Text (Take It Off #4)(13)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Again, I was struck by how “normal” he appeared. How uncreepy and non-kidnapper-ish he seemed. He was the most dangerous kind of criminal of all because no one would suspect him. No one would be inclined to believe any accusations against him.

I flipped through a few more of the photos when one had me gripping the phone until the bones in my fingers ached.

It was of a young blond woman. She was smiling, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were haunted, they were sad… and they were also a little empty.

Around her neck was the locket I’d found in the dirt—the one now in my pocket.

My stomach roiled. Bile rose up in my throat and I dropped the phone and lurched to the side and heaved violently. Nothing came up because my stomach was empty. I made hideous sounds and the pain of retching had me collapsing onto the dirt floor and curling into a ball.

I lay there for a long time, feeling the cold dirt against my cheek and keeping my eyes closed, hoping I might wake up and find this was all dream.

Eventually, the uncomfortableness of my position made me roll over onto my back and stare up at the black sky.

Only there wasn’t just black sky to look at.

There was something pale in my line of sight.

My heart rate accelerated when my eyes made out the shape of a man.

Nathan! He’d come for me after all!

“I told you I’d come back,” intoned a voice from above.

Chills crawled up my spine and I shivered. That wasn’t Nathan. It was my kidnapper.

“I had planned on leaving you down here for the night,” he called. Funny how his voice didn’t seem that far away; it seemed as though it was very close, and I reminded myself that he was up there and I was down here. For once, I didn’t mind being down in this hole.

When I didn’t respond to his comments, he spoke again.

“But it seems I have misplaced something. I came back to see if you had something of mine?”

My eyes darted to where the phone lay on the ground. It was facedown and the case was black. I knew he wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Are you talking about your heart?” I snapped. “Cause I’m pretty sure you weren’t even born with one.”

“Feisty.” He chuckled. “I like feisty. It turns me on.”

Gag. Me. With. A. Spoon.

“It seems my cell phone has gone missing,” he said. “You don’t have it down there, do you?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t still be here,” I yelled.

“Well, that’s good. Because I would hate to have to move up my timeline and just kill you now.”

His timeline?

Something told me that being killed now versus later was probably the better option.

“I’m going to send down a rope ladder. Climb up,” he said.

I wanted to laugh. Yeah, right. And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass.

It was almost cute the way he tossed down the rope ladder and adjusted it so I could climb right up.

If pigs with mustaches and goatees were cute.

“Come on,” he instructed.

“No.”

The silence that followed my one-word reply was almost comical.

“What did you say?”

“I said I would rather sit down here and rot and die than climb up there and be any closer to you,” I spat.

I heard his rough inhale and I knew I pissed him off.

Good. He pissed me off too.

“Get. Up. Here. Now.”

“Why? So you can rape and murder me? No thanks. I’m not really feeling much like rape and murder today.”

“You little bitch.”

“I thought you said you liked my feisty attitude.” I mocked. I knew I should shut up, but I found myself with a severe case of diarrhea of the mouth.

I sat down to punctuate my intention of doing exactly what he told me not to do. As I sat, I slowly pulled the phone into my palm and then crossed my hands over my chest, hiding it beneath my arm.

“How rude of me,” he said in a conversational tone. “I realize my mistake.”

Then he disappeared, leaving the rope hanging there, taunting me with freedom. I knew better. He probably wanted me to think he left so I would climb up to my doom.

While he was gone, I shoved the phone up my sleeve and then hooked my thumb through the little hole made into the arm. Hopefully that would be enough to keep the phone hidden.

A few minutes later, something hit me in the head.

I looked up only to see something else plummeting toward me, and I ducked just in time to avoid being hit in the face.

“What the hell?” I muttered and reached out to pick up the items he chucked down the hole at me.

My hand closed around one of the slightly textured, round items. It was an orange.

The crazy ass threw two oranges at me.

“I get grumpy when I don’t eat, too,” he said, like the reason I didn’t feel like dying was because of low blood sugar.

There weren’t enough M&Ms in the world for that. An orange sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.

My stomach rumbled at the sight of it. I was tempted to peel it and dig in. But my writer’s brain kicked in. He might have used a syringe and injected it with some sort of deadly poison.

I think I’d rather starve.

“Eat,” he commanded.

I stood and threw the orange back up at him.

I was a girl. I threw like a girl.

The orange came back down and made a plopping sound at my feet.

“I would eat that if I were you,” he growled.

I didn’t bother to reply. I was exhausted, and fighting with him made it worse. I needed to save my strength for getting away.

I sat down in the dirt just as more thunder rolled overhead. I wished it would rain. I wished it would lightning and thunder and a storm of epic proportions would rage. It would chase him away. He would be forced to leave me here and not come back ‘til morning.

Maybe by then, Nathan would have found me.

If he was even looking.

Let’s face it here. My situation was pretty bleak. I was depending on a guy that I met through my kidnapper’s phone. I highly doubted that he kept upstanding citizens as company. I more than likely texted his partner in crime. The pair of them had a good laugh at my expense and then creepy up there came back to throw oranges at my head and then murder me.

This wasn’t one of my romance novels.

A dashing, romantic hero wasn’t going to come riding up on his white horse and save me.

I was going to end up on the eleven o’clock news.

“Come on,” the man above demanded.

“No!” I shouted.