Marty handcuffed me to the steering wheel while he checked in at the motel. It was old, log cabin themed and had only one floor, the room entrances directly off the parking lot. I seethed, searching the dash for any kind of emergency notification system I could use to signal for help, but there was nothing. It was just a simple, cheap rental car.
“Let’s go.” He returned, opening my door and leaning across to unlock the handcuffs.
“What exactly is your plan here?” I demanded. “This doesn’t make sense, Marty.”
“Shut up, Summer.” He fumbled with the lock because the position was awkward. I kept talking while eyeballing his gun. It was back in the holster. The moment he released my hands, I was going to reach for it.
I would shoot the fucker, too.
He was unhinged. I couldn’t believe I used to care about this man. Believed he’d cared about me. He wasn’t capable of caring about anyone but himself.
“You can’t keep me prisoner forever. How do you imagine that’s going to work for you? I’m going to somehow make you money with my music but keep it a secret that I’m locked up in your house with you?”
He finally unlocked the cuffs but kept an iron grip on my closest hand, refastening the handcuff around my wrist.
Fuck. It was now or never. I kept talking, hoping to distract him.
“How do you think the guys at the station will take that? Although I guess they look the other way over a little domestic abuse, right?”
“I said, shut up!” Marty snarled.
He reached for my other wrist, so I took my chance, snatching at his gun with the wrist already attached to the cuffs.
I got it out of the holster, but his fist slammed into my face.
Pain exploded in my cheek, and my vision went black.
When I came back to consciousness, I was over Marty’s shoulder as he slipped and slid across the snowy sidewalk and unlocked the door to the motel. My wrists were locked together in front of me, and his gun wasn’t in the holster.
Dammit.
Marty stepped inside the motel room and threw me on the bed. “Don’t move,” he snarled as he shut the door, closing the cheap curtains, and drawing the security chain across. He kicked off his snowy boots.
My face throbbed so hard where he’d hit me I could feel my heart beating in my cheek. I brought my fingers to touch the area. It had already swelled.
Marty was out of his mind. He’d fully lost it.
When I was badgering him earlier, I’d realized the truth. As soon as he understood he couldn’t win this, and there was no way it would ever work–that there was no way I’d ever go home and be his wife again–he’d end it. And I didn’t mean he’d end it by letting me go. I meant he’d end me. Maybe end both of us in one of those stupid dramatic murder-suicide things that deranged men do.
It was that old twisted “If I can’t have her, no one can” mentality.
So, I needed to get the fuck out of his clutches now before he figured it out. Either that, or I needed to make him believe I would go home with him and be a good little wife until I could get away. But it was probably too late for that. I’d antagonized him too much now.
I closed my eyes and steadying my breath, trying to think through the pain.
I needed to get word to Boone. Tell him where I was.
Okay.
So I’d wait for a chance to use the phone. He had to go to the bathroom or–
“Are you hungry?” I tried to make my voice sound casual, like we were still husband and wife, figuring out what we were going to have for dinner.
“What? No!” he snapped. He paced back and forth, stabbing his fingers through his hair, which was now damp from melted snow.
I used my feet to scoot myself backward on the bed. It was awkward as hell with my hands cuffed together, but when my head hit the headboard, I rolled to my side and pushed with my feet until I could sit up, leaning against it.
“Did they have a vending machine in the lobby?” I asked.
