He turns back to the bed, eyes resting on my face for a second, a slight frown marring his heavy brow. He kneels on the edge of the mattress, then moves closer, straddling my calves and holding my knees together with those powerful hands.
The palms are dry, scratchy where thick calluses have formed. A working man’s hands whose very touch fills me with terror, but I have so little energy left after my last panicky effort to get away.
He looks me straight in the eye, face pensive, perhaps expecting panic attack: the sequel. His hands slide up under the skirt of my dress and I want to fight again, dreading what comes next, but a few feeble convulsions are the best my exhausted body can manage.
Thick fingers hook in my underwear, dragging it down while his gaze locks onto mine, then travels lower, hungrily capturing every detail like a voyeur to his own actions. My chest heaves uselessly, not even able to sob around the wad in my mouth. He tosses the plain cotton fabric aside before gripping my knees again, harder, wrenching them apart as I mount another doomed struggle.
“Lay still and try to relax,” he murmurs while my body stiffens, bowing up in one last feeble attempt to throw him off.
A wave of gooseflesh runs up my arms. My mind separates from my body, drifting away to calmer shores while the going’s good. Leaving my worn-out shell behind to face whatever he throws at it.
“Did you put the drugs in the back or the front?”
CHAPTERTHREE
KAI
I honestly don’t knowwhy she bothers to twist and writhe and yelp around the sock shoved in her mouth. Like, even if she were successful in screaming for help, who does she think is going to come?
The circle of acquaintances who know about this place would take one look and do far worse things to her than I intend to.
I wait out the last-ditch effort of her renewed struggles, letting her wear herself out so she’ll be calm enough for me to do the job without hurting either of us.
There’s also a puzzled expression on her face but if she genuinely thought she was being circumspect, she hasn’t spent a lot of time on my side of the tracks.
Someone coming for her son. An entanglement with the Highway Rangers. Doesn’t take a genius to work out they want something from her and her insistence on getting to prison means it’s something already stored in place.
After leaning on her thighs for five minutes, most of the fight has gone out of her. A good deal. Hurting someone’s mother is the kind of thing that doesn’t go over well inside. Or outside, I suppose.
I could tell her again I won’t hurt her but since she hasn’t listened so far, I doubt she’s about to believe me on the third repeat.
She should count her lucky stars she’s alive at all.
I’ve been planning my escape for months now. From the moment the judge accepted my guilty plea, took all the statements into account, but still decided in his wisdom to sentence me toeight fucking years, I’ve had no other choice.
Five years or fewer and I could have waited it out. With good behaviour and time served, I might easily have been out in two. Barely a blip in the greater scheme of things.
The baby bump currently stored in Rachel’s belly would still be a toddler, unable to remember that I wasn’t there for their first few developmental milestones.
But eight years? Not a chance.
So, I plotted and planned and cashed in every favour I could while obeying the restrictions on visitors and phone calls that make organising anything a bloody nightmare.
I put together a meticulous plan that would have seen me switching out of the prison van at the offsite commercial laundry, riding in comfort in a pile of clean sheets all the way to a hotel in the central city, where a change of clothes, a set of wheels, and supplies for the trip ahead would be waiting for me.
Will still wait for me.
The only problem now is I won’t be collecting them. Not when I’ve missed the first exchange point. The team I pulled together with spit and polish will instantly disband, wiping their metaphorical fingerprints from anything that might tie directly back to me.
One careless driver later, and I’ve got a hostage who is time added to my sentence if we’re caught, and a mate of a mate of a mate on the way.
That’s who now holds my freedom in their hands. Someone I barely know.
Thanks very much, Nadia Ostend. Turns out you’re just as much of a pain in the arse as your son.
“Stay still,” I warn her, moving up her body a little to provide easier access. “We both want to be on the other side of this.”
Her more than me, probably, but time’s ticking and I want to be ready to go the moment my contact pulls up to the house.
