Page 49 of Torment

I breathed a quick sigh of relief. Then I frowned and looked closer as something caught my eye. Upon first glance, it appeared Jolie was situated where she usually was on the map, but closer inspection showed that the red dot was actually hovering very slightly above it. I zoomed in to make sure I wasn’t simply imagining things, and my blood ran cold as I realized I was right.

The red dot was no longer right on the lake house. It was about a mile away in the middle of the swamp that ran between my property and the next one over.

“Fuck!” I roared, slamming my foot down on the accelerator as I pulled back onto the highway. Somehow, in the fifteen seconds between the power going out and the generator switching on, Jolie had actually escaped.

I tried to calm myself as I sped down the road, telling myself it had to be a GPS error. There was just no way Jolie could make it all the way out of the cell in fifteen seconds or less. No fucking way.

Unfortunately, my worst fears were confirmed when I finally reached the lake house. The back door was unlocked, and the power was still out. The generator must have been struck by lightning or something else that prevented it from kicking in properly.

“Fuck!” I shouted again, running down to Jolie’s cell. It was empty. She was definitely gone.

Heart racing, I looked at the tracking app again. The red dot was in the exact same place as it was half an hour ago. Either Jolie hadn’t moved from that spot in the swamp for some reason, or she’d somehow managed to dig the microchip out of her back and dump it on the ground there.

Either way, I needed to head in that direction as fast as I could.

I raced through the pounding rain, barely even registering the cold as the howling winds picked up around me. I didn’t know which possibility was worse—that Jolie could be stationary in the middle of the swamp, or that she might’ve removed the tracking chip. If she’d removed it and left it there, then she could’ve made it to safety hours ago, and I’d be totally and utterly fucked. But if she hadn’t removed it and was actually just sitting there in the same spot, then that meant something terrible had happened to her. She might’ve fallen into the swamp and drowned, or a fucking alligator could’ve gotten to her.

I finally made it to the right spot, and my stomach lurched as I caught sight of Jolie’s muddy, rain-soaked form lying motionless on the ground. She must’ve tripped and fallen over, knocking herself out cold.

“Jolie!” I said, sinking to my knees and slapping her in the face. “Wake up!”

She didn’t stir. I dragged her away from the edge of the water, which she was perilously close to sliding into, and then I shook her. “Come on. Come back to me.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something on her left arm. I looked closer, and my chest tightened as I realized what it was. Deep fang marks.

“Oh, fuck. Come on, wake up!” I said, shaking her again. “I’m going to get help, okay? Just wake up!”

My pleas were pointless. Jolie’s face was pale, almost paper-white, and she flopped around in my arms like a lifeless doll as I shook her. I dropped my head to her chest, but I could barely hear her heartbeat. I wasn’t even sure if it was actually beating, or if the weak throbs I felt every few seconds were simply part of my imagination.

If nothing changed in the next few minutes, I was going to lose her forever.

---