Pressing the accelerator again, I tried to ignore the spike of anxiety as the truck matched my speed. The road curved again, the trees flashing past us in blurs. I could barely make out the man in the truck behind me. Was it Trent or Barry Galloway?
My entire car jolted as he rammed into my bumper again, sending it swerving as I struggled to maintain control of my speed and direction. “Oh my God.” The truck surged forward once more, hitting me at an angle, metal screeching as the world tilted.
I fought against the wheel, the tires trying to turn one way, as I tried to keep the vehicle on the road while my heart pounded in panic as everything sped up. None of my driving experience had ever allowed for this sort of thing, and just as quickly as it started, I lost the fight, my car veering off the pavement into the trees.
You see car crashes on TV, but nothing prepares you for the force of branches shattering into the glass of the windshield and scraping against the metal as you careen across the road. Bracing myself was an impossibility with the sheer velocity of the crash. The car bounced violentlybefore slamming into something solid enough to jolt my teeth together. Pain erupted through my shoulder as the seatbelt locked, and airbags deployed in a burst that robbed me of my breath.
My eyes opened slowly,with sharp pain in some spots that made me close them again. “You’re okay, Hattie.” I tried to give myself positive affirmations. There was only ringing silence and the smell of burned rubber and chemicals. Maybe Kipp would notice that I didn’t check in. Or Lila and Sage.
The car had come to a stop at an angle, with the nose buried in the brush and one wheel spinning uselessly in the air. My head throbbed, and my vision swam, but I was alive. As I collapsed back onto the seat, I looked for my phone, but it must have been lost in the rollover.
Whoever it was may have been spooked by something, or maybe CID had new evidence against them. Blood dripped from a wound in my shoulder, and it felt like something was broken. Groaning, I tried to reach the seat belt button to loosen it just as I heard sounds of movement outside the car.
Fear spiked as the sound of footsteps grew louder nearby. Did whoever tried to run me off the road come back to finish the job? Clamoring at the belt, I tried again and finally hit the release with a moan.
Someoneyanked the car door open, and my entire body erupted with pain as a man dragged me out. My feet frantically tried to scramble, even as my eyes rolled back in my head from the fiery pain that spread throughout my body. I realized that one of my ankles might be broken as I desperately tried to put weight on it, only to find it was useless. My fingers scrabbled against the door frame, trying to keep me inside.
“There’s nowhere you can run, you know? You’re dead now. Just like that dumb bitch.” Chief Dale Galloway’s face came into view, his eyes wild as he pulled at me. He took the wreck in and my panicked, stricken face. “Didn’t expect me, did ya?” He looked practically psychotic. “If you had just left it alone.”
“You killed Allison? Why?”
He gave me a disgusted look, yanking me inch by agonizing inch out of the wreckage of the vehicle. “Trent and Barry showed me this site she had. Girl was showing everything.”
Vomit rose in my throat as he grabbed me by the armpit and started walking, each step making the bile burn on my tongue as the pain sang.
“You were messaging her. Not Barry?” My brain felt sluggish. Was that what we were missing somehow? There had been a mix-up either with the IP address or the phone. I wasn’t the hacker, but Barry wasn’t the one behind the profile. It was Dale Galloway. Maybe?
“No, it was him talking to that girl. I guess it doesn’t matter now.” He was setting a punishing pace, and I wasn’t sure I was interested in keeping up. Not only because I wasn’t physically able, but because there were so many stories that showed you the statistics fell as soon as you went anywhere with a kidnapper or whatever Galloway was. “Allison was a whore,” he said with a sneer. “She’d meet up with Barry and me for a little extra money. Then she said she was leaving.” His whole face was red, and he clenched his grip even more. “Said she had pictures if we didn’t pay her an extra ten grand. That wasn’t happening.”
He gave me another hard yank, and my injured ankle was twisted again. My stomach pitched as the pain sharpened, and I gave up, collapsing in a heap on my knees as the Cocoa Puffs came back up. This a-hole better not have ruined my favorite breakfast.
“Come on. We aren’t stopping for this.” He pulled me back to my feet. “You set those hounds from CID on us.”
This was my only chance. Gritting my teeth against the agony and driving up on my good foot against Galloway with a roar, I put everything I had into it. Maybe I could get away, but no way would I be letting him walk me to some secluded spot away from the car wreckage where he could kill me.
Pain screamed through me, bright and blinding, but the surprise worked. “Bitch,” he snarled. Dale stumbled a step back, his grip loosening just enough for me to twist.I slipped in the dirt and leaves, my bad ankle screaming as it folded under me, but I kept moving, clawing at the ground, dragging myself away from him on instinct alone.
Come on, Hattie Bear. Come on.It was Jane’s voice that urged me forward.
The kick came out of nowhere. His boot connected with my ribs, the impact knocking the air from my lungs in a wet, humiliating gasp. Rolling, I tried to protect my head, but Dale seemed to be frenzied as he hammered down another blow, and then another, each one furious, like he was finally letting himself enjoy it.
“You think you’re smart,” he said, breath ragged as he loomed over me. “Running your mouth on that podcast. Digging into things you don’t understand.”
I tasted blood, and my vision blurred at the edges, the forest tilting and spinning as I tried to focus on his face, on anything that might help me remember details later.Get up, Hattie.His hands shook when he grabbed me again, fingers digging into my hair, yanking my head back so hard tears spilled from my eyes.
“You don’t get to ruin my boy and me,” he went on. “That’s what that girlie thought she’d do. We paid her. She didn’t get to leave.”
He slammed my head into the ground.
Stars burst behind my eyes, a violent spray of white that made me cry out despite myself. I curled inward, arms up, trying to make myself smaller, trying to survive the next second, then the one after that.
“She was nothing,” he continued, pacing as if the words themselves fueled him. “Allison thought she could walk away. Thought she could threaten us and we’d give her even more money.” He laughed, a broken, ugly sound. “I told Barry from the beginning that we shouldn’t have even been paying her, but there wasn’t any way that we were going to let her walk with videos that could ruin us later. It would have all just gone away.”
Another kick. This one landed in my stomach, sharp and deep, and I gagged again, bile burning my throat.
“You want to know how it happened?” he asked, crouching in front of me. He grabbed my chin, forcing my eyes open. “She got beat for her troubles, too, but she came a little more prepared than you.” My body shook uncontrollably, a mix of pain and rage as he recounted Allison’s last moments. “Stuck us a few times with her little knife, but we stuck her right back.”
I tried to spit at him, but it came out weak, streaked with blood. He smiled at that. “What about the car?”
