Page 98 of Threat of Danger
Her breath grew more ragged. Blood pounded in her ears. She breathed in slower to keep herself calm, as she would on a stunt. She needed a clear head. And she needed to hear the man who was coming after her, so she’d know how close he was getting.
He was shuffling forward carefully, probably didn’t want to fall on his face.
After a few seconds, his footsteps stopped.
She couldn’t see him in the dark tunnel, but since a wedge of moonlight came in through the opening above, even with the flashlight off, he would be able to see where she was and what she was doing.
She jerked her body around to shake the bars.
The middle bar gave with a terrible, metallic creak. If she could pry it out, she might be able to squeeze through. She pulled back the flashlight and banged as hard as she could on that loose bar.
The banging wasn’t enough.
Then, out of nowhere, arms grabbed on to her waist.
In all the banging, she hadn’t heard him take the last few steps toward her.
He yanked hard, and she lost the flashlight. She needed both hands to hang on anyway. She tried to pull up her knees enough to kick him, but he was wrapped around her now, jerking hard to dislodge her, to bring her down. He was like a freaking octopus. Her underwear was ripping—the least of her worries under the circumstances.
With the last of her strength, Jess did a chin-up to the bars, pulling his entire body off the ground. They crashed to the ground the next second, the grate coming down on top of them, nearly knocking her out. Their combined weight had been enough to break the rusted hinge.
God, the damn hinge.The edge cut along her stomach, down to her waist. She pressed her hand against the sharp pain as she scrambled back from the man. OK, no gushing blood. She’d been hurt, but not disemboweled, as the throbbing agony suggested.
Her opponent maneuvered to roll her under him as she fought to get away in the narrow space. She swiped out to claw him and managed to rip off the mask, but she was between the moonlight and him and couldn’t make out enough of his face.
She pushed up and away. She couldn’t get back into the tunnel because he was blocking it, trying to push to his feet. So she leaped onto his shoulder, placed one foot there, another on the wall; then she propelled herself up and caught the opening, pulled herself up, and was free.
The cold wind hit her. She ran. She wanted to put some distance between them to give herself time to think. Because he would follow. He was tall and strong, and if she could pull herself up, so could he.
Snow clouds were drifting in, the moon disappearing, then appearing again. She glanced toward the throbbing pain at her waist. An eight-inch cut seeped blood onto her tattered, once-white panties.
Could be worse.She kept going. She’d worry about the cut later.
Jess got maybe sixty feet away when the man’s head popped out of the hole. Climbing out took him longer than it’d taken her. She stopped as he bent over to catch his breath. Then he straightened, and the moonlight hit his face.
Principal Crane?
Her mother’s boyfriend?
Disbelief hit Jess first, then a wave of fury. All these years she’d always thought the masked man had been a stranger. Because how could someone who knew her do what he had done to her? How could a man who’d been put in charge of kids be this evil? His entire job was to protect them!
The creepy fatherly attitude made sense suddenly. At school, he’d been forever going on about how he considered the students his kids.Gag.
Even as Jess’s mind raced to catch up, he lurched into a run on the uneven rocks to catch her. He knew she’d seen his face, knew he could not her let get away now.
She ran toward the far edge of the cliff. In the daylight, with safety equipment, she could have gone down without much trouble. In the dark ... unlikely. With her hands tied? No chance at all.
Her heart pounding, she stopped again.
So did he, still catching his breath. They stared at each other, only thirty feet or so between them now.
“How could you?” she shouted at him. “You were supposed to be protecting your students. You are the high school principal.”
“And I was always better than the job. I’ve wasted my life at Taylorville High.”
She stared at him.
“I should be running VPA, but they wouldn’t take me. I wasn’t good enough.”
