Page 88 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
Nash takes hold of Oscar’s wrist. I grab onto Nash’s shoulders and pull him away. He elbows me in my face.
Oscar turns around again, intending to run in between two cars parked close to one another—but Nash kicks him in the back of one knee, causing him to buckle and fall to the ground with a thud.
Before Nash can get his hands on Oscar again, Darin wraps his long arms around Nash from behind. “Leave the kid alone!”
I help Oscar up onto his feet.
Patricia yells at us, “Get in the car! Get in the car!”
Nash slams his elbow into Darin’s stomach. Darin releases a pained gust of air and lets go of Nash.
But Henry, palms out, pushes Nash back towards Darin.
Darin, with his hand balled up in an angry fist, punches Nash right in the center of his face.
Darin says, “I may be gay, but I’m not your bitch!”
Jo locks the car doors once Patricia, Oscar, and I are back inside. She throws her foot on the accelerator, and we speed through the parking lot.
Nash starts running after us. “You don’t know Nikolai! You don’t know who you’re dealing with! Give me Oscar, or all of you are dead!”
Karma has finally caught up to me and in the worst way possible. Not only have I gotten Oscar involved in all of this madness, now Patricia and Jo and Darin and Henry are mixed up in it.
Jo’s car barrels onto the street.
“Slow down, Jo,” says Patricia. “The baby.”
Because we got into the car so fast, Oscar and I haven’t put our seat belts back on, so Jo says, “Get your seat belts on, guys.”
Oscar and I simultaneously reach for our seat belts. But before we can get them on, a blue SUV slams into the front side of Jo’s car, causing it to spin out of control. As tires squeal, we’re all desperately trying to grab hold of something to keep from being thrown around. The car finally stops when it crashes into a telephone pole, sparks flying. Oscar’s body is thrown against mine, and we both smash into metal.
When I open my eyes, my vision is blurry, slowly coming into focus. Jo’s bloody head is resting against the cracked driver’s side window. She’s not moving. Patricia is also still, her head slumped down in front of her. Their seat belts hold them in place.
Suddenly, I hear the sound of glass shattering. I turn and see two big, middle-aged men in muscle T-shirts standing outside, next to Oscar’s side of the car. One of them has just smashed Oscar’s window, and there’s now a jagged gaping hole.
Oscar is lying across the backseat, his head in my lap. He’s conscious, but completely disoriented.
One of the men reaches inside the car and grabs Oscar by the ankles, dragging him out through the broken window, sharp edges cutting into Oscar’s skin. He screams in agony.
“Oscar!” I yell.
I crawl towards him along the backseat, but when my palms get cut up by the broken glass I yelp in pain.
The two men throw Oscar into the back of the SUV, where there is another muscular man. They slam the back door shut and get into the front of the vehicle.
I reach my hand out towards the SUV. “No! No!”
But it’s too late. The SUV speeds away.
And if there was even the smallest part of me that ever thought that life was worth living, that part is gone. It’s all gone.
38
Siren
I’m in the backseat of Jo’s car, lying on my side, on top of little pieces of sharp glass, weeping.
I’ve done some terrible things (secretly recording Nash and Alessandra, uploading Nash’s videos to a porn site to make money, luring old dudes in the comments section and through DMs in order to make even more money, lying, lying, lying). Now, not only am I being punished for it, people all around me are being punished for it. Patricia and Jo are injured (I pray they’re not dead) in this car. Darin and Henry are probably still shaken up in the hospital parking lot. Carter T. Douglass and Sruthi could be in danger. And Oscar has been taken away, kidnapped, headed towards certain doom.
