“But it’s league night.” Bryce looked very serious, and then a gradual smile began to form on her full lips.
Alison teasingly nudged her shoulder. “I’ll pass on the pitchers of beer and overweight, middle aged guys in ill-fitting bowling shirts.”
Bryce laughed and reached for the DVD. Their fingers touched as Bryce took the DVD case from Alison, who was reminded how cool the woman’s hands were, and how smooth they had felt the few times Bryce and she had touched. Bryce got up and inserted the DVD, after pressing several buttons on the remote. Alison was thrilled when Bryce sat back down next to her and not at the opposite end of the sofa.
“Would you like some popcorn?” Bryce’s eyes were focused on the screen as she spoke.
“Not now. Maybe later.” Alison settled in, resting her glass of wine on her knee.
As much as Alison enjoyed most anything Paul Newman was in, particularly a young Paul Newman, she was having difficulty focusing on the film. She wondered if she had miscalculated the out-and-about option as Bryce’s leg was just a few inches from hers, and the tension in her chest from wanting to touch the woman to her left was growing uncomfortable.
In contrast to Alison’s nervousness, Bryce seemed engrossed in the film as she casually sipped from her wine. This whole thing is entirely in my head. Tragic and desperate.
“Are you not enjoying the movie? Should we have gone bowling after all?” Bryce interrupted Alison’s mini pity party.
Realizing she must have been sitting there with a scowl on her face, Alison forced a smile. “I’m enjoying it.”
Bryce frowned and shifted so she was facing Alison on the couch. “You look unhappy. Have I done - or more than likely - not done something?”
Alison couldn’t help but grin at Bryce’s candor. “You’re fine.”
Bryce looked suspiciously at Alison as she put her wine down. “I don’t believe you.”
Alison’s eyes widened. She was fine with candor, but Bryce’s tone verged on accusatory. She could return the favor or actually tell the woman the truth. “Pause the film, please.”
Bryce reached for the remote to her left and hit the pause button. Putting the remote down, she turned her full attention to the anxious blonde next to her. “What’s wrong?”
Chewing nervously on the inside of her cheek, Alison took a deep breath. “I had really thought I was a better person than this. That I could be friends with you even though I’m really attracted to you.” Disappointment slapped Alison in the face as she watched Bryce visibly tense. Holding her hand up in front of her, Alison wanted to reassure the woman. “It’s fine. I’m not going to act the fool, but - I can’t be your friend. It doesn’t seem honest.”
Standing up, Alison walked to the kitchen and set her empty wine glass in the sink. She was angry with herself that she wasn’t able to strike a balance with Bryce between what she felt and what the redhead wanted. She needed to be alone to swim in the self-loathing. “I’m going to head out. Thank you for the wine.” Her frustration and embarrassment were pushing tears to the back of her eyes that she was trying desperately to abate. Bryce sitting silent and motionless on the sofa wasn’t helping Alison’s anxiety. “Right - so, I’ll see you around.”
She was halfway to the door before Bryce stood up and walked around the sofa. Grabbing Alison’s hand, the woman turned her around so the two were facing each other. “I - I don’t want you to go.” Bryce’s voice was low, and her cool hand wrapped firmly around Alison’s. Before she could respond, Bryce had pulled her into a full on hug, her arms wrapping tightly around Alison’s waist and her face buried in the side of the stunned woman’s neck.
Once the initial shock of having Bryce’s body pressed to hers wore off, Alison managed to bring her arms up and wrap them around the woman’s shoulders. The coolness of Bryce’s skin was evident through her thin blouse, as was her intoxicating scent.
Bryce leaned back so she and Alison’s lips were inches apart. Her eyes were a vivid green as she looked intently at Alison. “Stay - please.”
Bringing her hand up to the smoothness of Bryce’s cheek, Alison closed the remaining space between them and kissed the woman. Tentative at first, Bryce tensed under Alison’s touch; but seconds later, and to Alison’s delight, Bryce’s hand cupped the back of her neck, and the woman intensified the kiss.
