“Stop making so much damned noise, Ella,” he said as he clamped a hand over her mouth. There was a cloth in his hand and panic came over her and she couldn’t control the breathing that she now knew would bring on her own demise. As she felt herself slipping away, she heard him utter one last sentence.
“We’re headed back to where this all should have ended months ago.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ella
The darkness had been all consuming. She remembered the darkness from before; it was the last thing she saw before she woke up in the hospital where the darkness turned into blinding light. Either way, light or dark, she knew she was in trouble.
She could tell she laid on a soft surface, but something was wrong with her arms. She tried to move to sit up but her hands were stuck together and when she tried to pry them apart she felt the cutting sting of the rope that tied them together.
Her eyes blinked open and she was glad to see that there was only a dim light in the room she was in. Her head pounded and she didn’t need bright lights adding to her discomfort. When her eyes finally adjusted to the light and she could get a good look at her surroundings, she found herself sitting in the living room of the rental house at Lincoln City where she’d spent her birthday week. Her face scrunched up in confusion and she could feel the adrenaline start to move through her system. She tried to think back, trying to piece together how she had gotten here and why her hands were tied up behind her.
She heard a crash come from the door to the basement and heard his voice.
“Shit!” Kyle exclaimed from behind the door.
Her eyes grew wide with fear as the events of the evening came rushing back to her. He’d broken into the house in Salem and kidnapped her. She looked around frantically, trying to figure out her next move.
She clumsily got up from the couch, still wavering back and forth, concentrating on trying to keep her balance even though it felt like she was walking in a fun house with moving floors. Whatever he had used to knock her out was still affecting her, making it difficult to even walk in a straight line. She made her way to the kitchen but clipped her hip on the corner of the kitchen counter on her way in. She pressed her lips together like a vice to try and keep the painful shriek from coming out.
Awkwardly, she used her hands to frantically pull open drawers of the kitchen, trying to remember where the knives were kept from her stay all those months ago, trying to maneuver the drawer pulls with her hands tied behind her back. She tried to keep in the scared sobs, knowing she had only moments before Kyle came back into the kitchen to do only God knows what to her.
Finally she found the drawer with the knives and grabbed a small one by the handle and held it so the blade was hidden between her wrists and then darted towards the door, hoping to get outside. Once she made it to the door, she found it locked. She let out a small cry of frustration, her emotions starting to overwhelm her ability to keep quiet. The longer it took her to grasp the lock with her fingers, made nearly impossible simply by being tied up, the more frantic she became. Her fingers could find the lock, but she couldn’t turn it in the right way to get it open. She was so focused on the door lock, she didn’t notice the door to the basement open.
“So, you’re awake.” The sound of his voice made her blood turn to ice, her body freezing, and her mind racing. She looked up to see him standing a few feet in front of her.
“Kyle, let me go, please.” He cocked his head to one side, examining her carefully, his brow scrunched as though he were considering her pleas.
“El, if I let you leave here, I’d be spending the rest of my life in jail. Why would I do that? I’ve got so much to live for,” he said as a sickening smile spread across his face. She grimaced at the use of his old nickname for her. Nothing about the man in front of her reminded her of the man she’d spent four years of her life with.
“Who are you? What happened to you?” She asked honestly, still trying not to cry. He chuckled a little and rubbed his chain with his hand.
“I’m exactly the same person I’ve been since you met me. You are just a really bad judge of character. Now, get away from the door and go sit back down on the couch.”
She didn’t move. The farther she was from the door, the farther she was from escaping. She continued to stare at him, trying to emit an aura of fearlessness, trying to give him the impression that she wasn’t afraid, even though she had never been more terrified in her life. His blonde hair was longer than she remembered and it looked dirty. In fact, as she took a moment to really look at him, he looked terrible. He was thinner, his cheeks hollowed out, dark circles were under his eyes, and his clothes were wrinkled and baggy.
“You look awful,” she said before she could stop the words from coming out.
“What do you expect? I hauled your ass all the way in the house. Now go and sit on the couch,” he said angrily.
“No,” she said firmly. He reached behind his back and when his arm came forward he was aiming a gun directly at her.
“Say no one more fucking time Ella and I swear to God I will put a bullet in you so fast you’ll never even get to scream.”
This was the second time Ella had seen a gun pointing at her and in that moment something inside of her clicked on. She should be scared with the silver gleaming barrel winking at her, but instead she was angry. She was not going to let someone else determine what happened to her anymore. She was no one’s victim. She calmly walked past him and his gun, not looking him in the eye, and sat back down on the couch. As she sat she slowly rotated the knife in her hands until she could tell the blade was against the rope. She began to slightly run the edge of the blade along the rope, hoping that she was putting enough pressure on the knife to make a difference.
She watched as Kyle came into the living room, the gun still in his hand but no longer trained on her. He paced in front of the coffee table, running a hind through his greasy blonde hair.
