Boxing us in.
No. No no no?—
“Holley,” Tiffany says, her voice dropping into something cold and steady. “Who is this?”
Before I can answer, the sedan’s front door opens.
And my nightmare steps out.
My ex-husband—Eric Colson.
He looks exactly the same and nothing like himself all at once. Same perfect hair. Same well-tailored jacket. Same expensive shoes unsuited for dirty Southern back roads.
But his eyes?—
His eyes are wrong.
Sunken. Sharp. Wild.
He’s smiling.
Smiling like he’s found something he lost.
“Oh god,” I whisper. “No.”
His voice carries across the quiet road, cheerful and cruel.
“Holls! You’ve been very, very hard to find.”
Tiffany reacts immediately—hand diving for her phone.
She doesn’t make it.
A man from the SUV slams his fist against her window, shattering glass inward. Tiffany cries out but doesn’t lose grip on the wheel.
“Get OUT!” the man bellows.
Everything becomes chaos.
Hands wrench my door open. Fingers clamp around my wrists. I scream, kicking wildly, but someone grabs my legs. My back hits the pavement. A cloth presses over my mouth—chemical, suffocating, sweet and burning.
Not chloroform.
Something cheaper.
Something worse.
Tiffany fights like hell—because of course she does—but they drag her out too, kicking and punching and yelling curses that would make grown men flinch. She’s tiny at five feet tall, not that I’m much taller. These men easily toss us around.
“Tiff!” I scream, or try to—the cloth muffles everything.
Someone grabs my hair, yanking my head back.
Eric crouches over me.
“Shh, sweetheart,” he croons. “Stop making this difficult.”
I thrash harder. Because I’m not that woman anymore, not the obedient wife he built and broke. A fist cracks across my cheek and stars explode behind my eyes.
