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EMILY

I could feel the sweat dripping down my forehead, the air growing thicker and staler as the oxygen was slowly replaced by carbon dioxide. The sun beating down on the metal van and the blindfold creeping lower on my face before the fabric covered my nose. I tried to flare and scrunch my nostrils, wiggle my top lip and tug at the material with my teeth, but all that seemed to do was make matters worse.

My arm ached, the raised position forcing me to switch between bearing my weight on my thighs and stretching out my upper limbs. While dehydration didn’t seem to alleviate the growing pressure in my bladder.

I had to pee so goddamn bad my thighs were shaking. The sweat accompanied by a weird chill that lingered on my spine and urged me to just let it all go.

What I wouldn’t give for that fucking bucket right now…

I was doing my best not to panic or piss myself, whereas my brain was doing its best to send my central nervous system in to a frenzy. Which was why it took me a moment too long to feel the sudden breeze bristling against my skin. I hadn’t even heard the door open but I was grateful for the rush of fresh air that streamed in from the seam. Even more so when the metal around my wrist was loosened and my hand slipped free.

I sucked in a sharp breath, rubbing at my arm while my head shifted from side to side, even though I still couldn’t see past the blindfold. Until it finally occurred to me…

I reached up a hand. Tugged the fabric off my face and glanced around the back of the van. Finding it just as empty as it was before the cuff was removed. As much as my brain was cautioning me that this shit was a trap, it didn’t stop my feet from shuffling closer. My arm from reaching out and pushing the door wider and my body from propelling forward.

I didn’t register the crunch of the gravel beneath my feet. The way my ankle rolled or how my knees stung when I tripped and scraped them across the concrete. What I did notice was the swatting of wind on either side of my face. The buzzing of insects by my ear and the bright-orange of a familiar bell-shaped flower…

I stumbled in my steps and took a deep breath as realization hit me at the same time the scent of Marisela’s perfume made its way into my nostrils and embedded itself in my lungs. She was here. Or she had been. There was no mistaking her presence. It had this way of lingering long after she was gone.

I tugged the hem of my tattered dress in one hand while peering back at Prescott Estates, the large manor silhouetted by the towering trees that surrounded its perimeter. I didn’t know how deeply involved my former boss was in all this. Just that she was. There was no other explanation for why it was so important for me to be the one to land on Cohen’s doorstep that day.

I remembered everything now. Including how she had been the one to send me to that creepy-ass asylum in the middle of nowhere.

You are the only one who can do this, she’d said.

And why exactly was that? What did she have to gain from what I was certain was a deal with the devil? Because if I knew anything for sure, it was the fact she had something to gain from it. Marisela didn’t do anything if it didn’t benefit her in some way.

Which also left me to wonder how much of my life had been planned out for me. Down to what I’d assumed was an accidental teenage pregnancy but hadn’t been accidental at all. How many coworkers and acquaintances were used to shuffle me one direction on the board and then the next? How many friends were really just players in a game I wasn’t invited to join in on?

But I didn’t have time to think about any of that now. Not when I should be running. Why wasn’t I running?

And then I felt it. His eye on me. I couldn’t tell you how I knew or where it was coming from. Just that he was coming.

I forced my aching feet to pick up their pace as I navigated around prickly bushes and downed trees. Jumped over a few puddles and pushed past some overgrown vegetation that told me I was getting farther and farther away from civilization and closer towards the density of the woods.

My heart was past the point of pounding. It was fluttering in my chest, barely able to finish the cycle of its first beat before it was starting the next. I didn’t know what it really felt like to be hunted until now. Because that’s what this was. I was the prey doing whatever I could not to fall into a trap. While everything in me said Cohen had his sights set on taking me down.