Text (Take It Off #4)(8)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Eventually, I made it a little ways off the ground. My arms and shoulders trembled with exhaustion. I felt as if I’d just carried about fifty pounds worth of groceries up three flights of stairs and across a living room.

I paused in my efforts and leaned my forehead against the wall. The earthy smell of dirt washed over me. It was strong and outdoorsy. Any other time, I might have thought it was pleasant.

Now it reeked of death.

The phone in my pocket beeped and startled me. I let out a little shriek and jerked, falling off the wall and tumbling onto the ground, landing on my back.

I sucked in a sharp breath, which caused even more piercing pain than I already felt. My side ached. It felt swollen and uncomfortable, and I just wanted to lie there and cry.

I allowed myself a few long seconds to brush the sweat and dirt off my face. The phone beeped again and I pulled it out and held it above me, staring up at the lit-up screen.

I couldn’t understand why sometimes the stupid thing worked and sometimes it didn’t. This guy seriously needed a new cell provider. Of course, I would rather it only work a little than not work at all.

Prove it, the text read. I couldn’t even be angry by the request. If I suddenly got a text from someone claiming to be kidnapped, I would probably want proof too.

I cleared out of the messaging screen and pressed the camera button.

If he wanted proof, I’d give it to him.

After making sure the flash was on, I held the phone out away from my face. Right before I snapped the selfie, I grabbed the locket out of my pocket and held it up beside my cheek. I don’t know why. It just felt like the right thing to do.

I snapped the picture and then pulled the phone down to view it.

I grimaced. I looked like hell. I looked worse than hell. I looked like something that crawled out of a grave on some B-rated horror movie.

The bottom fell out of my stomach. What I was experiencing right now could totally be part of a horrible B-rated movie.

The entire picture was cast in that yellow-ish kind of glow that a flash provides. My face was streaked with dirt. My skin was pale, my eye was completely swollen and dark, my lips were caked with dried blood, and my hair was half falling out of its pony. Beside me, the necklace was clear, and I nodded, thinking that was good.

I sent the person my photo.

If that wasn’t enough to get some help, then nothing would be.

The picture failed to send twice. The little red exclamation point beside it drove me mad with desperation. By the time it went through on the third try, I’d bitten down three of my fingernails until they were bleeding.

It was cold down here. Parts of my body began to go numb, and I huddled against the wall, pulling my knees in as far as my side would allow, and then wrapped my arms around them. I rocked back and forth, trying to create warmth.

Trying to create comfort.

I was watching the screen when I got another text.

What’s your name?

Honor Calhoun. Please, God, let this person believe me. Let them help me.

I’m going to get you out of there, Honor.

I started to cry. I said I wasn’t going to cry. I said I wouldn’t give my kidnapper the satisfaction. This wasn’t about that.

This was about the hope that burst through me. This was about the possibility of me actually living to see tomorrow. This was about another human being who was going to make sure I wasn’t alone.

I’m scared, I texted.

I know. We’re going to figure this out.

What’s your name? I needed to know. I needed something to hold on to. Something to whisper in the dark of the night.

Nathan.

I gripped the phone tightly.

There was now something standing between me and absolute death.

His name was Nathan.

8

Nathan

Someone beat her. Someone used their hands—their fists—as weapons to inflict pain on her. She was small. I don’t know why her slight frame bothered me so much. Maybe it was because it didn’t match the determination, the absolute stubbornness buried deep in her icy blue eyes.

I laid the phone in my lap and looked across the table at the man whose phone I was getting texts from. At first I thought he was playing a prank. But I watched him. He wasn’t holding a phone. He didn’t occasionally glance down at his lap like it was lying there. Lex’s hands remained above the table on his cards at all times.

He didn’t look like the kind of man that would kidnap a woman, beat her, dump her in the center of the woods, and then drive to a poker game and have beer with the boys.

Yeah, and everyone thought Ted Bundy was nice.

He caught me looking at him and I forced myself to smile. “You gonna fold or raise?” I said, pretending like I was only looking at him because of the game.

He smiled and took a pull of beer. “I’ll raise,” he said confidently and threw some chips in the center of the table. I didn’t even pay attention to how much he threw in.

How could someone just sit there and act like they didn’t have some hideous secret? How could he sit there and act like he wasn’t worth the scum on my shoe?

Questions like that usually had no answers. Answers a sane man wouldn’t understand. I learned a long time ago, in the center of a warzone, that actions spoke louder than words. A man could open his mouth and spew forth a bunch of pretty lies and no one would think twice, yet that same man would then come back hours later with machine guns and homemade bombs and totally obliterate the ones he fooled just hours before.

I learned the hard way not to trust outward appearances.

I glanced back down at the phone hidden in my lap. The screen had gone dark. But it didn’t matter. Her image—her face—was seared in my brain.

Dark, tangled hair, blue eyes, one of them swollen shut, a bloody lip, and huddling against a very dark backdrop. It was almost like she was sitting in the center of a vast pit of nothing— waiting for its chance to swallow her whole.

Something about that image—about her face—haunted me. It stirred up feelings deep in my gut that I didn’t expect.

Could I trust her appearance?

Could I trust that text? Was it some sort of sick game? A trick?

“Nate,” the man on my right said. “In or out?”

I glanced at the cards in my hand. I had a royal straight flush. I could take this game. I could have all the money piled in the center.

“Fold,” I said, shaking my head like I was mad at my lousy hand. I didn’t have time for this and I didn’t want the attention of winning. Not here. Not right now. I hadn’t been wrong when I said I was lucky tonight, except now it seemed luck wasn’t the only thing I had tonight.