“What do you want?” I shouted. My hands bunched together in fists as I pounded against the glass. “Let me go!”
The glass was dirty, thick, and had a goopy-dried coating around the edges. The window was made to open and slide, but someone had made sure that would not happen.
“Fuck!” Had he been involved in burning down my cabin? It seemed probable. “Who are you?”
Several vehicles sat in the middle of the mountain pass, blocking traffic.
“What the hell,” he grumbled.
His voice, though muffled, I could hear, which meant he heard me just fine.
He slammed hard on the brakes, my body flinging through the back of the ambulance bay, smacking into the wall, the gurney slamming my knees. I grimaced and swallowed back a groan from the pain. I didn’t want him to get any ideas.
The tires squealed as he revved the engine.
A single-seat was positioned by the interior window, and I sat facing the front of the ambulance on my knees, clutching the seatback so that I could watch through the glass.
Several vehicles had blocked the main pass of the mountain. Had there been an accident? Through the dirty opening, I spotted a familiar truck. My heart fluttered in my chest. Could Jaxson be there?
No, I had to be delirious. He was at the top of the mountain at home, lying unconscious on the snow outside of my burned-down cabin. More than one person owned that type of vehicle. I could see figures outside their trucks, on the side of the road, but couldn’t make out anyone’s face. The glass was too dirty and distorted. Everyone appeared blurry.
“Help!” I screamed. Could anyone hear me?
He slammed the gas to the floor as the ambulance lurched forward, head on for the multitude of vehicles waiting below.
“Shit,” I clutched the seat and reached for the buckle to spin around and secure the seatbelt, but it had been sliced in two. It was worthless.
The ambulance driver refused to slow down as the vehicle plowed down the mountain road, slamming into the trucks, SUVs, and police cruisers that had been sitting in the middle of the road.
I clung to the seat, the impact throwing me from the bench chair to the floor. “Help!” I shrieked. Could the men outside hear me? The crunch of metal drowned out their voices.
My head throbbed, and the ambulance’s engine roared. The back of the vehicle fishtailed on what I could only surmise had been ice and snow. The vehicle spun and catapulted down a ravine, throwing me around the back of the ambulance until darkness won over.
* * *
Every part of me, inside and out, ached like fire dripping over my skin. I groaned, and my eyelids fluttered open, the brightness forcing the pounding in my head to intensify and offering a warmth that made me imagine it was the sun.
“Looks like she’s awake,” a gruff voice echoed.
It took all my strength to focus, to stay awake and alert.
My fingers grazed the cold stone surface of where I curled up. I wasn’t in a bed. There weren’t any beeps of machines or sign that I’d been transported to a hospital. The last memory I had was of the accident, which meant that I hadn’t escaped yet.
I exhaled a heavy breath and winced. It hurt to breathe. That wasn’t a good sign. I rolled over on the hard floor and forced myself to sit, my back pressed up against a cold slab of cement. The bright light that warmed me earlier had been the flicker of a single bulb in a darkened room. Was I being held in someone’s basement? There was no sign of the ambulance or the forest floor.
The room smelled old, musky, and tickled my nose. I scrunched my face to keep from sneezing, glancing up at the dimly lit bulb.
Two men with long thick beards sat in the dark on stools, knives in their hands, watching me. I strummed my fingers over the cold stone floor. I was injured, but I could move. My fingers and toes wiggled. The men hadn’t restrained me. There were no binds keeping me from moving.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice hoarse, my mouth parched.
One man used his knife to whittle a stick. The end sharp. Did he intend to use that on me? I bit down on my tongue. The intense pain helping wake me from the foggy disconnect that surrounded my head. Had I not been in an accident, I would have surmised I had been drugged. Was it possible that both happened?
The second man picked at the edge of his fingernails with his knife and then used it to clean between his teeth. With squinty eyes, he stood and towered from above. “Turns out there’s a price on your head. We’re just collecting the bounty. Sit tight.”
That was the last thing I was prepared to do, sit and wait for my death. What happened with Jaxson? Was he all right? I didn’t want these men to know that he meant anything to me, not if they’d use that against me too.
“How much am I worth?” If they were after money, I could convince them I had a bucket of wealth offshore. All they had to do was let me live. Did they know who I was, what my ex-husband had been convicted of, or was this bounty because of my work with the agency?