Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Closing the distance between me and the cabin, at a fast pace, I reach for the door handle, hoping it will open for me. I push the handle down and sigh in relief when it gives way with ease. I push the wooden door open and take a step inside the cabin.
“Ren? It’s me, I’m alone,” I call out, And I’m met with silence. Still, I’m not ready to admit that he isn’t here. “I’m sorry I left, but I’m back now. Please, Ren, I just want to help you.”
The silence is deafening. I hang my head low in defeat. “He is gone,” I whisper to myself.
“You are too late,” an unfamiliar voice says behind me.
I spin around, ready to defend myself from any threat, but like the man says, I’m too late.
Something hard hits my head and the last thing I remember is my knees giving out as darkness engulfs me.
5
SCARLET
It’s the violent jolt that wakes me up. Like I’m in a car or something, and we just hit a pothole nobody bothered slowing down for. My whole body bounces hard enough to bring me out of the deep darkness I was floating in a minute ago. Why did they have to wake me up? It was better to be asleep.
No. Not asleep. The throbbing in the back of my head brings everything back all at once. I wasn’t asleep. I was unconscious. Because somebody hit me hard enough to make me that way.
Instinct tells me to keep my eyes closed and stay limp and still as I try to piece things together. Where am I? Who am I with? Why the hell can’t I move my hands or feet?
That last question I can answer easily. I might have a bump on the back of my head—I can’t reach it, but I’m guessing based on how much it hurts—but I’m not totally out of it. They tied me up. They dumped me in a van. At least that’s what I’m guessing it is since I’m stretched out full length and there’s still plenty of room around me when the van hits another bump, and I roll without meaning to. It’s an old van, by the sound of it, creaking and groaning.
It turns out I’m surprisingly sharp when my life is in danger and my head is about to explode.
Who would have a reason to knock me unconscious, tie me up, and throw me into a van? I can only come up with one answer, and it stirs nausea in my stomach. A cold, sick sweat coats the back of my neck when I understand what this is about. Who is behind it.
I guess Ren wasn’t as careful as he thought when hiding us from Rebecca once we escaped that hell on earth. I can’t believe we ever went there to begin with. Another one of River’s brilliant ideas that’s probably going to get me killed. And there I was, having no clue what was really happening. What it was all about. Ren watched his brother die at New Haven. I don’t blame him for wanting revenge. I only wish he had been in his right mind when he decided to launch an attack. Maybe he wouldn’t have launched it at all. Maybe we could have worked toward helping him move past all that trauma and pain.
Instead, these monsters are still out there, doing things like this.
“Stop pretending.” A sharp, nasty voice rings out, surprisingly close to where I’m lying. Male, raspy, like a smoker’s voice. “There’s no way you’re still out cold. Not when we’ve been on the road all this time.”
A second deep male voice adds, “Let her pretend. She won’t be able to pretend for long. Not once Rebecca gets a hold of her.”
Big surprise. They’re taking me back. Back to New Haven, back to Rebecca, back to everything I foolishly told myself we escaped. So long as the group, the compound, and the people behind it survive, there is no escape. I don’t blame the normal people who got suckered into thinking they found what they were looking for—it’s not their fault, even if they have to be blind not to see what’s really happening. I can’t blame them for not being able to leave, even if they do understand who Rebecca really is.
For all I know, plenty of them have tried to leave and are now six feet underground. I’d bet anything on it.
I very much blame people like the ones taking me back. It will be a cold day in hell before I can muster an ounce of sympathy for them. They might be trapped just like everybody else, but they don’t have to take sick joy from it.
“I wonder what Rebecca will do to her first,” one of the men muses with laughter running under his words. Nasty, brutal, barely human. “A few days without food or water should break her down a little.”