Her Dangerous Promise - Part 4: (Romantic Suspense Serial)

by Stryker, Ashley

  Thom heard her cry over the earpiece he still wore when she impacted the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of her. He shouted uselessly against his gag for her to run. She obviously came willingly with Adam in the first place, hoping to save Brad and himself. Unless Adam pursued her now, she might not flee.

  Adam fished around between the seats and came up with the carving knife. Thom tried to slow him down by hooking his knees around Adam’s ankles but he didn’t have the strength to do more than buy Mary a few seconds.

  Over the wire, Thom heard Mary’s startled squeak. She hadn’t run and she saw the knife. He heard her start to run. She gasped heavily as she ran full out.

  Adam climbed over the seat and out of the van, leaving the door open and sprinted after her.

  Desperate, Thom scooted against the driver’s seat and grabbed the paring knife he’d stabbed into the base. He’d stuck it there just before Adam’s attack.

  Gritting his teeth, Thom focused on manipulating the small blade. He sawed at the layers of duct tape binding his wrists with as much force as he could manage at the angle he had to hold the blade. With every stroke, the tip of the knife sliced into his forearms but Thom ignored it. That wasn’t important. Mary was.

  Over the wire, her breaths came in ragged draughts. “I don’t know where I am,” she moaned desperately, either to herself or for Thom’s benefit, he didn’t know which. “There are no houses, just factories and warehouses. I have to find a place to hide.”

  She ran again, her footfalls echoing loudly over the wire.

  Get help, Honey. Thom thought.

  Thom stopped sawing and yanked with all his might. The tape stretched and finally ripped. Quickly, he sliced at the tape around his ankles. In seconds, he was free.

  Over the earpiece Mary mumbled something too softly for Thom to make out. He grabbed the cuffs and pepper spray he’d discarded earlier.

  Thom tore the tape off his mouth as he jumped over the seat and out of the van. They were in an industrial area on the west side of town. Thom knew the area. Outside the van the silent night offered no sight or sound from either Mary or Adam.

  He shouted, “Mary!”

  Over the microphone, Thom heard Mary scream.

  Chapter Nine

  When Mary had seen the warehouse door standing open and the lights blazing inside, she had assumed there would be someone working inside. So far, she hadn’t found anyone. The place was large enough to serve as a hanger for a 747. Boxes on skids formed pillars evenly spaced from each other.

  Mary zigzagged up the rows searching for anyone but willing to settle for a hiding place. She found neither. Her own footfalls echoed enormously loudly, not only signaling her location but blocking her ability to hear pursuing footsteps. Each breath she gulped down added to the cramp stabbing her ribs.

  Mary slipped behind a random tower of boxes and doubled over as she struggled to recover. Holding in her burning side with one hand, Mary touched the wire running under her clothes and hoped it still worked. She only needed to buy enough time for Thom to find the paring knife and free himself. As long as Adam didn’t find her, she had a chance.

  After a few seconds to recover, Mary peered around the boxes toward the entrance. She’d come further than she thought. The gaping black entrance revealed nothing of what lurked outside. With the bright overhead lighting, the night became an impenetrable fabric.

  “I don’t see him,” Mary whispered. “I might have lost him.”

  She leaned back against the boxes, grateful that they supported her. Her oxygen-starved muscles battled with the adrenaline coursing in her blood making her legs shaky and weak. Mary glanced around. She’d nearly reached the other side of the warehouse. A door there led to an office with a wide window overlooking the warehouse floor. To the left of the office an emergency exit sign glowed over a heavy fire door. On the far side of the exit, a metal staircase led up to the rafters, where a long walkway traversed the length of the warehouse.

  “If there is a phone in the office, maybe I can call for help,” Mary muttered for Thom’s benefit. She hoped he would soon work free of the bonds. “If not, I’ll make for the exit in the back.”

  Mary peered cautiously around the boxes.

  Only two rows over, Adam rushed into view. They spotted each other at the same moment. The knife hung in Adam’s grip by his leg but when he spotted her, he raised it over his head and lunged for her.

  Mary screamed.

  She bolted for the doors. Her legs pumped as fast as her heart. The long dress hampered her, so she hiked the skirt up her thighs. She dared not look back. Each of his growling breaths grew closer every second until she thought she felt the heat of it on her neck.

  As the far side of the warehouse grew near, she had to choose. She’d only have time to try one. The office door or the emergency exit. In a split second she weighed her options. Even if the office door was unlocked, she would be trapped, cornered.

  At full force she rammed into the bar of the emergency exit. The door moved three inches, revealing a heavy chain on the outside barring her escape.

  The misplaced force of her slamming into an immovable object jarred Mary back off her feet. She landed on her rear with a jolt that traveled up her spine.

  Over her head, the knife hit the door. Adam followed, smacking into the door with enough force to rattle the metal wall.

  The knife scarred a jagged gouge in the paint covering the door, slipped in the space between the partially opened door and the frame. When Adam stumbled back the door slammed on the blade, snapping off the first few inches.

