Lying Next to Me by Gregg Olsen

Author:Gregg Olsen [Olsen, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781542040518
Published: 2019-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

LEE

I could hear twigs snap, but I couldn’t scream. Someone was near. Was it my attacker, back to fulfill a promise interrupted by someone who’d seen his car? His words played over and over like Kip’s favorite CD.

“Don’t say a word and don’t move a muscle. I’ll know if you do. I’ll be back when it’s dark, and then I’ll take you home.”

The movement of someone coming. Was it someone sent to find me? Lying there in the dark, under a shield of tree branches that the man in the blue-and-red flannel shirt had used to conceal me, I could hear someone call my name.

“Lee!” the voice came.

My attacker had told me to stay quiet. To wait for his return. To say a word, to call for help, would mean he’d find me again. Kill me. Kill my family.

I believed him.

So stupid, I know now.

Though I was frozen there, I wanted to live.

I heard my name a second time. I tried calling out, but nothing could move past the tape that sealed my lips.

“Lee!” came the voice once more.

It was familiar.

It was Adam Warner.

When I think about the moment when he leaned into the dark of the branches covering me, I cannot help but find tears in my eyes. It’s like the moment in a movie when the lovers meet on the top of the Empire State Building or when they find out it was the other who had been emailing them the whole time. Adam and I weren’t lovers, of course. But it was that kind of emotion that burbles to the surface in a way that I could never fully comprehend.

I was shivering and rocking back and forth to move the branches that were meticulously placed over me.

“Oh, God!” Adam said, dropping to his knees and uncovering me.

It was Adam, of course. But to me it was an angel as he gently pulled off the tape from my mouth. He was crying. We both were. I didn’t care that he was seeing me naked. I only cared that he’d found me.

“I was so stupid,” I said.

His gaze never traveled down my body.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told me.

Promised me.

He undid the silver tape from my bruised and bloodied wrists and then my ankles. His hands were shaking as he did that and repeated over and over, “You are going to be okay, Lee. You’re going to be fine.”

My lips hurt from the tape.

“Promise?” I asked, though really it wasn’t a request, but a plea.

He looked right into my eyes. “Would I lie to you?”

I shook my head.

“No,” he told me. “Never.”

Adam put his jacket on me and when he held me, I felt the warmth of his sweaty chest. He was breathing hard. Sharp puffs of breath brushed against the rawness of my face. For a flash it made me think of the man who took me. Only for a second. I didn’t ever want to think about him again. Or what he did to me, first in the car, and then in the vacant lot where people discard things they don’t want anymore.

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