The majority of it had stopped in high school, when Jon had stepped into her life.
She’d watched Drew’s rage escalate. She’d seen him do more violent, frightening things to Jon. So, she had no explanation for why she hadn’t ever truly feared the man. For all her life, Drew Parker had been an annoyance. A pest, a jerk, at worse a bug she could never successfully eliminate from the house that represented her life.
But, as they drove up into the mountains beyond Misty Glades and well away from anywhere she was supposed or expected to be, Jenna had to admit to herself she was scared. She couldn’t fathom what Drew was up to, but there was no way this ended in smiles and laughter. She needed to figure out a way she could at least defend herself, to try and pay attention to their surroundings when he stopped in case she had any moment of opportunity to run.
The use of her arms would be nice.
In movies they made it look like the hero could just shrug their shoulder out of joint and swing their arms into a better position with little more than a grimace and grunt. Jenna was definitely not the hero of any movie, so that wasn’t going to happen for her. To say nothing for how tightly Drew had attached the cuffs. She could feel them digging into her wrists even as they held her arms back so uncomfortably.
The SUV turned and Jenna realized he was pulling in to a small, gravel lot.
“Time to go for a little hike, Hodge,” he said as he cut the engine.
Her entire body tensed and she glared his way. “Why don’t you go on your hike and just leave me here?”Better yet, toss me intowhatever mountain you’ve driven us to and tell me to run while you reach for your gun.Literally anything would be better than continuing to go anywhere with him.
Drew twisted around and rested his elbow on the back of his seat, studying her with that all-too-familiar derisive sneer. “Poor, pathetic Jenny Hodge just never could make the best choices for herself, could she?” He lifted her phone and tapped roughly at the screen to demonstrate that he’d turned it off. Meaning it was untraceable.
It occurred to her that he hadn’t used any of the dials or buttons on his dashboard, either. Definitely not anything like GPS. Was it possible he’d turned off, or disabled, the SUV’s tracking system?
What good would that even do?
“Time to face the music, bitch,” Drew declared, before promptly swinging out of the SUV. He still held her phone in his hand.
Jenna watched him round to the passenger side and did her best to scoot toward the middle. He hadn’t exactly belted her in; a fact she’d bemoaned more than a few times. But she couldn’t move fast enough to twist and haul a leg up like she’d hoped, so instead she was just sort of flopped on one aching shoulder when he wrenched the door open andtsked at her the way he’d always done before Jon.
Drew grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up, then roughly out, forcing her to stumble and scurry to catch her feet or injure herself on the gravel. He slammed the door shut with his other hand, then pulled her back up to his chest with a bruising grip on her arm. “Play nice now, Jenny.”
She narrowed her eyes and debated spitting at him, clenching her bruised jaw so hard the ache echoed to her head.
Then he held out her phone, smirked at her, and dropped it at their feet. A snap followed and without a word he extended hisgun. He pulled the trigger and the explosion made her jump, her ears ringing. Her phone flew back along the gravel, something shattered, and with a second bone-rattling shot she realized he was shooting her damn phone.
Jenna’s jaw dropped, but she had no words.
Numbness built inside her.
He was making it clear that even if she should manage to escape him, she had no means with which to call for help.
She drew a hard breath and clamped her mouth shut.As if I’d call 9-1-1, anyway.He could take away her phone. He literally could not take away her best chance to call for help. But he didn’t know that.
Drew put his gun away after the second shot, leaving her phone misshapen, shattered, and very much destroyed on the gravel just feet from his back wheel. He shoved her forward and started walking. “C’mon, we have somewhere to be.”
He wasn’t walking so fast that Jenna struggled to match his pace, but her feet faltered when she finally realized where he was likely taking her.
There were a lot of caves in around the Cascade mountains. Many were open to the public. A few were even fairly well known, as far as caves went. The lot Drew had parked in was convenient for nice views, photographic moments, boasted a small building to one side with two drop toilet rooms, and on the opposite side it opened into one wide trail. The trail started off nice, hard-packed dirt with only a few sprigs from bushes that might snag a sock. The nice, maintained trail that led to the public, well-explored, frequently checked tunnel cave sloped gently to the right and up the hill.
The path Drew pushed her along quickly became overgrown, rough with rocks, pinecones, and other growth from lack of use or maintenance. It was the path that led to an entirely separate cave, and while that cave had been open to the public at onetime, Jenna had heard it’d partially collapsed somewhere in the middle and so it had been shut down. Of course, they couldn’t make it disappear altogether. And of course, that damn cave had also been Drew’s favorite when they were young. He’d even thrown parties in it.
Parties Jenna had never gone to.
Was Drew going to just toss her into the collapsed cave, handcuffs and all, and leave her to fend for herself? It was dark and cold in the caves, even in the warmest months. They weren’t the deepest, but if he did that, she would have an incredibly difficult time wiggling her way out.
Jon will find me.
A fresh surge of desperation rose up in her chest. What if Drew had taken her out of Jon’s range? Before, Jon had said he could ‘hear’ her from “just about anywhere in town.” Jenna had no way to know evenifhis range had expanded. She’d never thought to ask.
Shit. Shit!She may have lost her best chance. Because she was sure as hell on the opposite side of town from where he was supposed to be.
One of her feet slipped on a loose rock and her ankle twisted sharply, causing her to cry out and her body to lurch.