At the first tentative touch of Bryce’s tongue to hers, a quiet moan escaped Alison. Her head was spinning as the sound of her drumming heart pulsed in her ears. Then it stopped.
Nearly falling forward as Bryce took a sudden step away from her, Alison’s eyes fluttered open. “What’s - what’s wrong?”
Bryce turned her back to the confused woman, her shoulders tense. “Nothing. That - that was amazing. I just can’t go so fast.”
Alison thought she must be a complete harlot, because she felt like they were moving at a snail’s pace. She wanted Bryce naked and under her on the sofa ten minutes ago. “Okay. We can take things slow.” She closed the space between her and Bryce, putting her hand on the beautiful woman’s surprisingly firm shoulder.
After a few seconds, Bryce turned around. “Thank you.” She reached for Alison’s hand and pulled the woman to her. “Everything you said about being attracted to me, I feel the same way about you.”
Unsure what the issue was if they both wanted to take the relationship to the next level, Alison suppressed the urge to question Bryce. Clearly, she would share whatever was causing her to hesitate in her own time, as she had eventually talked about other aspects of their relationship.
“I can be incredibly patient.” Alison smiled as she tucked a loose strand of Bryce’s auburn hair behind her ear.
Bryce cocked her head to the side and pursed her lips. “That word doesn’t come to mind when I think of you.”
Alison was poised to argue her point, but thought better of it, knowing Bryce was right. “Thanks. What words do come to mind when you think of me?” She had used her most flirtatious tone and could tell from the grin on Bryce’s face it had worked.
Looking up at the ceiling, Bryce took her lower lip between her teeth. “Let me see. Funny, beautiful, then there’s smart, and kind - and - ”
Alison’s kiss cut Bryce’s litany of compliments off. In spite of the pleasure and warmth Bryce’s kiss sent shooting through her body, Alison had heard the woman’s concerns about how quickly she wanted to develop the physical aspect of their relationship, and because of that, Alison did one of the hardest things she had ever had to do.
Pulling back from Bryce, she took a deep breath. “I’m going to go while I can still exercise free will.” She ran her thumb across Bryce’s full bottom lip. “Can we have dinner tomorrow night?”
Bryce nodded, her eyes fixed on Alison’s lips. “Yes.”
Forcing her feet to move, Alison took a step back toward the door. “I’ll text you details.”
Nodding, Bryce reached around Alison and opened the door. “We didn’t finish the movie, but I’m not complaining.” The woman smiled broadly before leaning in and giving Alison a quick kiss on the lips.
Alison knew she was grinning like a fool, but couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t expected the evening to take the turn it had, but she was thrilled that Bryce and she were finally on the same page about their relationship - even if they hadn’t agreed on how quickly they wanted to turn to the next page.
“I’ll see you later.” Alison hugged Bryce, feeling she would never get tired of being close to the beautiful woman.
Reluctantly turning away, Alison walked back toward her car. Sliding into the driver’s seat she started the engine. After nearly five minutes of contemplation and judging herself for being sappy, she decided she needed one last kiss to tide her over. As she opened the car door, she heard several loud women’s voices echoing from the apartment complex breezeway across the street.
Unable to understand what the women were saying, Alison hesitated. She had to go through the walkway to get back to Bryce’s apartme
nt at the back of the complex, but the last thing she wanted was to be in the middle of a domestic altercation. Deciding to close the door, crack her window, and wait for the women to disperse, Alison leaned back in the driver’s seat and looked at her phone, thinking she would call Bryce instead. The battery icon was red and flipping the lid on the center console’s storage drawer, she remembered she had left her car charger in her mailbag. Shit.
“Do you have her or not?” A woman’s high pitched voice caused Alison to jump and turn her attention back to the apartment building. To her horror, she saw two women carrying an unconscious Bryce by the shoulders and feet.
Alison’s first instinct was to lunge from the car and demand to know what was going on. Her pragmatism kicked in as a third woman wearing sunglasses and an unseasonably warm trench coat, her head wrapped in a black scarf, emerged from the walkway, and Alison took stock of how outnumbered she was. To her dismay, Alison recognized one of Bryce’s assailants. The woman holding her feet was Christine from the parking garage and locker room.
