I sob harder, screaming with everything I have.
How do I live in a world without him?
I’m helpless, unable to save the one person who always saves me. I’m losing him, and all I can do is watch all the light left in the world fade out of existence, leaving behind cold empty darkness.
My mind drags me out of the nightmare, pulling me into the now with a sharp intake of air. My breath comes in ragged gasps, and my throat is raw. I feel like I’ve run a marathon without water, training, or rest. Exhaling slowly, I try normalizing my heart rate while establishing where I am and what happened.
Cold caresses my skin, causing me to shake against the icy temperature blowing over me, highlighting the damp streams which have forged a path down my cheeks. The air itself feels oppressive, as if it followed me back here to the waking world.
I can tell I’m lying down, but my body responds slowly to my commands. My brain is disoriented and fuzzy, and I feel like I’m moving through sludge each time I try to access it. My eyelids are heavy when I attempt to open them, so I leave them closed and listen instead.
Music plays from a radio, not softly but not especially loud either. The humming of an engine purrs, and I realize I’m in some kind of moving vehicle. I smell sunscreen, old sweat, and a faint undertone of weed. The wind’s whistling outside the car brings bitter-cold gusts. I hear the slurping of a drink through a straw, ice tinkling against the plastic.
All at once, my brain catches up with the situation, my heartbeat rises, and I suck in another small gasp of air. Hudson drugged me. Hudson was waiting at my apartment, and he drugged me.
That motherfucker!
I panic, mentally running through the scenario and trying to understand why Hudson would have any reason to take me. Did Cain put him up to this? Would he have sent him to retrieve me? Of course, they work together, but the idea that Cain wouldn’t storm down to my place himself has me eliminating that idea altogether. Cain didn’t seem particularly close to Hudson from the brief interaction I’d seen anyway.
My mind wanders to other possibilities—things like human trafficking. There have been rumors that it’s a big problem in Las Vegas with all the tourists, but Hudson knows I live here. He knows how close I am to Liv.
Oh my God, Liv! What if she's in trouble too? How can I warn her?
I attempt to slowly open my eyes again, trying to do so without alerting him to the fact that I’m awake. Then, I start running through my self-defense training and what I know about how to get out of these situations. I know how to escape a choke hold, get out of duct tape, and even escape zip ties, but I can’t even feel enough of my body to be able to tell what’s happening at the moment.
My eye cracks open the tiniest of slivers, and I take everything in. It's still night. I’m indeed in a vehicle lying in the backseat of an oversized SUV. The interior’s stone gray and looks like a newer model with darkly tinted windows. In front of me sits Hudson, his massive frame behind the wheel. His deeply bronzed skin and rippling muscles are covered in an intricate full-sleeve tattoo, and his surfer-boy blonde hair is disheveled and flopped to one side, shielding his face from me.
Glancing down my body, I see restraints at my wrists and ankles. A green synthetic rope is looped in some boy scout rated knot. I tug against it, trying to see if there’s any give. Nothing. My phone isn’t in my front pocket, and I don’t see it in the car as I look around.
Strike one… I guess I’m even less likely to be found now.
I’m buckled into the seat belt, which lies loosely across my lap, the shoulder strap resting against the back of the seat above me.
How sweet of you to care about my safety as you kidnap me.
I roll my eyes at the absurdity of him ensuring I have on a seatbelt with everything else going on.
He may need me alive—that I can work with.
Hudson shifts in his seat, turning his head slightly and shaking his hair out of his face. I slam my eyes closed, hoping to play the sleeping victim a bit longer to formulate a plan.
“You always have the nightmares?” the smooth timber of his voice surprises me, and I lay silently, trying to decide what my next move is. “You can stop pretending,” he adds with a dark chuckle.
Shit!
“You’ve been talking in your sleep for the last twenty minutes. The silence kinda gave you away.”
“Where are you taking me?” I groan out, teeth chattering and my throat feeling like sandpaper as I adjust to a sitting position. The new view allows me to see the street in front of the car illuminated by the headlights, which show the scenery flying by. Still in the desert. On a highway. No city around for miles.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” he answers, his voice flat and lacking all of the charisma he exuded the night of our date. Instead, his deep-blue eyes glance up at me in the rearview, and his thick eyebrows scrunch together for a moment before he reaches over and clicks the button to roll the window up.
“Sorry about the cold. I forget you guys are more sensitive to the temperature.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, the words no more than a whisper.
Hudson exhales. His posture deflates as he runs one hand through his hair and squeezes the wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white with the other.
“You wouldn’t understand, but I’m trying to figure out how to get us both out of this alive.” His words come out gruff, but I sense his desperation beneath them as he slams his hand back onto the wheel. His eyes flip up to the rearview mirror again temporarily, and I see them darken with anguish.