Page 24 of Run While You Can

The cabin—if it could even be called that—where she’d been taken sat somewhere deep in the mountains outside San Francisco. She didn’t know how long they’d driven to get here.

She remembered trying to start her car. Realizing it was dead and that she needed to run.

But she hadn’t made it very far. As soon as she’d stepped into the stairwell, someone had grabbed her.

A rag had been clamped over her mouth, the chemical stink burning her nose and throat.

She’d tried to fight, to claw at him, but her muscles had turned to wet sand.

After that, everything blurred into fragments: the feel of hands dragging her, the slam of a van door, the rumble of an engine on twisting roads.

Darkness swallowing her again and again.

Now she sat on the splintered floorboards of a drafty mountain shack, her clothes offering little protection against the cold that seeped through every seam. Her blazer was torn. Her blouse was filthy. Her hands—zip-tied in front of her—throbbed with bruising.

The man left for hours at a time—so long that she wondered each time he left if he’d return.

He always did.

She’d tried to escape when she first arrived. But the door was locked solid.

The windows were covered with boards. She’d broken two nails and bloodied her fingers trying to pry them off. It was useless.

She’d yelled for help, but it was clear no one was around to hear her.

She was trapped . . . and her future was beginning to feel hopeless.

Worse yet, she still had no idea who this man was or why he’d grabbed her. Was she just a random victim? Why her?

God, why me?

The man was here again now, standing in the shadows and watching her. Asking her questions.

She still couldn’t see his face.

Sometimes it was the angle.

Sometimes it was the hood.

Most times it was the headlamp—bright, focused, aimed directly at her eyes whenever she tried to study him.

That had become its own kind of torture.

He’d fed her earlier—it had been paltry: a stale sandwich and a bag of barbeque chips.

But it was something.

He’d watched every bite she took as he leaned against the wall with an eerie stillness, as though he were observing a test subject instead of a human being.

And he’d asked questions.

So many questions.

About her work.

Her habits.

Her fears.