“You’ve always been more trouble than you were worth, you know that?” He looked over at her and she remained silent, not wanting to give him any ammunition to use his gun before she was ready for him. “When we started dating, you were cute enough, and inexperienced enough that it was exciting. You were so trusting and you never questioned anything I did. You were so stupid,” he said with obvious disgust.
She continued to listen to him, or at least look at him, trying to pretend like she was taking in his words. He rambled and she tried to free her hands. He could say whatever he wanted about her. It didn’t matter. She just needed to get loose.
“Why’d you stay with me if I was so stupid?” She asked to keep him talking.
“Well, Ella, that’s a good question. How else could I continue to embezzle money out of Poppy if I wasn’t dating you?” She froze at his words and looked up at his eyes. He smiled at her, his mouth turned up on one side, smirking, as if he’d just said something particularly clever.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the tens of thousands of dollars I siphoned out of your business while I was distracting you with our pathetic relationship.” Her heart hammered in her chest and her mind raced, trying to connect the dots he laid out for her. She blinked at him, her mind blank and empty. He walked over to her and bent down so his face was only a breath away from hers. “You never even noticed the money was missing. It almost became too easy.”
Her breath shuttered out of her, anger starting to take precedence over any other emotion she was feeling at the time.
“You were stealing from me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She screamed at him. Immediately she felt the contact of the gun hitting her against the cheekbone. The contact sent her reeling back, the sound of the gun meeting her face cracked throughout the room. She was stunned at first and then slowly she pulled herself back up to a sitting position. She shook the hair free from her face and was relieved to feel that she still held onto the knife. She looked at him with what she hoped came across as
steely resolve and she resumed her efforts to cut the rope loose with the knife as she felt a trail of blood slide down her face.
“You were so stupid and trusting Ella. If you hadn’t walked in on me and that stupid bitch Tiffany, all of this would be different. You’d still be at my side, working your ass off, and happily ignorant to everything around you. I’d still be happily milking your business for all it’s worth, fucking every chick I got ahold of, and continuing with my master plan, which you royally fucked up by growing some balls and walking out on me.”
She wasn’t stupid enough to ask what he was talking about. She continued to try and cut through the rope on her wrists, hoping she was making progress. She would never be able to over power him without her hands. It would be useless to try and take him on with her hands still tied behind her back. She knew if she kept quiet he would continue his rant, giving her some time to get free.
“A few months before your birthday, I was getting real tired of dealing with you every day. I liked the money enough, but you weren’t doing it for me anymore. I had a buddy of mine help me take out a life insurance policy on you. It took a few weeks to get everything squared away, to gather all the information we needed on you and forge your signature. But just before we were supposed to go to the beach, it went through.” He got a far away and dreamy look in his eyes, and he began to look a little crazy to Ella. She had never seen this side of him before and almost couldn’t believe that he was the same man she had loved for so long.
“That week, at the beach, someone was going to break into this house and kill you. I was going to be lying next to you in bed and watch you bleed until you were empty,” he said with a fire burning in his eyes. He said it with such passion and strange longing that it made Ella’s stomach turn. “You were supposed to die and I was supposed to collect the five hundred thousand dollar paycheck.”
At that moment she felt the rope finally break free, It took every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep the elation from her face. She slowly unwound the rope from her wrists and turned the knife so that the handle of the blade was fixed in her hand, ready to use it to protect herself.
“But you went and fucked everything up,” he continued. “It took a little bit of planning and strategizing, but I managed to coordinate another hit on you that night at your store. The stupid kid had lousy aim and only hit your shoulder. Imagine how lucky I thought I’d gotten when you were in a coma with a brain bleed. Maybe things were looking up for me again. I hoped your body would give up and die already, but no, you still lived, which pissed the hell out of me.” She watched him pace back and forth in front of her. She knew she couldn’t go after him, especially if he still had the gun. Moving towards him would be a death wish at this range. She had to get him to come after her. She nearly laughed at herself, and perhaps that was a sign of how much stress she was under, but it was almost funny to her that at this moment she was trying to figure out how she was going to get her royally fucked-up ex-boyfriend to come after her with a gun.
“Then, when you woke up with amnesia and couldn’t remember a damn thing, I almost let it go. I was so close to just fucking walking away from all of it, but then that pompous asshole you were dating just rubbed me the wrong way. He’s a real piece of work, Ella. I can’t believe you spread your legs so quickly for him – both times.”
“You’re just jealous,” Ella said, sneering at him.
He laughed at her remark.
“I’m not jealous. What do I have to be jealous of?”
