“Brian! Brian, please! Look at me!”
With shaky hands, she cradled his cheeks, but his head lolled to the side and blood spilled from his mouth.
“No! Brian, please don’t!”
Amelia laid her head on his chest. Her heart raced, and she confused the pulse in her ears for his. When she lifted her head, his vacant eyes were fixed on the sky. The light was gone.
It came then, just like before. A crunch of gravel. A shuffling step.
Amelia’s head snapped up. No longer bug-eyed, the man from the gas station had removed his glasses and ditched the flannel for a white t-shirt. He flashed a sadistic smile and pointed a gun at her.
“Come on. Hands up. Do what I say.”
Amelia scrambled on all fours. Jagged rocks sunk into her hands and knees until she regained her feet. The man charged at her and hollered something she couldn’t understand.
She sprinted across the lot and then the street, her feet slipping on rain-slicked grass as she bounded toward the factory. The man laughed as Amelia darted between rusted cars and ducked for cover, though he didn’t shoot.
“Give it up, Amelia!” he shouted. “You know how this ends.”
She broke from the maze of decrepit vehicles and bolted onto the road. A pair of headlights hovered in the distance but grew larger as the car sped toward her.
“Stop! Please!” she screamed and waved her arms with the pliers clutched in her fist.
The car screeched to a stop, and the front doors swung open in unison, but the men who climbed out weren’t strangers. They’d been at Richard’s party as part of Emory’s cohort.
“Fuck,” Amelia whimpered and turned to run but collided with the man from the gas station.
The hard hit knocked the air from her lungs and the pliers from her hand. His fingers clamped down on Brian’s sweater, loose against her body, and he hurled Amelia to the ground.
She thrashed against his weight on top of her and clawed at the mud, reaching for the pliers until her shoulder screamed in pain. Her fingertips brushed the rubber handle.
Amelia grabbed hold and swung hard. The pointed endburrowed in the soft flesh of the man’s cheek and ripped it open. He howled in pain and toppled off her.
“Stupid fucking bitch!”
His fist cracked against her cheek in a powerful blow. Pain seared, bright and blinding, and Amelia’s vision blurred as she collapsed again. Her body lifted from the ground.
I’m floating,she thought as her limbs hung loose and weightless.
Something wet her cheek. Blood or rain or tears, Amelia didn’t know as she closed her eyes and surrendered to the inky dark.
NINE
AMELIA
Amelia swung her arms in the dark. She found a wall and mapped it out until she reached a door. Faithful fingertips followed the wood grain down until a cold kiss of metal met her touch.
Through the door, she was out of the dark. Lamp light pooled on a desk covered in coffee-stained folders and tattered papers that rustled in a phantom breeze. Through a large window, gnarled trees swayed against a bedeviled sky where night yielded to crimson dawn.
A man stood in front of the window. Even with his back to her, Amelia recognized the weight of the world on his shoulders and the burden of duty heavy on his mind. She staggered toward her father, but her limbs moved like cinder blocks through water.
He turned around, but it wasn’t her father she found. Emory flashed a sinister smile. Cavernous holes existed where his eyes should’ve been. Blood bubbled from the floor vents and streaked the walls.The dead weight in Amelia’s legs lifted. She turned to run, but a shadow gathered her hands behind her back.
“Wake up, you fucking bitch!” the shadow screamed with piercing cruelty.
The ruby-hued darkness faded, and Amelia opened her eyes.Through groggy vision, she discerned the man from the gas station straddling her in the back seat of his Buick.
By the sweater clenched in his fists, he yanked Amelia up then slammed her down again. She groaned through the assault and struggled against him, but a thin rope bound her wrists and sliced into her skin.
