First Girl Gone(98)

Recognizing him jarred some of the memories loose: Todd tackling Will. Bashing him over the head. Doing the same to her.

She squinted her eyes to slits this time when she opened them. Looked out at the world through a thatch of eyelashes, through the tiny gaps between them, through the halos and smears of greenish light.

Todd faced forward. She could see the side of his face well enough to tell that much.

She took a deep breath, careful to keep it quiet. And the statistics of these kinds of situations came to her. Survival rates. Situational data.

The end result was simple: if you went quietly with the abductor, you died.

Better to make a stand. To fight. Make them drag you kicking and screaming, clawing and biting. Anything that might give you a chance.

And so she would.

She pictured it now, what she would do next. How she would go on the offensive.

Fog still roiled inside her skull. Murked up her thoughts. Fresh confusion coming in waves. But she pushed it aside, forced herself to focus.

She may not know exactly what was going on here, but she knew she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She lurched for the steering wheel. Grabbed it and jerked hard to the right. The movement was abrupt enough to wrench the thing out of Todd’s hands.

The driver sucked in a breath, spit hissing between his teeth.

His hands moved back to the wheel. Fought her for control. And then he slammed on the brakes.

Too late.

It all happened in an instant. A single heartbeat. Yet it felt like slow motion.

The tree seemed to fill the windshield like a movie screen. The camera zooming in and in and in. The big, dramatic close-up.

The front end slamming into the tree. Metal cracking against wood. Deafening.

The airbag inflating, a giant white pillow that engulfed her face.

The impact stopping their forward momentum dead, jerking Charlie so hard she could feel it in her teeth. The pressure.

And then everything going still. Quiet. Motionless.

Black smoke fluttered up from the wounded place where the metal meshed with the maple tree. Lit by the one flickering headlight somehow still glowing.

It took Charlie three shaking breaths to come back to herself. She glanced over at the driver. At Todd.

His face was squashed into the airbag, a smear of blood on the white of the material. From his nose, she thought.

Was he dead? Or just unconscious?

He stirred then, a groan escaping his mashed lips.

One word shivered in Charlie’s head. Her entire reality reduced to three letters:

Run.





Chapter Eighty-Three





Charlie burst out of the passenger door. Skidded down the banking shoulder, gravity pulling her into the ditch. Her feet gouged holes in the snow on the way down.

The bottom of the trench jammed her knees. One then the other. She stumbled. Balance teetering. Leaving her.

Some instinct waved her arms in front of her. Useless. Her wrists were still fastened together by the zip tie.

Falling. That weightless feeling sickening as the ground rushed up to meet her.

She landed on her side. Panicking. Thrashing at the snowy ground. Scrabbling like a crab stuck at the bottom of a bucket.

Then she rolled onto her belly. Pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Climbed the other side of the ditch. Running.

Up onto the gravel. Across the street. Into the woods. Into the darkness.

The vast black swallowed her. Concealed her.

Instinct once again took over. No thoughts. No words. No strategy. Something animal inside that knew what to do here in the dark, in the wild. She trusted it. Let it take over. Somehow the animal self was able to see just enough to steer her away from the trees in her path, to keep her pressing forward.

She picked her feet up high. Bounding steps, each almost a small leap.

She banked hard to the left to run along a stream. Dared a look back as she made the turn.

Behind her, a flashlight bobbed along the surface of the snow. Lighting up pine boughs and glittering on icy branches. Todd was following her. And he still had her gun.

Forget that. Keep going. Keep running.

Run for your life.

She swiveled her head forward. Watched only the path ahead once more. The next few yards of the forest were the only thing that was real. A tiny reality that reset itself every few seconds. Erased all else but the next cluster of trees and bushes to avoid.

And some insane part of her, a detached part of her, observed all of this as though from a million miles away. Marveled at the notion that her whole life had led to this moment, this encounter with Todd Ritter. Everything she’d ever done and said and thought and experienced, it all delivered her to this run.

She would live or die based on how she handled this next little piece of time, this next little stretch of land. It seemed so absurd. Unlikely to the point that it verged on impossible. And yet all stories ended in death, one way or another, didn’t they? Everyone’s path surrendered them to that eventuality.

A lightness took shape up ahead. A clearing. At first, she could only make out snippets of it. The snow glowing brighter through the trees, reflecting back the moonlight no longer blocked by the shadows of the woods.

She crested a small hill, fighting the incline. Almost losing her balance as she battled through the steepest part of the slope just before the land leveled out at the top. And then she saw it.

The giant Ferris wheel towered over the horizon, lit by the moon, somehow hulking and skeletal at the same time. The sight stole her breath. Vacated her lungs. But only for a second, and then she was racing down the other side of the hill. She knew where she was now, and fresh adrenaline coursed through her system.