  Mary scrambled backward crab style. Once she distanced herself a few feet away from Adam she twisted to get her feet under her. She scrambled up the metal stairs on all fours. Through regularly spaced holes in the floor grating Mary could see the floor on the warehouse drop away further and further beneath her.

  As Adam stomped heavily up the stairs behind her, the whole stairwell rattled.

  With Adam right behind her, she didn’t dare slow down despite her fear of heights. At the top of the stairs a gate blocked her from running out on the walkway over the rafters. Mary jerked the bar out of the loops securing the door.

  Adam sprang toward her in that moment. She swung the bar with all her force. It struck him in the arm and he fell back against the wall. Her second swing knocked the knife from his hand and it pitched over the railing, tumbling end over end for several seconds until it clattered on the concrete floor far below.

  Adam shot out a hand and caught the bar. He ripped it from Mary’s grasp.

  She staggered back into the cage door which fell open. Mary dropped hard onto her back. On either side of her nothing protected her from the three storey drop to the ground. The simple metal bar that acted like a railing was above her, out of reach.

  Quickly, she scrambled back out of the way of the gate. She slammed it shut with her feet just as Adam reached it. He rammed his shoulder against it, rattling the entire hanging walkway with the force of it. Mary kept her feet braced against the gate. With each slam of Adam’s heavy frame against the gate, the shock rocketed up her legs. She gripped the floor beneath her as hard as she could, despite the bite of the grating in her palms.

  Even with her feet braced against the gate, it began to bend. Adam wedged the bar between the frame and the gate and wrenched the upper part of the gate downward. It wouldn’t hold much longer.

  Chapter Ten

  Thom jogged away from the van, searching for any sign to point him in the direction Mary had gone. Even though he hated leaving Brad while he was injured, Thom had to find Mary first. He hadn’t seen them through the windshield when they ran off, so he went the other way, hoping that his instincts were correct.

  Over the wire, he’d heard Mary talk about an office and doors. Her
footfalls echoed too. She’d gone inside a building but which one?

  Thom pressed a palm to the side of his aching head, with each thud of his heart his head surged. That pain paled in comparison to the ache in his heart. He couldn’t lose Mary. Not now. Not this way.

  One of the warehouses not far up the street had an opening in the fence with a simple tollbooth style bar blocking vehicular traffic. The truck entrance of the warehouse stood wide open and the light blazed like a beacon in the night.

  Mary went that way, searching for help. He knew it. Frightened people tended to run toward the light. He touched the earpiece, wishing he could glean a clue from the clattering sounds he heard.

  Thom rushed inside the warehouse. There was no sign of anyone. Had he guessed wrongly? Had she gone in a different direction?

  As he started to backtrack, he heard a banging. The vastness of the warehouse muffled the sound but over the wire it resounded clearly.

  “Mary!” he shouted. “Mary!”

  She had to be close. He could hear the banging somewhere nearby and a louder reverberation in his ear. Thom pulled out the earphone and listened, trying to get a bearing on the direction.

  He raced between the stacks of boxes but the source of the sound eluded him. Then movement caught his eye.

  There, up among the rafters, someone slammed himself against a barrier. Thom squinted, raising his hands to his eyes so he could block out the bright overhead lighting.

  Adam Fielding. Thom knew he created the sound he heard over the wire. Mary had to be close to him but he couldn’t see her. Thom scanned his surroundings quickly. The walkway spanned the length of the warehouse and the steps up to the walkway closest to him were on the opposite side from Adam.

  With a screech of metal bending, the barrier before Adam bent over. Mary rose from the walkway and started running.

  Thom cursed, bolting for the steps.

  Chapter Eleven

  The metal of the gate groaned and squealed as it folded downward from the frame. Even with her feet braced against the gate, Mary couldn’t hold Adam back any longer. Mary scrambled to her feet and, holding the railing on either side, she hurried across the walkway. To distract herself from the long drop to the warehouse floor and the lack of anything but a rickety walkway and a thin railing between herself and that drop, she focused on the gate at the far end. It was so far away and each step of her shaky legs only brought her fractionally closer.

  The walkway jolted with each of Adam’s lurching steps.

  Mary glanced back at him. He wasn’t able to ignore the height either. He continued to progress forward, one step at a time but he faced the side, not forward. He moved hand over hand along the railing, slowing his progress. Blood from the gash on his back soaked his black sweatshirt, making it shiny.

  Unable to hold onto the bar he’d used to pry open the gate while he crept along, it slipped from his hands and bounced off a pillar of boxes before cartwheeling to the floor.

  “Adam,” Mary called out to him. “You don’t have to follow me. You can go back.”

  “I can’t go back,” Adam said.

  “Yes, you can.” Mary didn’t slow down, extending her lead. Up until now, she hadn’t been able to try to reason with him. “Believe me. I understand where you are coming from.”

  “You don’t know anything!”

  “Listen to me, Adam. I know about your mom dying. You depended on her for everything.”

  “Shut up! I’m not stupid. I’m not a mama’s boy.”