None of what she was seeing made any sense to her, but she had to do something or risk Bryce becoming a kidnapping statistic. Picking up her phone, Alison dialed 9-1-1 as the three women violently flung Bryce into the trunk of a black Lincoln Town Car. Alison gripped the steering wheel as shock and anger coursed through her.
“San Antonio 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice had a nasal quality that tickled Alison’s ear when she spoke.
“My name is Alison Bailey. I’m at 67 Cadence Street, and I am witnessing a kidnapping.” She took slow steady breaths, but her heart rate was ramping up as she watched the three women get in the car. She didn’t want them to leave with Bryce, but she didn’t have a way to stop them. Squinting, she tried to make out the car’s license plate, but it was too dark, and the plate wasn’t illuminated.
“Hello? Hello?” Alison pulled the phone away from her ear to find it had discharged. Alison felt heat and panic building at the base of her neck as the car pulled away. Alison put her car in drive and, leaving her lights off, slowly pulled out of the parking space. Performing a U-turn, she waited until the car took a right onto Broadway before she turned her headlights on.
Following the car as it turned off Broadway and onto Hildebrand, Alison was careful to maintain a safe distance to avoid being detected. Realizing she was still clutching the useless phone in her right hand, she dropped it onto the passenger seat and resigned herself to continue the pursuit. At least she would know where they had taken Bryce and could report the location to the police.
They wound their way onto Highway 281 and drove north for nearly an hour. Deep into the Texas Hill Country, Alison had only a vague sense of where they were as the car turned off the main road and onto a two lane flat top.
There was no other traffic on the road, so Alison had no choice but to allow the Town Car to pull nearly a half mile ahead of her for fear they would see her. She slowed at every side road, and looked for tail lights or plumes of dust.
Ten miles from the main road, Alison slammed on her breaks and backed up. A thin cloud of dust on a narrow dirt road to her right told her the three women had turned off the flat top.
Flipping her headlights off, and with only the illumination of her parking lights, Alison drove slowly down the deserted road. She heard branches scraping along the side of her car from the narrow Mesquite scrub and cactus lining the road. The darkness was broken by a faint light over the next ridge. Alison pulled her car off the road and behind several low-lying mesquite trees. Pulling the handbrake, she quietly got out. Her leather flats made a faint crunching sound on the pebbled ground as she gently pushed her car door shut. Hitting the trunk release on her remote, Alison slid the spare tire cover off and popped the metal rod used to raise and lower the jack out of its plastic clip.
Holding the rod firmly in her right hand, Alison realized her palms were sweating. Should I be doing this? She never considered herself a hero. The closest she ever came to a self-defense class was a Krav Maga course she took while finishing her doctorate. After two sessions, she pulled a tendon in her hip and had to forgo the remaining five sessions.
You have to do this. You care for Bryce and god only knows what they intend to do with her. Alison took a deep breath. The idea of Bryce being hurt, or worse, made her stomach cramp with fear. Just make sure this is their last stop, and then get your ass to a phone and report it. With a plan in place that didn’t involve the unrealistic expectation of Alison fending off three attackers, she made her way up the road.
With the exception of the faint glow coming from the other side of the hill, the night was pitch black. Her attention focused solely on the task ahead, Alison didn’t notice the quarter moon and kaleidoscope of stars overhead, their brilliance no longer cloaked by the city lights. She did notice the stillness of the country being broken repeatedly by her quick, nervous breathing.
Crouching behind a low shrub, Alison couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. The three women stood in the glow of the Town Car’s headlights, the spans behind them cloaked in darkness. Christine and the two other women had tied Bryce’s hands and feet together with some sort of thin metal cord. Attached to the redhead’s hands with another cord was a large black metal box. What the hell are they doing?
The women’s voices were muffled by the distance. The apparent leader of the group, the woman dressed in the black trench coat with her face concealed by a black scarf, was pointing toward a slight rise ten feet to her right. Alison narrowed her eyes, trying to see what the woman was pointing at, but it was too dark.
