Page 18 of Hold Me Before You Go

“We need to stop.”

I tensed at the sound of the female voice in the front of the van. I double-checked the partition window, and my stomach dropped when I realized it was cracked.

They checked on me.

“Yeah, I’m fucking tired. Maybe the bitch will be awake by then,” Brandon rumbled, not a single drop of humanity in his voice, soulless.

The woman was quiet for a moment, leaving only the sounds of the van to fill my ears.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do with the body,” the woman finally said plainly.

Brandon scoffed, laughing softly. “After we get what we need from her, we can leave her fucking body on the side of the road for all I care.”

Goosebumps scattered across my skin, fear paving the way for them as a chill slithered down my spine. My ears started to ring, and the tiny sliver of hope I’d just felt vanished like it never even existed. The conversation I’d overheard outside the van earlier came to the front of my mind, and I wanted to throw up again. Brandon had Leo’s drugs.

Brandon and this woman had been watching me all along.

I was never truly free.

Freedom was a myth, made up to give false hope to a woman like me, a woman born in chains and forced to serve.

“That’s how we get caught, Brandon,” the woman hissed. “We have to hide it somewhere.”

That woman wasn’t even referring to me as a person…

What the hell was wrong with these people? What did I do to deserve this?

I swallowed, my throat burning as I questioned the timeline of all this. How long had I been gone? How long, in total, had I been passed out? How much of Leo’s drugs did Brandon dose me with?

I’d been gone for at least one day, but there was no telling how much time I’d truly lost…

Tears stung my eyes as a realization settled on my shoulders, weighing me down.

I was going to die.

They were going to kill me and leave my body in a shallow grave somewhere on the side of a road.

I licked my cracked lips and laid my head back down, staring at the roof of the van. First thing I needed to figure out was who that woman was and what they wanted from me. My brows pinched together as I tried to recall the words that asshole said to me before pricking my neck with a damn needle.

“You need to fucking listen to me or you’ll be dead before I can get my fucking payday.”

Payday.

Had he been hired by someone? To kidnap me? It couldn’t have been the Oasis boys; they’d already sent Grayson, and he set the record straight with Jeremy the night he let me go.

It could have been my father. Truth be told, the man hated my guts, and I wouldn’t put it past him to put a revenge hit on me while he was rotting in a damn prison.

Suddenly, the van slowed, and I felt it shifting in a different direction. We went over a bump, and I was thrown into the air again, landing on my back. I yelped in pain, my hands crushed underneath me.

“Did you hear that?” the woman asked.

I froze, closing my eyes on instinct. A second later, I heard a faint creak, and then a strong smell of cigarette smoke.

“She still out?” Brandon asked.

The woman grunted. “Yeah, she’s still out.”

I heard more creaking, and then their voices were muffled once more. I waited a few minutes before opening my eyes, and I silently cursed when I found the window was closed now. The van rolled on for a few more minutes, likely twenty or so, before making a sharp turn and coming to a stop. I heard the gears shift into park and then a single door slamming.

---