Page 98 of Silent Betrayal

He was already waking up before I reached him, pointing to the drive where a car was pulling away and yelling, “Mina!”

Ben speaks, pulling me from the memory. “It’s moving again, but really slowly. She must be walking.”

“Where are they? What’s there?” I ask him.

“It’s—nothing.Just forest.”

“Fuck!” Max and I say in unison. You don’t take a girl to the woods to do anything other than rape or kill her.Or both. I press my foot down on the gas.

“I think we’re less than ten minutes out if we can keep up this speed,” Ben tells me.

“Are they walking towards something in the woods? Is there a cabin out there, or are they on a trail or something?” Max asks him, leaning forward to look at Ben’s phone over his shoulder.

“Hmmm. I don’t see anything. It’s literally the middle of nowhere. We might even lose her signal since it’s so remote.”

“We better not,” I grind out, gripping the steering wheel harder.

“Zoom out more,” Max tells him. “That, there. What is that?” He points to something on the screen.

“I think it’s like a dirt road. Probably where people drive in with their trucks before taking their bikes through the woods or something.”

“We need someone to cover that road. Max, call Jasper, they’ll be closest,” Ben instructs.

“Max?” We hear Tucker answer.

“Yeah, we’re closing in on them.”

“You see her walking through the woods, right?”

“Yep, we’re following her signal, too. I’m gonna send you a pin. It’s a dirt road that’s past the area they’re headed. You guys need to go there and cover that road in case they head that way to escape. There could be a second vehicle there or something, trying to cover their tracks.”

“Yeah, we got it covered,” Tucker tells us.

“Eight minutes out,” Ben says.

“We’re about twenty,” Jasper says through the phone.

“Okay, radio silence, texts only. I’ll let Dom and Gideon know,” Ben tells everyone.

“Hold on, Malishka… we’re coming,” I say to myself. I just hope she takes what I said to heart and remembers it. She better not fucking give up on me. I can’t live without her.

Chapterforty-four

“There you are, my beautiful little pet.” Simon smiles at me as Helen pushes me into the clearing. The sun is all but set now, and darkness presses over almost everything. But I can still make out the evil glint in his eye, the knife in his hand, and the girl sobbing at his feet.

I look from him to the girl and back in shock and fear, not really sure what to do or say. Helen moves around me, keeping the gun aimed at me as she moves to stand beside Simon while she speaks.

“You’ve overstayed your time here. And it’s time you move on.”Move on?I thought Ihadmoved on. She must see the confusion on my face because she laughs and adds, “moved on from the world, you stupid little fool.”They’re going to kill me?Why drag me all the way out here to do it?

“I warned you. I told you the demon had a hold of you. You see it now, don’t you?” Not this demon crap again. If I’ve learned anything from my time away from her, it’s thatsheis the one who has a demon inside her, causing her to do horrendous things, not me.

“First your father became obsessed, then your brother. Then I had to watch as every man I brought home watched you with lust in their eyes. I’d let them have their fun, because what did I care if they touched you? As long as they kept coming around with money and cigarettes for me.”She let her boyfriends touch me forcigarettes? The thought makes me want to hurl.

Simon speaks next. “We’ve been running for years so I could keep you away from him, and keep you for myself. But you wouldn’t shut up about going to school, and we needed to keep you hidden, that’s why mom lied to you about your age. But too many bodies have piled up recently, and I knew it was time I let you go. I told mom to send you to school so there would be a record of you here, forging the birth certificates was easy enough, it wasn’t the first ones we’ve faked.”

Seeming the need to monologue, Helen continues. “All you had to do was stay quiet and color in your stupid books. Let them see what a damaged, broken girl you are. It would be easy to convince everyone you were a deranged psychopath, killing girls who looked like you because you were jealous. And you almost ruined it, letting that boy get close to you then crying rape!”

I shake my head rapidly. They’re going to frame me for all of his murders? They’re insane, nobody would believe that!

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