  “I know you are not, Adam. I do. It’s good to love your mother, that doesn’t make you a mama’s boy. You love her and you miss her. I know. I get it.”

  Mary glanced back at him. He kept coming. He’d developed a rhythm to his hand over hand progress and he moved faster now. She wasn’t sure if he still listened but she pressed on. “Adam, I know why you wanted me to stay with you. I remind you of your mother, don’t I?”

  “You’re nothing like her. She never hit me.”

  “I didn’t want to hit you either, Adam.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  “You hurt me first, Adam.” Mary touched her neck. “Didn’t you see the bruises you left on my throat? Don’t you remember banging my head into the car?”

  “I didn’t want to do that! I didn’t!”

  “But you did do it. You hurt me like you hurt the other woman, Nancy. You did hurt Nancy, didn’t you?”

  “She kicked me.”

  “But you started it, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not my fault,” Adam yelled. “It wouldn’t have happened if you had stayed with me. Why didn’t you just stay with me? Why won’t anyone stay with me?”

  “There are people who can help you. I met your doctor from the hospital. She said you could stay there. You wouldn’t be alone. There would be other people there like you.”

  “Not an institution. I won’t stay in an institution!”

  “Not an institution,” Mary assured him. “A group home. You would make lots of friends and have people to watch out for you.”

  “They killed my cat. Did she tell you that? I won’t go back there.” Adam stopped and hunched over the railing. He gripped it so hard his fingers whitened. The anguished moan that escaped him rose and changed to a war cry that echoed like the roar of a monster. Furiously, he shook the railing, forcing Mary to stop and hold on herself or risk losing her footing on the rocking walkway.

  She’d made it beyond the midpoint but the other side was still a couple of hundred yards away. The metal of the walkway rattled and squealed under the abuse and she prayed it was sturdier than it seemed.

  Adam jumped up and down in a tantrum suited to someone much younger in chronological age but precisely reflective of his emotional age. The floor grates, not securely bolted down and not intended to be misused in this fashion, bounced in their frames. Mary watched her feet as they rebounded inches above the grates with each jarring bounce and gripped the railing even harder.

  “I want things to be the way they were!” he shouted at her. “Don’t you understand that?”

  “I understand, Adam.” Mary spoke firmly, as she would to a student, as she hoped Adam’s mother had spoken to him when she tried to manage his temper. “Now stop jumping before you fall.”

  He gave one more big jump in defiance, and then spun to face her. “If you wanted to make things right, then you never should have left.”

  “You are not mad at me, Adam.” Mary stepped backward, further from him.

  He started walking toward her normally now, as if he no longer noticed the height. He didn’t even grip the railing with one hand.

  “You are mad at your mom for leaving. She died and left you alone, not me.”

  “You could have stayed,” he pleaded. “You could have made things all right again. If you had just stayed.”

  “Adam, please listen to me—”

  “Why can’t things just be the way they were?” he yelled.

  “Because they can’t.” He was gaining on her. Mary feared if she ran he would too and he’d catch her before she could reach the other side. She really didn’t want to fight him on this catwalk. She walked backward as fast as she could while keeping her grasp on the railing.

  “You ruined everything when you left,” Adam cried. The anguish and anger dripped in his voice.

  “Adam, please—”

  “I have no one now. No one! The police broke into my home. They took it. I can’t go back there.”

  “Yes, you can. I know a policeman.”

  He glared at her.

  “A very nice policeman,” she amended. “I could tell him that it’s okay. I could make it so you can still live there.”

  “You did talk to the police. You promised you wouldn�
�t! How could you do that to me?”

  “Adam.” Tears brimmed in Mary’s eyes and she blinked them aside. They dribbled down her cheeks but she didn’t release her grip on the railing to wipe them away. “We can work this out. I promise it will be okay, if you just stop this.”

  “Promise? You promise?” He roared, “You lie!”

  “Adam, just go back, okay? Just go back to the other side. I’ll bring help. I’ll bring people who can talk to you and help work this all out.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll tell on me again.” He sped up. “You won’t tell on me anymore.”

  “Adam, no!”

  He broke into a full run.

  Mary turned and raced to the gate. She slammed into it but it didn’t budge. She jerked desperately on the handle but it wouldn’t open. Through the narrow wire mesh of the gate she could see the bar keeping the gate locked in place. She was trapped!

  She turned and braced herself against the gate. She had no weapons. She had no escape.

  Adam slowed as he too realized she was at his mercy. His fists flexed and clenched. “You won’t tell on me anymore,” he repeated. “Ever again.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Thom saw Mary reach the gate and struggle uselessly to open it. When she turned to face her pursuer, Adam was only steps away from her. Adam focused completely on her, even as Thom ran to the gate and pulled the lock bar free.

  When he yanked the gate open, Thom felt his stomach drop.

  Mary screamed.

  Adam gripped Mary by the back of the neck and forced her down over the railing. Her stomach curled around the railing and she hung on with both hands but Adam managed to tip her further forward any way. Her loose hair fell forward so he couldn’t see her face. He hoped that curtain of hair would shield her.