Then I heard it. Tires on gravel. An engine cutting off. A car door opening and closing. The footsteps heading toward me were deliberate and unhurried. Heels on gravel, the same rhythm I’d heard a hundred times walking across the hardwood floor of a therapy office in Dupont Circle.
The door opened. It swung toward me and I pressed tighter against the wall. Janelle stepped inside and I could see her profile through the gap between the door and the frame. She was looking at the empty chain hanging from the broken beam, then down at Thad’s body on the floor, and her whole body went rigid. Her mouth opened.
I didn’t give her time to close it.
I came around the door swinging and the chain caught her across the back of the skull with everything I had left in my arms. The sound was wet and heavy and she dropped like somebody had cut her strings. She slammed face first into the concrete. She didn’t put her hands out and try to stop it. The bitch just fell instantly and went limp. Her bag hit the floor next to her and her keys scattered across the concrete.
I stood over her for a second. Her eyes were closed. Blood was spreading from her hairline into her parted hair and pooling on the floor beneath her face. She wasn’t moving. There were two bodies on the ground and I needed to get the hell out of here.
I grabbed her keys off the floor. My hands were still bound, the chain dragging between them, but I could grip well enough to hold a key fob. I stepped over her body and walked out into the night.
The air hit me and I almost collapsed. It was cool and clean after the warehouse and my body wanted to fold, wanted to lie down on the gravel and close my eyes and let somebody else handle the rest. But nobody else was coming. Nobody knew where I was. So I kept moving.
Janelle’s car was parked about twenty feet from the door. A beat-up Nissan Altima that confirmed every broke thing I’d just assumed about this woman. I clicked the fob, got in, and turned the key. The engine cranked once. Twice. Nothing. I looked at the dash and the gas light was glowing orange. This bitch had driven here on empty and the car had finally given up. Of course. Of course she couldn’t even kidnap me with a full tank of gas.
I got out and started walking. Down the gravel road, away from the warehouse, with no shoes and no phone and no idea which direction led to civilization. The chain between my wrists was heavy and dragged with every step. The gravel cut into the bottoms of my feet and I could feel every rock and every pebblebut I kept going because stopping meant dying and I had done too much surviving tonight to die on a dirt road in Maryland.
The gravel turned to pavement after what felt like forever but was probably ten or fifteen minutes. My feet were bleeding. My arms were useless. The chain rattled with every step like I was a ghost hauling my own shackles. I followed the road until I saw headlights in the distance and I stepped into the middle of the lane and held up my bound hands because I had no pride left, no energy left, nothing left except the need to hear one voice.
The car slowed. A woman behind the wheel, maybe fifty, wearing scrubs, coming off a shift somewhere. She rolled her window down halfway and her face went white when she saw me. The chains. The blood. My bare feet on the asphalt.
“Oh my God. Honey, are you okay? Do you need me to call the police?”
“No.” My voice came out rough and cracked from the gag and the hours of silence. “No police. Please. I just need to call my husband.”
She looked at me for a long second, processing the chains and the blood and the request that didn’t match either of those things. I could see her deciding whether I was dangerous or in danger or both. Whatever she concluded, she unlocked the passenger door.
“Get in. There’s a rest stop about a mile up. I’ll take you.”
I got in her car and bled on her seat and she didn’t say a word about it. She drove me to the rest stop and parked under a light and handed me her phone without being asked. Like she already knew.
I dialed Quest’s number from memory because it was one of three numbers I knew by heart and his was the only one that mattered right now. It rang once.
“Who is this?”
“It’s me.”
Silence. One second. Two. And then his voice came back different, lower and tight and full of something that was trying to be relief but hadn’t gotten there yet.
“Where are you?”
“At the O’Brien Rest Stop off of 97. Please come get me.”
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m coming.”
I handed the phone back to the woman in scrubs. She was staring at me with wide eyes and her coffee was shaking in her other hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to call somebody? An ambulance? Something?”
“I’m sure. He’s all I need.”
“I can stay with you until he gets here.”
“No, you don’t have to. I really appreciate the ride.”
“I’ll go get you some water and something to eat.”
