“If,” I repeat, my voice barely there.
Brady shrugs the blanket off his shoulder and spreads it out on the ground, brushing away a few sticks before looking back at me. “Sit,” he says gently.
I hesitate, every instinct in my body screaming at me to keep going, to not stop, to not give him a chance to catch up, but my legs are shaking, and I can barely catch my breath anymore. I know I won’t make it much farther like this. Slowly, I lower myself onto the blanket. Luke sits beside me, angling the flashlight outward, while Brady settles on my other side, close enough that our shoulders press together again.
We sit there in the dark, listening and waiting, and I lose track of time almost immediately. The quiet is suffocating.
“You’re shaking,” Brady mutters.
“I know,” I whisper.
His arm loops around me, but he gives me time to pull away if I want to, but I don’t. I lean into him instead, needing the contact more than I want to admit. Luke shifts closer too, his knee pressing against mine, steady and grounding in a different way.
“I don’t want to die like this,” I say quietly.
“You’re not going to,” Luke replies.
“You can’t promise that,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “But I can promise we’re not letting him take you.”
The word hits something deep in my chest, something darker than fear or the memories of his abuse.Take.Like I don’t get a choice. Like I belong to him.
“He doesn’t get to do that,” I mutter.
Neither of them responds right away, but I feel it shift between us. The understanding. The agreement. We will die before they allow him to take me away from them.
“He doesn’t,” Brady says, finally. Silence settles again, heavier this time, but different.
Then I hear it.
Footsteps.
All three of us go completely still. Luke reaches over and clicks the flashlight off, and darkness swallows us instantly. My heart starts pounding so hard that I’m terrified that it’s loud enough to give us away. The footsteps come again, slow and deliberate, coming from the direction of the road. I grab onto both of them without thinking, my fingers digging in as the sound gets closer.
The silence that follows is unbearable, stretching out until I almost convince myself we imagined it, that it’s nothing, that we’re just—
My thoughts are interrupted when a twig snaps behind us. In this moment, I remember something.
Months ago, he cut my leg. I remember being in a ton of pain when he shoved something into it. I thought he was just torturing me, but what if it was a tracker? I can still feel it, and my fingers drift to that spot on my leg, and there it is. Small, but it’s there. How did I forget about that? I made every excuse in the world for the longest time.
“I knew you all were stupid, but I didn’t think you were this stupid,” Austin says as the barrel of a gun presses against the back of my head. “Get up.”
“Austin… Please, let them go,” I whimper. “I’ll go with…”
“Oh no,” he laughs. “I need them for this part. Get up. All of you.”
I slowly stand, but shriek when he loops his arm around my waist and yanks me back from Luke and Brady as they turn to face us. They look angry, but calm. I glance between them, and we know we need to just shut the fuck up and do what Austin says.
“Handcuff their wrists behind their knees,” Austin tells me simply. “Sit them against those trees.”
“Austin, please…”
“Now!” he screams at me, making me instinctively flinch and cower away from him. I sniffle and take the handcuffs from him.Brady and Luke move toward the trees Austin was referring to and just sit down.
“Just do as he says,” Brady murmurs quietly enough that Austin can’t hear.
“We love you so much,” Luke says, matching his quiet tone. I tighten the handcuffs, and sitting like this, they can’t move. They are huge men with thick muscles; there is no way they can get out of this without severely hurting themselves.