“Let’s not be too hasty, angel. You see, you and I have some unfinished business, so we are gonna have a little talk. Come on, my car isn’t far.”
“I’mnotgetting in any car withyou,” I scoff.
He heaves a sigh, his jaw ticking as his eyes harden and takes a step closer. “Angel, you don’t want to mess with me,” he warns. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to that beautiful little girl now would we?”
“What little girl? Who’re you talking about?”
“Long brown hair… big blue eyes…” he trails off.
My heart stops.
“Lissy?”
His mouth curves upwards so I know I’m right.
How the hell does he know about her?
“What does she have to do with any of this? She’s just a child!”
“And as long as you do what I say, no harm will come to her. Now, come along, angel.”
My heart thuds in my chest, but against my better judgement, I start walking.
“Good girl. You can follow orders after all,” he comments as I trail behind him towards his car.
I wrack my brain, trying to work out what to do. I could run, he’s older and in theory slower than me, but then there’s still the threat he made against Lissy hanging over my head. Running isn’t an option.
No, I have to be smart about this.
I try to think of movies when people have been in this situation, when I find myself shouting at the TV, yelling at the protagonist to pull out their phone and record them.
I glance up, he’s a couple of steps ahead of me and I quickly pull out my phone, unlocking it and scrolling to find the voice recorder app. I click on the huge red button in the centre of the screen and the clock begins to roll. I shove my phone back into my pocket, just moments before he glances over his shoulder to make sure I’m still following him.
We reach his car and I hesitate with my hand on the handle. I look back over my shoulder towards campus, knowing that Dwight is in there somewhere. I try to focus on him, picturing him in my mind as if trying to communicate with him telepathically.
Stupid, right?
“He can’t help you, angel, you’re mine now,” he says, as if reading my mind and I shudder.
We drive for what feels like forever, getting further and further away from the centre of the city.
My mind races.
A million and one scenarios of how this will pan out racing through my mind, and not one of them end well.
Yeah, it was dumb getting in his car, but what was I supposed to do? He threatened Lissy. I wouldn’t be able to ever forgive myself if something happened to her because of me.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“You’ll see, we’re almost there,” he replies without even taking his eyes off the road in front of him.
The not knowing is killing me.
I have to wedge my hands between my thighs to keep them from trembling. The last thing I want to do is show fear in front of him, because that’s what he wants.
Men like him enjoy the control, they feed off the fear of the weak and vulnerable and I refuse to give it to him.
We turn into a street that I’ve never been down before, with good reason. It’s a street lined on either side by derelict, boarded-up buildings covered in all kinds of graffiti. It looks like a scene from a disaster movie, the ones in a post-apocalyptic movie where everything is deserted.
