard everything I told the cop. Save your energy, I told him, and she was listening. The same way she lectured about memoirs, I taught her how to escape. How to fight back. Wait for your chance, I said. And she soaked the knowledge right up.

The best thing I can do for her is leave her here, but I can’t. I won’t.





Chapter Seventeen




Abigail


He forces me into the stream. Freezing-cold water swirls around my ankles and fills the insides of my boots, numbing my feet clear to the bone. I try to pull away, but he holds my wrist tight. I’m shivering. I can’t believe he’s not cold without a shirt on. Not that I should feel sorry for him considering he used his shirt to gag and blindfold a cop.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“The other side.”

He shakes his head. “We’re walking the stream.”

“I can’t,” I say.

He pulls me closer; he still seems obsessed with the gash on my face, which maybe should be a good sign. I force my focus onto the trees in the distance, anything but the rise and fall of his hard, mud-streaked chest. It’s around dinnertime; I can tell by the slant of the sun. Up close he smells like sweat. Not pine, not cologne, not musk, just man sweat.

“Bend over.”

“What?” I try to yank my wrist from his hand, but he fists my hair and pushes my face nearly into the water. He splashes water onto my cheek. I close my eyes against the cold spray of it, spitting it out of my nose and mouth, trying to twist from his grip.

“God!” I say as he lets me up. I sniff and wipe my eyes.

He inspects my cut and grunts his approval, as if infection is this huge threat right now. He pulls my hand. “Come on.”

“I can’t even feel my feet!”

He frowns, furrowing his dark brows. “Fine.” He bends over and loops my arm around his neck and just hoists me up.

I pull my arm back and struggle against his hold. “Put me down!”

“You want to walk? Or I still have that .357. I could put a few holes in you, and you could float. Is that what you want?”

I loop my arm around his neck, feeling weird, like I’m participating in my own captivity. But it seems better than the alternatives. Don’t struggle. Wait for your chance.

A ways down he steps onto the bank and puts me on the mossy ground. I feel unsteady on my feet. He gets up on the rocky shore next to me, water streaming from his big black boots, chest shining with sweat. “Take off your panties.”

I look at him like he’s crazy. Maybe he really is crazy behind those dark and beautiful eyes. Underneath all that rough skin and powerful muscle. He’s a loony bin wrapped up in the sexiest package I’ve ever seen.

I’m praying that he’s just toying with me.

He smiles like it’s pretty hilarious. “Do it, or I’ll do it for you.” He picks up a rock, rubs it in his armpit, then tosses it deep into the woods. He does the same thing again, with another rock, and then another. “Two seconds,” he says. “I’m not f*cking around.” He raises his brows, waiting. “Am I doing it for you? You know I will.”

My stomach lurches, but I don’t have a choice. My hands are shivering as they reach under my skirt and push down the fabric of my panties. I place them in his outstretched palm.

“Thank you, Ms. Winslow.” Like I just handed him a pencil to complete his assignment.

He tosses them into the underbrush. Then he picks me up and carries me through the stream again, heading back where we came from. My heart sinks as I realize what he’s just done—pointed the search dogs the wrong way.

“You have such dirty ideas, Ms. Winslow,” he says, trudging through the water.

Soon we pass the place we started from maybe ten minutes ago. Making good time, I think grudgingly.

“I try to be practical,” he continues, “and where the f*ck does your mind go?”

I hate that he can read me. I wish I could read him. “Stop calling me Ms. Winslow.”

“What do you want me to call you?” He lowers his voice, and his dark eyes meet mine. “Abigail?”

My belly does a flip-flop to hear my name on his lips, and I look away. It’s like an invasion of my privacy or something, him saying Abigail, but Ms. Winslow, the way he says it, is just too dirty.

“I don’t want you to call me anything,” I snap.

He snorts, carrying me down the stream the way a groom would carry a bride over the threshold. It feels almost tender. I have to remind myself that he’s a cold-blooded murderer.

So why hasn’t he killed me yet?

Save your energy, wait for your chance, he told the cop. I wonder if my chance is coming up—surely his feet are too numb by now to run fast. And though he doesn’t show it, he has to be tired from carrying me; his biceps bulge and strain under my weight. The tendons in his warm, sweat-slickened neck pop with every step he takes. Can I wear him out this way? I wish I weighed three times as much. Anything to sap his strength.

His nostrils flare minutely as he goes. He has a simple nose, a friendly, no-nonsense nose that contrasts with the sharp beauty of his eyes. And he knows how to harden those features to make himself scary. His perfect cheeks are getting just a shadow of stubble. It occurs to me that he must have shaved for his escape. Wanting to look clean-cut, I suppose.