Only then did he free her legs and drag her off the bed. “Jason, where are we going?” Grace asked as he led her out of the bedroom and into a hall.
“To find peace,” he murmured, and she had a feeling she was definitely not going to like his idea of peace.
“I’ve found peace already, Jason,” she implored as he pulled her down a flight of stairs. “With the man who’s been staying with me in the safehouses. He’s a good man, and I think he’s falling in love with me, I know I'm falling in love with him. I’ve found my peace, please, Jason, let me help you find yours.”
Jason paused, palmed her cheek, then leaned down and touched a kiss to her forehead. “You have helped me, my angel. And now it is time to set you free. For us both to be free.”
Yeah, she was totally not liking the sound of that.
Jason pulled her along with him through a hall, then a large open plan kitchen, dining, living room, and finally outside.
Immediately she grabbed hold of her opportunity, there might not be another one. “Help!” Grace screamed at the top of her lungs. “Someone please, help me!”
“Stop,” Jason demanded, slamming his fist into the side of her head hard enough that she saw stars.
Her knees buckled, she would have hit the ground if he hadn't picked her up first and slung her over his shoulder, carrying her with him down to the back of the garden.
She tried to fight.
Tried to shove away from him.
But the world kept spinning around her in a series of sickening revolutions that almost had her throwing up.
Then she was falling.
It felt like she dropped hundreds of feet, but really it couldn’t be more than four or five.
She landed with a thud that forced the air from her lungs.
A face hovered above her and she blinked to try to clear away the blurriness. “Please,” she begged, “please let me go.”
“I am, angel. I'm finally setting you free.” Jason assured her with such conviction that she knew he had lost whatever touch with reality he’d still had.
With a horrifying air of finality, something slammed down above her blocking her view of Jason and the bright blue sky behind him.
It took a moment for reality to break through the denial she was trying to cling to.
A coffin.
Jason had just thrown her into a coffin and closed the lid.
She could hear small thumps, rhythmically spaced, and knew they were him throwing dirt down into the hole.
Burying her alive.
“No!” she screamed, banging her bound hands on the lid of the coffin, trying to shift it. It moved a little, and for a second Grace thought she actually stood a chance at getting out of here.
But the dirt kept coming with surprising speed, weighing down the lid, making it impossible to move again.
Hysteria welled up inside her, bubbling out in a throat burning scream as she hammered frantically at the coffin lid, trying to break through it with nothing but her fingernails, her fists, and pure determination.
“Jason! Don’t do this. Please,” the last was said on a sob as she began to cry. Huge, chest heaving wails that stole her ability to breathe.
She was going to die.
Even if Matthew lived and he’d been conscious and managed to hear what Jason had said and put the pieces together and figured out he was the man at the rape crisis line she’d spoken to. And even if they managed to find out Jason's name, and then figure out where he was living, he’d still have to figure out that Jason had buried her alive in a coffin that would soon become her tome.
And all within around five hours or so.