Page 51 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

I couldn’t see anyone but I could hear them.

Muffled sounds: branches breaking, men grunting, the swish of leaves and shouts. I couldn’t tell where or how far away. But it wasn’t here.

Dragging myself up, I rolled out of the dirt-filled box and onto the ground.

My hands and feet were still tied. I couldn’t run like this and the panic felt almost worse now that I’d gotten out, now that there was a chance I might live to see tomorrow, to see my mom and Blake and Charlie again.

Trying to slow my breath, I checked every direction.

The giant gnarled tree where Ted had forced me to kneel was the closest one, and it was too big to see if anyone hid behind it.

Other trees surrounded the clearing, their trunks obscured by scrub and bushes.

Nothing moved. No color or shape caught my attention, but it felt like someone was here, watching me, waiting for the right moment.

I didn’t know if it was Ted playing another one of his games.

“Come out,” I muttered. “I dare you to come out and try it.”

I rose to my knees and fell back at the shock of pain.

They were covered in red and brown, scraped raw and oozing.

Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. I looked behind me, terrified that someone had crept up while I was distracted.

There was nothing. The distant crunches and groans I’d thought I’d heard had fallen silent now.

Someone was coming. Someone was here.

I frantically scanned the ground for a weapon, a tool, anything I could use. Two shovels lay next to a hollowed mound of dirt and an open backpack sat at the base of the gnarled tree.

Wobbling, I pushed off my butt to balance in a squat on my feet and stood up.

My legs throbbed and shook. The deadened nerves around my zip-tied ankles sent bolts of electricity cramping through my feet.

I hopped once and whimpered on impact, but stayed up.

The backpack was only a few yards away. I hopped again, moving around the uneven hole in the ground as the forest floor tilted and faded in and out of focus.

The dirt-filled box looked like an open mouth waiting to swallow. It wasn’t going to eat me. It wasn’t.

I made it to the tree and dropped to my knees, crying out at the jolt of pain.

The bag was open. I knocked it over with my shoulder and picked up the bottom of it by the teeth, shaking until I heard its contents hitting the ground.

I tossed the bag aside. On the dirt lay a smaller red bag, zip ties scattered like snakes, a pill bottle, a phone, and a utility knife.

A rustle in the brush snapped my head up.

I looked in every direction, flattening myself against the tree.

No one. No one that I could see. Leaves swayed and shimmered around me, flashing green and gold, hints of light and darkness.

I spun and felt around with my hands until I found the knife and worked to open it.

My fingers were numb. They felt huge and awkward, impossible to manipulate.

I chanced looking away from the woods to focus on the knife and managed to flip it open.

It cut my wrist, slicing a long, thin line that bloomed red and spilled over, trailing down to my hand. I could hardly feel it.

The zip tie was impossible to cut. I juggled the knife awkwardly in my fingers, cutting and nicking my hands, trying to find the right angle, the right pressure so I could hit the plastic and not my skin.

Every moment that I was still here was time wasted, seconds ticking closer to being discovered and tossed back into the earth.

A branch creaked. I didn’t look up. Couldn’t.

I flipped the knife again and stretched myself into a bow to get the zip tie on my ankles instead.

Pressing, gripping against the slide of sweat and blood on my hands.

I pushed and sawed and finally, the tie broke.

Grabbing the knife, I stumbled up and looked around.

Which way? I circled the gnarled tree, staring down the shadows.

There were voices. Birds? Animals? I didn’t know.

I picked a direction I thought was west, the way Mom and I had gone the night we’d escaped Ted the first time.

It had brought us to safety once. Maybe it would again.

I ran and my lungs expanded and began pumping—not in panic but that familiar, welcome bite in my chest as I jogged the morning into being, watching the sun crest Charlie’s horizon. I could do this. I could find the shore.

I hadn’t gone more than fifty paces when I heard the voices again. This time it was a shout, high and clear, a woman’s voice.

My mother’s.