by Debra Doxer
“It’s not the whole organization threatening you. Just Victor Severance.”
Drew laughed miserably. “Believe me, he’s enough.”
“What’s he threatening to do?”
He looked from side to side to make sure no one was listening. Then he leaned in toward me, crowding my personal space. “Take my parents away just like they took your father. You have to help us, Candy. You owe us.”
The raw emotion I saw on his face hit me in a way I hadn’t expected. He was being genuine. I believed that, but I still couldn’t give him what he wanted.
“I don’t know about the safe,” I lied, “but I’m working on something that will get Victor to leave us all alone.”
He scoffed. “All Victor cares about is whatever’s inside that safe.”
I wanted to back away from him, but there was a wall behind me. “Drew—”
“He won’t believe that you don’t know where it is. He knows it’s somewhere, and we can’t all claim not to know what the fuck happened to it.”
He popped something into his mouth before his hands landed on the wall on either side of my head, caging me in. His eyes bored into mine, and there was something dangerous in them that set off alarm bells in my head.
When I tried to duck beneath his arm, he gripped my shoulders and pushed me back against the wall.
“Drew, stop.” My heart pounded, acknowledging I had a problem long before my head caught up.
“Tell me the truth,” he said as his fingers dug into my skin.
I lied again, telling him I didn’t know where the safe was.
My hands came up to his chest to push him away as I frantically looked around, hoping to catch someone’s attention. “Calm down, okay?”
When my eyes wandered again, he grabbed my face and made me look at him. At that point, I was past worrying about causing a scene as his hands dug into my cheeks. I screamed out, but he muffled the sound, covering my mouth with his and pushing his tongue inside.
I saw red as my knee came up and slammed into his groin. Drew grunted before his hands fell away, allowing me to shove him off me, and I gasped in shock at what he’d just done.
It was then that I tasted something metallic on my tongue. I rubbed it with my fingers, trying to get it off. Drew looked up with an expression that was too calm, and my stomach dropped. He’d pushed something into my mouth, and he looked smug as he watched me realize it.
As I rushed away from him, I coughed against the chemical taste dripping down my throat. I reached into my pocket for my phone, and as my fingers brushed it, a wave of dizziness swept over me. Swearing under my breath, I leaned against the wall as I broke out in a sweat. I reached for my phone and pulled it from my pocket, my eyes blurry as I searched for Jonah in my contact list.
Drew plucked the phone from my hand. Dizzy, I lost my balance and nearly fell as I tried to get my phone back, and he wrapped an arm around my waist.
“Did you have a little too much to drink, Candy?” he asked in a loud voice that I knew was for the benefit of whoever was standing around us.
I tried to deny it, just like I tried to get my legs to move in a different direction when Drew led me through the party, continuing to joke to everyone about how much I’d had to drink, even though I’d had nothing.
Drew was walking us toward the door, and I knew I couldn’t let him get me outside. Although the drug was messing with my muscles and my coordination, my brain was working fine, well enough to be frightened of whatever it was he had planned.
In the living room, we passed close to Ethan and Lea, who had come up for air and were now dancing. I managed to reach out and grab Lea’s arm.
She inspected me and giggled. “Parker spiked the punch. I should have warned you. Drink lots of water when you get home, and take some aspirin too.”
It felt like I was looking at her through a fog. I couldn’t communicate a thing, and she was too busy smiling widely and subtly gesturing to Ethan as if to say, Look what I caught.
When she finally noticed Drew was holding me up and eyed him curiously, Ethan spotted him too.
“You’re leaving with him?” Ethan asked me, raising a disapproving eyebrow.
Meanwhile, Drew squeezed me tighter, and Ethan gave us one last look before he shook his head and pulled Lea back to him.
“Text me tomorrow!” Lea called over her shoulder.
If Drew managed to get me out the door, I wondered if I’d be doing anything tomorrow.
