Page 52 of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

I have to wonder why he’s changed things up so drastically. Serial killers usually keep the same MO. I’ve watched my share of true crime shows.

Though, would Houdini be considered a serial killer?

Maybe he ran out of escapes? Somehow, I don’t think that’s it either.

Shit. I probably led him right to me by leaving the compound. If it’s one thing he’snot, it’s stupid. He used that back road to access the Lords’ property. Of course he’d keep eyes on it. What had I been thinking?

God, my head had been so messed up. I messed everything up.

My back burns and the stinging is almost unbearable. I lay on my belly and twist my neck to look over my shoulder. Every place my pulse pounds in my back there’s a welt or laceration or lash mark.

Nothing open or oozing; he wouldn’t want to inflict enough damage to kill me until he’s ready for me to die.

It’ll take a while for me to be able to move. Which is fine. I need to wait a while to make sure he’s good and gone before I attempt to open that door. Time to compartmentalize the pain. Shove it back to a place where I can feel it, but let it go. So I lay here with thoughts of sunshine and fresh air and coffee filtering through my mind. And Gage. It always comes back to Gage. I feel his love surrounding me, even with him off somewhere else. His love is always with me. As it always has been.

When I feel like I can move unhindered enough to make a legitimate escape and enough time has passed that Houdini won’t be outside the door waiting for me, I suck in a breath, let it out slowly, and inch the door open a crack. Waiting, just to be safe. Then I inch it open another crack. And another. And another, until I open it wide enough to slip through by sitting down and scooching my bottom to the edge of the railcar and dropping feet first down to the pebbly dirt next to the track. Before sliding the door shut, I remove the rivet and push the door so the lock engages.

Maybe I’m stupid, but I feel like it gives me that extra bit of escape time.

He likes to come for his visits at twilight, though I can’t be sure if it’s morning or evening twilight. Only that it’s that space of time between day and night. What I do know is that I’ve waited enough time that it’s daylight out. I haven’t seen the sun in so many days. It shines warm against my clammy skin.

Houdini honestly dumped me in arailroad carin themiddle of nowhere. Facing away from the car, the canyon to my right would be impossible to walk down. With the treacherous flat drop-off, repelling seems the only feasible way to get to the bottom. There is a bridge, but it shows signs of severe burning with more than half fallen away.

Out here, so far in the sticks, my guess would be lightning strike? There’s a sign blocking the track to the front of the car. No wonder no one has come upon me. This far out in the middle of nowhere, and the bridge gone, the tracks must have been rerouted well far back. With my bearings so messed up, telling north from south or east from west feels hopeless. But my gut tells me the canyon faces west. Which doesn’t matter current, as there’s only one possible way out, anyway.

Thus I begin the long trek east keeping to the tracks. The wooden planks feel rickety beneath my bare feet and it’s a bit awkward to find a good pace with each one separated maybe a foot apart from the next. I don’t know; measurements have never been my strongest suit. But with all the thick brush and mountain drops, it’s also the fastest way back to civilization that I can think of.

Fast?Ha!

What had I been thinking? Because it feels like I’ve been going for hours.

My body, protesting.Not another step, it shouts at me. To which I’ve taken to verbally reminding myself, “You don’t want to die.”

And it’s true, I don’t want to die, but after being exposed to the elements for so long, the once warm caresses from the sun now beat down on me, hitting dangerously stifling levels, causing perspiration to drip down my nose and brow, blurring my vision. As I wipe at my eyes, I see I’ve got pit stains and Ineverget pit stains.

I’m a hot mess. Hot as in temperature. Still, I’m alive and free for the time being. So I continue to walk and walk, listening for animals along the way. The last thing I need is to have a run in with a hungry wolf or bobcat. Well, that would be the second to the last. The last, last thing would be running into Houdini again.

With only one clear route to get to me, I know I have to move faster and get off the track. No kidding, if I survive this, I’m dropping down to one knee and asking Gage to marry me. Then should he accept, we’re eloping. No more wasting time. He and I have a future to live and it’s time to start living it.

My eyes prickle with tears. Stupid emotions. I’ve picked up several slivers in the pads of my feet, which sting like a mother. Thankfully, the landscape changes from stones and boulders scattered about between plunging, craggy cliffsides, to an abundance of trees blocking the heat and providing shade. Moss grows predominately on the north side of trees, I think. If that’s true, with the thick, brightly green vegetation coating the bark on most of the surrounding trunks, then I must be traveling east.

Unfortunately, with the denseness of the forest, along the dirt mounding around the tracks, there’re trails of scat. From what kind of animal, I don’t know. I’m not an animal poo expert. Just… I know it can’t be safe. Big animals eat little animals. So even if it comes from little animals, there have to be the big clawed, bigger-toothed ones waiting to feast.

I’m so tired and ache all over. My blood sugar begins to drop along with my adrenaline surge from escaping. Nary a bite of food to eat since he kidnapped me and no water to drink—it’s no wonder I begin to feel light-headed. And even though the sun can’t penetrate the thick canopy of cover the trees provide, I continue to sweat.

No. People push through this kind of thing all the time.You can compartmentalize this too,Liv. Perseverance. I’m sure I’ve already traveled miles, it’s just, I have no idea how many more I have to go to find people. A town preferably. Wouldn’t it be my luck to escape Houdini only to find myself in some sort ofDeliverancesituation? That movie made me glad I lived in a city the first time I saw it on TV as a little kid.

Right. Leaning with a hand against a tree to prop me up, I close my eyes and breathe. In through my nose and out through my mouth to clear my head. Make me less woozy. In and out. In and out.

Mid-inhale, I stop altogether when I hear a sound I will never the rest of my life forget. In the city it could be mistaken for a car backfiring. But not out here. Out here, that’s the defining pop of not-too-distant gunfire.

I think I might be screwed.

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