He did promise me a hot meal, and I haven’t eaten anything since his lame gas station fare. Just more empty words.
Jesus! He saved me from Miguel, and rival gangs and alligators. Get over yourself! I scold inwardly.
But I remember his rugged hands on my body, keeping me afloat in the murky waters, keeping me alive even though I fought him every step of the way. With my eyes closed I can see every curve, crevice and line of his beautifully disciplined body—the tattoos, along with the scars I never asked him about.
I had wanted more time.
He simply hadn’t.
My belly growls, offended. Grow up.
I fall asleep thinking about cuddling with my little sister and mom on the couch, watching some Netflix marathon and letting go of everything that’s happened.
When I wake up, it’s to shouts of orders, anger and profanity as the vehicle I’m in is run off the side of the highway and into a ditch.
The driver jacks the steering wheel too far to the left, and panic overwhelms me as we go over, rolling onto our roof and sliding deeper into the grassy crevice.
I’m dizzy and disoriented, but physically I think I’m okay. Officer Bloom, who hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, looks like she hit her head and is knocked out.
“BLOOM! OFFICER BLOOM!” I shake her. She doesn’t move.
Oh my God. I unfasten my seat belt and carefully climb over her and check her throat for a pulse.
I sigh in relief—it’s there. She’s alive.
I look up and realize I can’t say the same about the driver—he’s bleeding profusely from his head, and his eyes are wide and empty. The officer in the passenger seat—Guthrie—immediately reaches up, opens his side door like a hatch and lifts himself out. And then he starts shooting.
This isn’t a random accident, I’ve been compromised.
I try to think. I’ll be captured if I just sit here waiting for them to take me. And I’m sure Miguel won’t hold onto me to sell me this time. This time, he’ll murder me for certain.
Stretching up my arms I try to force my door open, but it seems jammed closed. I look around me and decide to try the sunroof—I could fit through it. I extend my right arm over the dead driver and hit the roof lever. It slides open.
I pull myself through it and carefully slide off and away from the SUV, when someone grabs me from behind.
Immediately my mouth is covered by a calloused, tattooed hand.
“RYDER!?!” I mumble from behind his flesh.
“You’re not safe.” He drags me back behind a small beige car and shoots over its hood at my escort team.
“Are you out of your mind!?” He’s shooting at the police! My mind scrambles to understand this new development.
“Get in the car!” he demands.
All at once, I think I figure this out. “Did you do this?” I shout. “Did you ambush them?”
“They’re driving you straight to Miguel!”
“You’re crazy!?” I cannot even fathom what he is thinking. None of the officers has done anything to make me fear or doubt them. They were taking me straight to Shreveport, just like they said they would. Has Ryder’s paranoia gotten the best of him? “They took me from a police station, Ryder!”
I jerk away from him and he lunges, quickly catching me. “I thought we already worked out this trust thing.”
“You left me there!” I want to trust Ryder. I do. But this is crazy, and I suddenly feel like I can’t even trust myself anymore. None of this makes sense.
“I didn’t leave you, they forced me out.”
“What? I don’t—”
“Farrington, they’re going to kill you.”
“No they’re not! They were protecting me!” They were protecting me, right? God, why can’t I trust any of my own instincts all of the sudden? I thought I knew Ryder, thought I understood him, but once he left I started to question everything . . . and sane people don’t just start shooting at the police on a hunch. Is this more than a hunch?
“Let the woman go,” a man’s voice shouts.
My heart is pounding with fear and anger. I have to make a decision. “I’m going with them, Ryder.” Even as I say it, I doubt myself, but I struggle from his grasp anyway.
“No, you’re not.” He clasps a handcuff over my right wrist.
“What the . . .?”
“Get into the car, Farrington.”
Immediately, the helplessness I felt when Miguel’s men took me surges up within me once again. The cold bite of the handcuff against my skin makes me sick to my stomach. “HELP! HELP ME!” I scream.
“Jesus Christ!” Ryder growls, crushing and shoving me into the front seat.
I immediately try opening the passenger side door, but he yanks me back towards him, leans over me and snaps the other cuff closed around the bar of the door handle.
“WHY?” I cry, snapping my wrist against the locked cuffs. I can’t think straight—can’t feel anything but that cuff around my wrist.
Instead of answering, he tears away from the mess of overturned and smashed cars.
“FUCK!” I shout.
“I told you Miguel has men everywhere.”