***
Drew leaned me against his car as he tried to open the passenger door. I could feel myself falling and with a little effort, I was able to make myself fall on him.
We went down together in a heap with Drew cursing and rolling off me. “You’re such a pain in the ass,” he spat as he shifted onto his side away from me.
That left me lying on the cold asphalt without my coat or gloves, which he hadn’t thought to bring. My teeth were chattering loudly by the time he lifted me into the passenger seat and buckled me in. I thought the seatbelt was a nice touch. Safety first, right?
My head rested against the cool window as he drove, and I could feel sensation already returning to my legs. I shifted to get them closer to the heater vent.
Drew glanced at me thoughtfully. “I don’t think I got enough of it into your mouth.”
A phone rang from somewhere on Drew’s body. “The Vengeful One” by Disturbed blasted inside the car, and somehow I managed to chuckle because I knew it was my phone. Jonah must have changed my ringtone as a joke. Such a fitting song for me, and when my chest stopped rising with laughter, I could feel the tears running down my cheeks.
Was Jonah already on his way to Lea’s house to pick me up? What would he think when he couldn’t find me?
Drew was driving us back toward my side of town, and the pit of dread inside my stomach yawned wider. “Where are we going?” I croaked out. Licking at my dry lips, I winced at the bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
He didn’t answer, but I already knew. A few moments later, he stopped the car in front of a house I’d been in once before the night I discovered who Jonah really was, but I didn’t think Jonah was home tonight.
“You have to tell Victor where that safe is, Candy. He’s obsessed with finding it. He won’t stop until he does.”
Drew faced me, and I was able to turn my head to look at him. Apparently the drug was fading from my system.
“What did you give me?” I asked, hearing the subtle slur in my voice.
“Victor told me to use it if you wouldn’t leave with me, but I only gave you half. He said it was some homemade ketamine. Frigging gel capsule started dissolving in my mouth before I got it into yours. You probably ended up with less than half. Tastes like crap, doesn’t it?” Drew lowered his window for a moment and spit over it.
Ketamine. I had no idea what that was. “Thanks for keeping it to half,” I muttered sarcastically.
“You’re welcome,” he answered seriously, as if I’d been sincere. “I’m sorry I had to do this to you. Just go in there and tell him where the safe is. Then this can all be over.”
“I thought Victor was away being questioned.”
“They let him go a few hours ago, and he’s not exactly in a good mood.”
I wondered why Jonah didn’t know Victor was back. “I don’t know where the safe is.”
He eyed me sharply. “Yes, you do, and you know what’s inside it too. It’s those medical files of your mother’s you were talking about at dinner, isn’t it?”
Panic shot through me, and my fear must have shown.
“I figured as much,” Drew said. “Your father shouldn’t have saved them. That was stupid of him.”
“Did you tell Victor about the files?”
He nodded. “I had to. Go on inside. Tell him where the safe is, and then everything will be fine.”
My eyes closed and my chest felt tight. Victor knew. He knew about the files. I pictured his cold, dark eyes, and could feel the pressure of his fingers around
my throat. “I’m not going in there.”
Drew’s lips flattened, his expression turning murderous as he pushed his door open and came around to get me. I doubted I could fight him off, but I wouldn’t make it easy for him. My attention kept going to the house, expecting Victor to come outside at any minute.
Drew pulled open my door and reached around me to unfasten the seatbelt. Before it could release, I leaned forward and grabbed the strap just as “The Vengeful One” played again from somewhere inside his coat.
“God damn it!” He bit the words out as he wrenched the strap from my hands and pulled me out of the car without unclipping the seatbelt.
I pushed off the seat with my legs, throwing Drew off-balance. We both tumbled back, just like at Lea’s house, but this time sharp little pricks pierced my skin through my sweater. As I scrambled to sit up, I saw we’d landed on a pine tree. There were pine trees everywhere, piled all over the front yard with green and brown needles scattered across the snow.
