“I’m not whining!” Mary knelt down, closed her laptop, and shoved it in the messenger bag. “Okay, maybe I am, but this is awful!”
“Let’s go.” Bennie turned out the light and headed out of the office, but the house had gone dark.
“Right behind you,” Mary said, as they hustled into the kitchen, then into the living room.
They had reached the front door when Bennie heard an odd muffled sound behind her. Bennie turned around just in time to see a masked shadow in the darkness, clamping a gloved hand over Mary’s mouth and dragging her backwards.
Bennie was about to scream when a blow to the head stunned her. She cried out in pain and felt herself falling.
The last sound she heard was a horrible guttural sound, barely human.
It must have been Mary.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Mary heard a man’s voice yelling at her. The noise crashed through her skull. Her head exploded in pain. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. Her head hurt so much. All she felt was pain. It paralyzed her. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t focus. She couldn’t stay awake.
“Are you alive or not?”
Mary heard the question louder. The man was right at her ear. Her head hurt so much. Everything was dark. She couldn’t see anything. She tried to open her eyes but something covered them.
She tried to speak but she couldn’t talk. Something filled her mouth like a gag. She bit down. It was wet cloth. It tasted like blood. She realized that it was her own.
“Wake up!”
Mary tried to say something but her mouth was so dry. The words stuck in the back of her throat. She almost gagged and ended up coughing. She tried to pull the cloth out of her mouth but she couldn’t move her arms. They felt wrenched behind her back. She felt pressure against her left side. She was lying down.
“Shut the hell up!”
A rough hand grabbed Mary’s arm, shaking her. Agony arced through her skull. Her head throbbed like a solid ball of pain. Reflexively she tried to talk. Only a weird ah-ah-ah came out.
She heard heavy footsteps on the floor. She felt the vibration with each tread. A door slammed close. The deadbolt was thrown. She was locked inside a room of some kind. Somewhere.
Mary didn’t know what was going on. She couldn’t think through the pain. She had never felt anything like it before. She tried to remember what had happened. She tried to shout but only the weird sound came out again.
She felt afraid but it was veiled. She was in a mental fog. It muffled everything. Feelings. Thoughts. She could barely put a sentence together in her head. There was too much pain to feel anything. So much pain that it numbed her. All she wanted to do was sleep to get away from it.
She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Lose consciousness. Then she heard voices, not far away. Something told her it was in another room. Not far away. It sounded echoey. She tried to listen.
“She still alive?” a man asked.
“Yes,” another man answered.
“How’s her head?”
“What do you think?”
“Is she conscious?”
“No.”
“So she’s still bleeding.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“What am I, a doctor? Go in and look for yourself.”
“I’m doing something here. Can’t you see? I asked you if she’s bleeding.”
Mary tried to stay awake. To listen. To understand. They were talking about her. She was bleeding. She couldn’t remember how she got here. She couldn’t remember why she was here. She didn’t know what was going on. She could barely stay awake. She wanted to go back to sleep but she didn’t. Something inside her told her to stay awake and listen. Something was telling her to survive. Whatever was happening to her, it was something she had to survive.
“What’s the difference? She bleeds now or she bleeds later? Who cares?”
“It’s called evidence. I told you to put the tarp down.”
“It wouldn’t have helped.”
“It would too. Now we gotta clean it up. It’s not my cabin.”
Mary struggled to stay awake. To try and understand. They were in a cabin. The two men had brought her there.
“It’s not my fault. It’s because her head hit the floor.”
“You hit her too hard! Why didn’t you tell me you had brass knuckles? Who the hell has brass knuckles?”
“How many times you gonna say that? I told you, I didn’t want to take any chances. What if she screamed? Those houses are close together.”
“That’s why I told you to cover her mouth. No one saw us anyway. I was able to drive up the damn driveway and there wasn’t anybody around.”
“I did cover her mouth!”
“Then what were you worried about? She wasn’t going to scream if you had your hand over her mouth.”
“Get off my case, Ray.”
Mary heard the name. Ray. It didn’t mean anything to her. She couldn’t even remember who she remembered. She didn’t know who was in her life. Then she started to remember something. A driveway. A house. She had been in a house for some reason. She hadn’t been alone. She had been with someone.
“We had a plan. I gave you the little one. How could you screw that up?”
Mary heard what he said. The little one. She must be the little one. She was little. She couldn’t remember her height exactly. She knew she was little. That meant there was a bigger one. She didn’t know who the bigger one was. She must’ve been with somebody bigger. She tried to remember who was bigger. The answer was everybody.
“You and your plans! Your plans got us into this mess! Now what are we going to do?”
“I told you I’ll figure it out.”
“You better figure it out fast. Somebody is going to be looking for them. She’s half-dead already.”
Mary realized he meant her. She was half-dead. She felt half-dead. She felt warm and wet. She knew there was blood on her and it was hers. It was hard to breathe through her nose. She couldn’t smell anything. She realized there was blood in her nose. She was congested with blood. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth because of the cloth. She realized she was panting a little, trying to get air.
“We can’t kill them until we figure out what they know and what they told the cops.”
“You want me to go ask her? I have a way with the ladies.” The man chuckled.
Mary shuddered, involuntarily. She realized what he meant. She didn’t want to think about it. She felt a bolt of fear, less muffled. She was a little one. This was very bad. They were going to kill her. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember anything. Except that there was a big one. She remembered that she had been with somebody bigger when something had happened. She had been grabbed from behind. It was coming back to her now, in bits and pieces. It was a memory just out of reach.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Lighten up.”
“Help me get into this laptop. They have everything under password. The phones too. I took the batteries out of their phones.”
“Why do you wanna get in the laptops?”
“I wanna see if they sent that email they were talking about.”
“How did you even get wireless up here? My cell gets no reception.”