But now...
I fought back the tears.
I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d struck a nerve. I had to stay strong if I was going to have any chance of getting away from his crazy ass.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked without turning back to look at him. At least my voice sounded steady again, even though whatever he had in mind terrified me.
“Not too far. You’ll see soon enough.” His tone was almost conversational, as if he hadn’t kidnapped me, bound me, and bundled me up into his car to do God-only-knew-what. “You should probably go back to sleep. I liked it better when you were quiet.”
There seemed to be an implied threat there, but there was zero chance of me falling asleep again while I was in that truck alone with him.
“Well, I liked it better when I wasn’t tied up in the passenger seat of your pickup,” I said, ignoring all of my good instincts for self-preservation. Because fuck him. I still wasn’t sure why he’d taken me in the first place, but if he’d mistaken me for a shy and submissive girl, he’d soon discover his mistake.
I’d never been that girl in my life. I sure as hell wasn’t going to start now that I had nothing to lose.
Well, nothing except for my life...
Which, granted, should have been a pretty powerful motivator to stay on Randy’s good side.
“Feisty little thing,” he repeated. “That’s okay. We’ll work on adjusting that attitude later.”
I turned toward him enough for him to see me glaring. He didn’t seem to care. He just kept driving along, hitting every bump and pothole in the road, which made my splitting headache even worse by the minute.
I was sort of surprised he hadn’t tried to cover my eyes, but there wasn’t much to see: endless trees and dirt roads leading out to the middle of nowhere. We could have been anywhere, and it looked a lot like the way out to my mom’s house. I let myself hope for about two seconds that he might have been taking me home before I came to my senses and pushed that fantasy away.
No, that definitely wasn’t happening.
“Where are we going?” I asked again, hoping for a better answer the second time around.
He stayed silent and kept his eyes on the road for several long seconds. I’d started to think he wasn’t going to answer me at all, which for some reason seemed even more troubling than his rude, taunting non-answers from earlier.
I could deal with the threats and the taunts. Lord knew I was used to those things. But the silence? That felt scary.
Randy’s eyes narrowed as the truck slowed down in the middle of the road. “Should be... right here.” He turned the steering wheel and revved the engine. Oh, God. “Hold on!”
The truck lurched toward a gap in the trees on the side of the road, dipping down into the ditch before roaring up the other side. I couldn’t hold on to anything with my hands tied behind my back, so I was thrown all over the place. I was pretty sure we were both going to die anyway with the way we’d flown off the road.
So I did the only thing I could at that moment. I closed my eyes and screamed my head off.
***
I was certain Randy was driving us to our death. After squeezing my eyes shut for at least ten seconds and then cracking them open again, I still wasn’t sure how we hadn’t crashed head-on into a tree.
He hadn’t slowed down even though the path we were taking through the woods could barely have been classified as a trail, let alone an actual road.
“Not so mouthy now, are you?” He laughed sort of maniacally as he swerved the truck, coming so close to a tree that leaves and branches slapped against my window. “I’d have gone off-road earlier if I’d known it would shut you up.”
As much as I hated how he was talking to me, I didn’t dare open my mouth to speak. I hadn’t been too concerned with my safety when we’d been back on the main roads, but now?
There was no doubt in my mind that Randy Johnson had gone off the deep end. He was certifiably crazy. The fact that I had to count on his driving ability and his reaction time just to stay alive was sobering—and terrifying—in a way that his disgusting threats hadn’t been.
I flinched and gasped with each near miss, but I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes shut, either. I sent up a silent prayer that we would survive this drive—or that I would, at least—and that my friends would be able to somehow track us down.
I had to hope that Micah and Axel were still alive and able to come after me. That hope was the only thing that kept me strong enough to keep from breaking down and sobbing.