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“I’m coming back in a second,” she says. “Don’t try to run. You won’t get far.”
She heads off to the cabin, leaving me alone in the car, scrambling to come up with a plan. I jam my thumb into the buckle at my hip and the seat belt recoils with a snap. I then search my pockets for my phone.
It’s gone.
Tina took it.
But I have another. The memory of it is a whirling dervish in my drug-addled brain. I shove my hand into my shirt, fingers fumbling for the stolen phone still secured under a bra strap.
Through the windshield, I watch Tina at the cabin’s front door. She stands directly beneath the crooked Pine Cottage sign, trying to get inside by jiggling the doorknob. When that doesn’t work, she throws her body against the door, leading with her shoulder.
I turn on the phone, holding my breath as I check the battery level. It’s in the red. There’s also barely any signal. A single bar appears and disappears in quick intervals. I estimate there’s enough juice and signal for one call.
I hope.
But calling 911 isn’t an option. Tina will hear me talking. She might take the phone away. Or worse. I can’t risk that, even if I suspect that worse part is going to arrive eventually anyway.
That leaves texting. Which leaves only Coop. Because I’m not using my phone, I know he won’t recognize the number. That might work to my advantage, considering what happened last night.
I look to the cabin again and see Tina still shoving herself against the door. Now’s my only chance.
I text Coop quickly, summoning his number from my hazy memory, fingers skating across the quickly dying phone.
its quinn sams holding me hostage at pine cottage help me
The phone beeps when I hit Send, confirming the text is on its way. Then the phone’s screen goes black in my hand, the battery giving up the ghost. I shove it into my pocket.
At the cabin, Tina succeeds in breaking through the front door. It yawns open, the threshold a dark and festering mouth, ready to swallow me whole. The car’s headlights point directly at it, the beams slicing the quickening dusk all the way into the cabin, where a patch of dusty floor basks in the glow.
That glimpse inside the cabin triples the dread that’s formed in my lungs. It feels like glass, puncturing the spongy tissue, cutting off airflow. When Tina marches back to the car, I have no choice but to run.
Only, I can’t.
Standing is far different from sitting up. Now that I’m out of the car and on my feet, the drugs take hold again, knocking me off balance. I drift sideways, steeling myself for the inevitable fall. But Tina is there, holding me upright. The knife flies to my neck and hovers there, blade scratching my skin.
“Sorry, babe,” she says. “There’s no getting out of this.”
Tina hauls me toward the cabin as I thrash in her grip. My heels dig into the gravel, doing nothing to slow us, twin trails of resistance all I have to show for the effort. One of my arms is trapped under one of hers. The arm that holds the knife, which I can’t see but can certainly feel. My chin bumps the hilt every time I scream. Which is often.
When not screaming, I try to talk Tina out of doing whatever she intends to do.
“You can’t do this,” I say, huffing the words, spittle flying. “You’re like me. A survivor.”
Tina doesn’t answer. She just keeps dragging me to the cabin door, now only ten yards away.
“Your stepfather was abusing you, right? That’s why you killed him?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Tina says.
Her grip loosens. Just a hair. Enough to make me know I’m getting to her.
“They sent you to Blackthorn,” I say. “Although you weren’t crazy. You were protecting yourself. From him. And that’s what you’ve been trying to do ever since. Protect women. Hurt the men who hurt them.”
“Stop talking,” Tina says.
I don’t. I can’t.
“And at Blackthorn, you met Him.”