Page 45 of No One But You
Neither of them responded.It was as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
I started to sit up, but the man in the passenger seat turned and grabbed a pocket knife from the drinks holder between them.
“Stay down,” he growled.
“Okay.”I lowered myself onto the seat, my mind whirling.“I don’t know if you heard, but I had a head injury, and I can’t remember anything.Not even your faces.”
It was a lie, obviously, but hopefully it had enough truth to it that they believed me.
“We can come up with another solution.You don’t have to h-hurt me.”
“We don’t want to.”The passenger sounded disappointed.“Like, we never planned to hurt anyone.We just meant to stop you from running your mouth to the wrong person but then genius here lost his shit when you kicked his knee and now we’re in hot water.We can’t take the chance that you’ll remember and report us.”
I latched onto his comment, hoping to keep him talking.“Why are you doing this?It must be more than just vandalizing an old hut or you wouldn’t have cared so much about keeping me quiet.”
“The thing is, we—”
“Shut up,” the driver snapped.“For fuck’s sake, man.Keep your damn mouth closed.”
“What about my friend?”I prompted, hoping the driver wouldn’t be able to hurt me because he was too distracted by the road.“He didn’t see anything, and you hurt him pretty badly.”
I hoped he was okay.When they’d dragged me out of there, he’d been in bad shape, dazed and bleeding from where they’d hit him.
If anything happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.
That was assuming I survived.
The chattier man glanced at the driver but didn’t speak.
The car turned and then turned again.From my position, I couldn’t tell where we were, but before long, I was reasonably sure that we’d left the township.After all, it only took five minutes to drive from one end to the other.
Eventually, we made a left turn and continued along that road for quite a while.I tried the door handle again, hoping I’d just been too distraught earlier to figure out how to open it.Now that I was calmer, maybe it would work.
That wasn’t the case.
“You can’t get out.”It was the first words the driver had volunteered.
I tried to roll over, beginning to feel sick from the motion of the vehicle.We turned right onto a gravel road, and the car bumped along more roughly than before.The driver slowed but not by much.If he had to stop quickly, I was pretty sure the wheels would skid out.
Eventually, the car stopped.I wriggled down until my feet touched the door and shifted as best I could so that when it opened, I might be able to make a run for it.
The passenger got out and opened my door.I waited until it was open at least a couple of feet and then shuffled down until my feet touched the ground.I lurched upright and tried to tear past him, but he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me like I was a sack of potatoes.
“Let me go!”I shrieked, kicking at him as I tried to look around.The gravel road was narrow, with dense forest closing in on each side.The car was parked in a small gravel clearing bordering a cliff edge with a knee-high railing to keep people back.
I recognized this place.The railing hadn’t stopped people from jumping or falling off the cliff in the past.No one had survived the drop to the bare creek bed below.
An awful feeling curled in my gut, and somehow, I justknew.
They wanted to throw me off the cliff.
If they did, they wouldn’t have to worry that I might live through the impact like I’d survived their beating.There was just no way.
Seized by the need to get the hell away from that sharp drop, I grabbed at my captor’s waistband and yanked his pants up, hoping it might squash his balls.He grunted and released me.
I thudded onto the ground, a sharp stone embedding itself in my upper arm.My head thunked onto the earth, too, but thankfully my shoulder took the worst of the impact.
I started to shimmy across the ground, ignoring the way the stones scraped against my skin, but a foot landed on my hip and pinned me down.