“What the hell?” Drew mumbled as he struggled to stand among the branches.
Glancing around, I saw the moment he realized he couldn’t cross the front yard because of all the trees, and would have to take me around to the driveway to get me to the door. He cursed up a storm as he rubbed at the needles stuck to his skin.
When my phone rang again, I was right beside him. Our eyes met and held. There was a long moment in which he knew I could get to the phone, but he also knew he couldn’t let me. I pushed my hand inside his coat until my fingers found it. Then I yanked it out at the same time he grabbed my arm.
It was Jonah calling. His name was right there, lit up on the screen. I stopped pulling against Drew and pushed at him instead. As he struggled not to fall backward, I swiped my thumb across the screen and yelled, “I’m at your house, Jonah! I’m not at the party. I’m at your house and your—”
Drew’s arm flew at me, knocking the phone from my hand before I could tell Jonah his father was here. Then he palmed the back of my head and pushed me facedown to the ground. I squeezed my eyes closed as the branches and needles scratched my skin.
Sharp points of pain were all I felt as Drew held me there. I tried to buck and knock him off, but each time I moved, the needles dug deeper. The irony was, this was my own doing. These trees were here because of me.
The pressure pushing down on me stopped abruptly when Drew removed his hands. As I struggled to stand, I heard him talking to someone. I swallowed hard since I had a good idea who that someone was. By the time I turned myself over and blinked the night back into focus, Drew was gone and only Victor was there standing over me.
I vaguely heard the motor of Drew’s car start before he pulled away. My heart nearly beat out of my chest when Victor reached down and roughly pulled me up by my arm. Wordlessly, he dragged me with him as he walked toward the driveway with me stumbling alongside him.
I was cold and wet, and my hands were coated with blood oozing from the tiny cuts in my skin.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about an advertisement being placed in the paper inviting the entire county to dump their discarded Christmas trees in my yard?” he asked.
I turned halfway and looked at him. “I was wondering why all those trees were here.”
His expression darkened at my answer. If he didn’t like my playing dumb about the trees, he was going to like it even less when he asked about the safe.
As I looked down at the last few feet of walkway I had to cross before we entered the house, my stomach lurched and my mind scrambled for a way out as the distance between me and his doorway narrowed.
Once he got me inside, behind closed doors, what would he do? How far would he go to get what he wanted? It was that thought that had my adrenaline pumping when I turned and yanked my arm free, surprising him with a burst of energy as I ran for the front yard, hoping the trees would slow him down. As I pushed through them, the pine needles scraped against my clothes until they detached from the branches and clung to me. I heard it clearly when Victor growled in annoyance and plunged forward, coming after me.
As I lunged over the trees, it was hard to believe there were so many, and I didn’t know if my prank was helping me or hurting me. The trees were here because of me and they were slowing Victor down, but they were slowing me down too. My legs burned as I pushed on, driven by panic, moving forward because stopping wasn’t an option.
I looked toward the end of the property line and saw that the trees thinned out and ended at the edge, where the neighbor’s yard began, and so that was the direction I headed in.
Victor grunted as he ran from somewhere behind me, ordering me to stop. His footfalls sounded closer than before. Fear shot through me, making me scream as I pushed through the trees, their branches reaching out for me, like arms holding me back.
The neighbors were close. I was sure someone would hear me if I yelled loud enough, and my voice cracked as I pushed it to its limit, my cries cutting through the silence.
I was a few yards from the end of the yard, nearly to the neighbor’s property, when something sliced into my calf. The pain made me gasp, and I stumbled forward and cried out when a tree branch tugged against the muscle in my leg, making it feel like it was on fire. Frantic, I reached down to free myself but my head was yanked back, and a hand came over my mouth before I could scream again.
Victor pulled hard on my hair, fisting it in one hand while covering my mouth with the other. My chest heaved, and the scream lodged in my throat echoed inside my head. Mindless fear had me thrashing against him.
