Right Next Door by Leah Montgomery

Author:Leah Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Calibre
Published: 2019-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I didn’t move. Even though the bench slats were cutting into my hip, I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I even could. I felt like a deer in headlights—frozen, waiting for the inevitable impact. Only my impact was recapture. I knew there was no way he would just let me go. Just leave me somewhere and drive away. No way.

Was there?

I watched his taillights grow dimmer and dimmer as the fog curled in around his car. It was so dense it looked sliceable. My brain noticed the most irrelevant minutia like that—dense fog, the way his loose muffler chattered like a bird, the fact that one square tail light was burned out. It was like I couldn’t bear to grab onto anything else. Anything like hope.

When the car was gone, I still didn’t move. It was like invisible snipers surrounded me, each one just waiting for me to shift the tiniest bit and then BAM!

Moments passed. Time, in its confusing, disoriented rhythm, passed. I felt strange. Off kilter. Unsteady. I blinked my eyes over and over again. Stared up at the night sky. Begged my mind to clear. I took one deep breath after another. Tried not to give in to the panic I felt rising. It scratched, clawed, picked at the ragged edge of my consciousness. It warned me not to fall for this.

This was too easy, too convenient. Too good to be true.

He would come back. He would come back and get me and continue his torture.

That or he had something else in store for me. Something worse. And I knew things could always get worse. You could go from worrying about food and water one minute to taking a human life the next. Only God knew what else a sick, depraved person could think up. I, for one, didn’t want to find out.

I moved my leg. A patch of skin on my hip had gone numb from the pressure of my awkward position. The instant I shifted, I instantly regretted it. My muscles tensed, my pulse fluttered. What if he was watching me? From the woods. From a distance. Watching and waiting.

I went statue-still again. Barely even breathed. I couldn’t work out in my mind what good feigning death or unconsciousness would do against someone like that, but it seemed like the right choice at the time.

When nothing happened, when no one jumped out of the forest to drag me back to my prison, it forced me to think of things from another perspective. Maybe it was too good to be true. Maybe he didn’t drop me off and leave me for real. Maybe he didn’t really let me go. But the fact of the matter was, I was alone. At least for the time being. And if I was alone, free for even a few minutes, I had an opportunity. And if I had an opportunity, however small and uncertain, I had to take it.

First things first. I needed to know where I was.

I rolled my eyes left.

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