Tight spaces. I shot out my hands and legs, every one of them hitting a barrier, like I was in a coffin. The floor under me rumbled to life, I heard car doors slam, and I moved my hands in front of me, finding a felt-like upholstery above.
I was encased. The engine roared, and realization hit me. I was in a trunk. I immediately began pounding and kicking. “No!” I bellowed, the hand covering my mouth now gone. “Please! Let me out!”
Ripping at the tie around my neck, I pulled it off and yanked the bag off my head, sucking in a lungful of air.
And then I beat the roof above me. I screamed as loud as I could and made as much noise as possible in the hopes anyone would hear me.
“Let me out!” I yelled, my throat burning raw as I howled until every last ounce of breath left my lungs. “Ilia! Lev! David! Help!”
Fuck! The car under me moved, and I rolled a little as it took off. “Help!” I pounded my fists harder and faster, going crazy. The farther away they took me, the greater the chance I’d never be found.
Music started blaring dully from the inside of the car, and my metal coffin vibrated under me, the noise drowning out the sound of my screams.
“Oh, God,” I cried, my eyes welling with tears. “Please.”
I started whimpering uncontrollably, sucking in short, shallow breaths as I patted my hands around the trunk floor, trying to find anything I could use as a weapon. A tool, a tire iron, anything.
But the trunk was completely empty, and I shook my head. My father would never come for me.
Fuck it. I slammed my fists, beating the lid above me again and again, not even stopping when they began to ache. They were going to do what they were going to do. I wasn’t going to lie here and wait for it. There might be a chance, any chance, a passing car or even a kid on a bike might hear me.
“Help!” I screamed, trying to make my voice carry. “Heeeeeelp!”
The car jostled, and I rocked back and forth in the trunk. I thought we turned, and suddenly the road underneath turned gravelly, and we slowed.
But I kept belting and pounding, kicking and shouting. I turned to my side and began kicking against the wall behind the back seat, hoping there might be some kind of escape, since I knew some cars’ rear seats folded down, opening into the trunk. But since I hadn’t seen what kind of car I was tossed into, I couldn’t be sure. So, I tried anyway.
The car continued to slow, and then it finally stopped. I breathed hard and listened. Shifting my eyes around the darkness, I heard the music die off, the car going silent, and doors started to slam shut. How many of them were there? At least two carried me out of the house.
Fear coursed through my body, and a small gasp escaped. I covered my mouth with my shaking hand as a tear spilled across my temple.
Three knocks hit the trunk lid, and my eyes rounded.
“Go ahead and scream,” a male’s cocky voice—the same one from before—said. “There’s no one around to hear you now.”
I heard muffled laughter, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted out of here, but I also didn’t. What were they going to do?
But another voice spoke up, this one smoother and darker, sounding an inch away from me. “You said you wanted to be hunted. Right?”
My breath caught in my throat.
Kai?
I pinched my eyebrows together as the dots started to connect. Fear morphed into anger, and my gaze tried to burn a hole through the trunk lid.
“You see that little green glow-in-the-dark lever in there?” he asked. “Pull it.”
Lever? What? I darted my gaze around, finally seeing something green glowing in the corner on my right. It was small but readily visible, and I didn’t know how’d I’d missed it. It had a picture of a car on it, and I reached out and pulled it, the trunk immediately clicking open and a sliver of daylight suddenly pouring in.
I exhaled, my nerves relaxing.
Pushing the lid open, I looked up, seeing three of them standing over me, their eyes barely visible through their masks. A chuckle came from the slightly shorter one to the left, in the white and red mask—Will—and I quickly wiped my tears away and scrambled out of the trunk.
“Assholes!” I growled, shoving the one in the silver mask I knew to be Kai with both hands, and then darting out and slamming Michael in the straight, red mask with a hand in the chest. They may not know much about me, but I knew exactly who they were and the bullshit they liked to pull simply because they could. I couldn’t believe they did this! Rich boys playing at being bad.
But the joke was on them. You’re not really bad when you only do shit under the security of never having to suffer consequences.
And where was Damon? I looked around for their fourth, but aside from all the cars in the lot, it was empty.