Christine and the third woman picked Bryce’s limp body off the ground. The black haired woman took a handful of Bryce’s hair and twisted the woman’s head back. Leaning in, she whispered something to Bryce, and releasing her hair, nodded to the other two women.
Alison watched. Her blood ran cold with fear at Bryce’s stillness. She was clearly unconscious or so weak she was unable to respond. Either way, Alison fought the urge to charge forward and free her immediately.
Alison was frantically trying to think of her next move, when a loud splash broke the stillness of the night. Alison gasped, realizing the two women had flung Bryce into a body of water beyond the rise. The three women then stood in a line, holding hands, and staring into the night.
Come on! Alison felt panic prickling up the back of her neck, knowing the longer the women lingered, the longer her friend stayed under water.
After nearly a minute, the women walked back to the car. Backing up, the brake lights cast the road in a red hue. Fearing she would be discovered, Alison lay flat on her stomach. A wave of relief washed over her as she watched the car pull forward and leave the scene.
Dropping the metal rod, Alison bolted from the underbrush and charged into the darkness at a full run. Her eyes adjusting to the shadows and she skidded to a stop at the top of the rise. With only the muted light of the moon to guide her, Alison slid down an embankment and stood at the edge of a large, lifeless, black lake.
Tears streamed down Alison’s face as she kicked her leather flats to the side, her feet sinking into the soft, cool mud of the shore. Slipping out of her jeans for fear they would weigh her down, the woman took a deep breath and dove into the murky blackness.
The water was warmer than Alison had expected, but absolute darkness surrounded her. Kicking with her legs, powerful from years of swimming, she quickly descended into the void. By Alison’s estimate she had swam down nearly fifteen feet when her hand sank into a wet, cold, slimy substance. She had hit the soft, muddy bottom of the lake.
Alison’s lungs began a slow burn as she desperately grasped at the darkness. Unable to use the bottom of the lake as leverage to propel her back to the surface, Alison began long, powerful kicks with her legs while fully extending her arms as if reaching for the top of the water.
Breaking the surface of the lake, Alison took in three deep breaths. Holding the last one, she dove back under. Hope
of finding Bryce in the vast darkness began to fade. Alison forced her lungs and body beyond their usual pain threshold, refusing to surface until she found her friend.
But feeling the blackness of the lake begin to strangle her, Alison had no choice but to return to the surface or risk joining Bryce. Kicking her right leg to the side so she could begin her ascent, she felt her foot strike something hard. Alison bent at the waist and reached towards the object. The only sound she could hear was the pounding of her heart as she suddenly grasped a handful of long hair.
A burst of energy surged through her, giving her additional endurance. Alison grabbed what she thought must be the collar of Bryce’s blouse and tried to pull the woman up. The fabric of the shirt tore and Alison lost her grip. She quickly propelled herself up; breaking the surface of the lake, she gasped at the air.
Her head throbbed and her stomach cramped. Her body felt heavy and weak as she struggled to tread water. Alone in the dark, staring up at the fullness of the night sky, her gasping the only sound for miles, her mind latched onto the oddest memory. If you are going through hell, keep going. The Winston Churchill quote had been one of her high school swim coach’s favorite. He would yell it from the side of the pool just at that moment when Alison thought she couldn’t take another stroke.
Directly below her, in the silent, pitch black water, Bryce needed her. Forcing her heavy legs to kick, Alison took as deep a breath as she could and dove under the water for what she hoped was her last time.
Relief washed over her like a reassuring embrace as she found Bryce within seconds. Surmising the metal box was not only anchoring Bryce to the bottom of the abyss, but was stopping Alison from being able to pull the woman to the surface, she felt along Bryce’s shoulders and down her arms. She found the thin metal cord that was restraining the woman’s hands and attaching her to the box.
With surprising ease, Alison snapped the cord, freeing Bryce’s hands and liberating her from the makeshift anchor. Wasting no time, Alison wrapped her arm around Bryce’s chest and began to kick furiously upward.
Dying Forever (Waking Forever Book 3) Page 11