“Quiet,” he ordered. A second later, his hand left my mouth and his arm came around my waist, lifting me like I weighed nothing at all as he forced his way back through the trees toward the front door.
When I screamed again, he shook me so hard my head snapped back, and everything went dark for a moment.
Victor broke through the trees with little effort. I was resigned somehow, terrified but also numb to my fate. I couldn’t stop this. He was taking me inside his house, a place I suspected would give birth to all my future nightmares.
If I survived.
***
Victor set me down on the couch in his living room, the same couch I’d sat on with Jonah the night I discovered he’d been lying about who he was. I could smell the tree sap on me, and see the blood and pine needles sticking to my clothes and skin. I was still breathing hard from running and from the nerves that pressed in on me. The wound on the side of my calf, where the branch had pierced me, burned. It ached and stung in equal measure, and blood trickled down my leg.
Victor left for a moment and returned with a glass of water. I only stared at it, confused by the gesture, but then I thought of the drug Drew slipped me and I didn’t move to take it.
Shrugging at my refusal, Victor set the untouched glass on the table and sat down across from me. He pushed his long hair out of his eyes as he casually withdrew a handgun from inside his coat.
Carefully, he placed the gun on a small table beside his chair. It looked like the same gun I’d found on the floor in my house, the one I’d shot him with.
“Tell me where the safe is, Candace, or tell me where the files are if you’ve moved them.”
Despite the way my hands trembled and my stomach rolled, I didn’t avert my gaze. I had no intention of telling him anything. But I didn’t know how I would hold up if he decided to physically hurt me or picked up that gun and pointed it at me.
I fisted my hands in my lap and said nothing. My gut bunched so tightly, I thought I might throw up.
He shifted in the chair and his forehead wrinkled in annoyance, but he didn’t look surprised that I wasn’t giving him what he wanted. In the quiet living room, I could hear his phone vibrating in his pocket as clearly as I heard my own heart pulsing in my ears, but he ignored the phone.
Abruptly, he stood and walked toward me, making me flinch. He knelt down in front of me and waited until I finally looked up and met his icy stare. A momen
t later, his hand shot out and gripped my calf. I jolted when his finger pressed into my wound, right where the branch had stabbed me.
Crying out, I scrambled to get away from him, frantically pushing against his shoulder. The fire in my leg flared and he held it still, unmoving, unflinching as I writhed before him, tears springing to my eyes.
When his finger pushed right into the hole, my eyes rolled back in my head. The pain was white hot, like a knife slowly slicing into me.
As abruptly as it began, it stopped. He released my leg, leaving me gasping. I sobbed, and tears ran down my face.
“Tell me, Candace,” Victor said, his voice deceptively soft.
At that, I cried harder. There was no way I’d tell him, and I was certain he was going to hurt me again.
His large hand stroked my hair, making me cringe away from his touch, as his voice soothed me at the same time, asking me to tell him what he wanted to know. But still, I said nothing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to utter the words.
When his hand moved back to the same place on my leg, I tensed, bracing for the pain. He’d just begun to press on it again when I heard the sound of car doors closing outside. They were close, too close not to be in his driveway.
His brow creased with annoyance as he released me to look out the window. Before he could part the curtains, I heard Jonah’s voice outside, followed by banging on the door.
My relief was overwhelming. He came. Jonah was here.
Victor didn’t look worried about Jonah’s arrival as he walked to the door and opened it.
Jonah pushed past his father into the house. The moment he spotted me, his eyes turned stormy, filling with concern and something else much darker. He came around the couch and sat down, his gaze running over me. “Candy,” he whispered, his voice raw with emotion.
“Where have you been?” Victor asked.
Jonah ignored him and continued to look at me. It seemed as if he was afraid to touch me, and I wondered what I must look like.
Victor said Jonah’s name forcefully, and Jonah reluctantly shifted his gaze from me to his father.