“Last time we were in the apartment you tried to get me to spread my legs for you and it didn’t work, did it? As I recall, I kicked your ass that night. And you had to find someone else to shoot me cause you’re too chicken shit to do it yourself.” He came right up to her and placed the cold barrel of the gun against her forehead, and she immediately thought she had pushed him too far. She closed her eyes, waiting for whatever happens after you get shot in the head. Pain? The blinding light everyone was always talking about? Then she saw Porter in her mind. She saw his smile light up his face, she felt his hands on her waist, and his nose flip the tip of hers. She felt him all around her and knew that she couldn’t give in this easily to Kyle. She owed it to Porter to give him their happy forever. She opened her eyes and all she saw was the hand holding the gun pressed into her head.
“You’re just a coward. You need to hold women at gunpoint and rape them to get what you want out of them. I’ve got my hands tied behind my back and a gun pressed up against my fucking head, and you still wouldn’t be able to get to me. I guarantee it,” she said, spitting the words towards him, hoping he would take the bait.
“Fuck you,” he said, his voice filled with quiet rage.
“You couldn’t if you tried,” she flung at him, hoping she hit her target.
Just as she was hoping, he reacted. She felt herself being pushed down on the couch as he climbed on top of her. He switched the gun into his left hand, pointing it directly at her chest, right in between her breasts. He held the gun on her, flush with her skin, and used his other hand to try and pry open the fly of her jeans.
“You’re such a bitch. I’m going to show you what kind of a man I am and you’re going to take it.”
Her arms were still behind her back and she was still clutching the knife in her right hand. She waited for her one chance. She knew she would only have one shot to save herself, because with one pull of his finger she would be dead.
He still looked her in the eyes, telling her how much of a dirty whore she was and how badly he was going to fuck her up. She didn't really listen. She tried to concentrate on his eyes. When she saw him finally look down at her zipper, because the dumbass couldn’t even get her zipper down without looking, she moved quicker than she’d ever moved in her life.
She pulled her right arm out from under her and plunged the knife blade into his left hand that held the gun. When all of this was over, she would think back about what it felt like when the blade sank into flesh, and the sudden halt the knife made when it hit bone and ground up against it. She would remember how the vibrations of the blade scraping along the tendons could be felt up her own hand through the handle of the knife. She couldn’t think about it in the moment, she needed to keep moving.
He cried out in pain and let go of the gun, staring at his hand with a small knife sticking out of it. Ella couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw the other end of the blade poking through the palm of his hand. Using his pain as a distraction, she quickly grabbed a hold of the gun he’d dropped on her chest. He saw what she was doing and fumbled for the gun at the same time. She cried out, trying to find purchase on the one thing that was going to get her out of this alive. He struggled as well, one hand rendered completely useless. She sounded terrified, her wails only accentuating the fact that she knew everything could end right then.
Both of them had their hands on the gun and nothing could have prepared her for the loudest noise she would ever hear. The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber was more like a sonic boom than anything else. She could smell the gunpowder, smell the sulfur, and the hot steel raged in her hands. One thing she couldn’t feel was pain. There was no pain and that was a blessing. If she had to die, she was glad there would be no pain. She closed her eyes and pictured Porter once more in her mind, the way he looked that night of their first date pressing her body up against his truck, kissing her for the first time. She would never have enough kisses with him. She felt the warmth of blood spreading over her chest, creeping into all the crevasses created by her body and her clothes. She never expected to feel warm in death, but was thankful at least for that small favor.
She also felt enormous pressure against her chest, a heavy weight pressing down on her making it hard to breath. She guessed, perhaps, she’d been shot in the lung and maybe that was why she was having a hard time breathing. She waited for her breaths to slow, to feel herself succumb to the death she had been fighting so hard to avoid, but it never came.
She pushed Kyle’s body off of hers, rolling him onto the floor next to the couch. She saw his shirt covered in blood and when she looked down at her chest she was covered in blood as well. But looking at his pale face and the hole in his tee-shirt, she guessed the blood came from him and not her after all.
She stared at his body lying there, not moving, and wondered what she was supposed to do. She was afraid to do anything, fearing that if she made too much noise he might wake up. Unless he was dead. She watched his chest for signs of breathing, but saw nothing. She shook so badly though, she wasn’t sure she would be able to detect such a small movement anyway. She took a few steadying breaths and then reached down to his body pressing her fingers against his neck to check for a pulse. She didn’t feel anything, so she moved her fingers around trying to make sure they were located on the correct place on his neck to feel his pulse. Still nothing.
She sat back quickly and pulled her hand to cover her mouth as sobs poured out from her. She cried frantically as she tried to process the fact that she had taken his life. She stood up, but then sat back down when she realized her body was not yet ready to support her. Her legs were shaky, her hands trembling, and the room seemed to be tilting like she was back in the fun house again. She took a few breaths and steadied herself, standing up slower, but making it to her feet this time.
She wobbled to the door, made it to the porch steps and collapsed down on them, sitting with her head resting on her knees. She had no idea what to do next. She was just praying she’d someday be able to erase the image of her ex-boyfriend lying dead on the floor next to her.
Never Far Away Page 28
