Page 65 of Never Fear (Whiskey Ridge)
Brynne’s head rolled, like she was barely staying awake at this point.
“No, thanks.” I tried to keep the waver from my voice as I barely spared him a glance and grabbed the door.
A strong hand gripped my upper arm before I could shut it, yanking me away.
“Let me go!” I shrieked, immediately trying to pry his bruising fingers from my skin. When that didn’t work, I aimed to kick him in the crotch, but he caught my leg and tugged. The world flipped upside down, and my head slammed into the ground.
“McKenna!” Brynne screamed, but she sounded faraway. I tilted my head back, eyes blinking away the stars in my vision, to find her crawling out of the car.
“Brynne, no! Get back inside!”
Two hands clamped around my ankles, and I kicked with all the strength I could muster as the black dots left my line of sight. “Get your hands off me!”
The man climbed up my body, rendering my legs useless now. I opened my mouth to scream, but he clamped a gloved palm over my mouth.
Realization hit me too late.
It wasn’t a glove pressed over my mouth and nose. It was a damp rag.
Sweetness enveloped my senses moments before my tongue went dry. My eyelids grew heavy, and the last thing I heard were Brynne’s screams and the rustle of pine needles.
Chapter 25
Austin
My fingers tapped impatiently on the leather steering wheel, staring at the empty space ahead where McKenna’s car disappeared around the corner. She had one job—stay with me. Then I got pulled over for no fucking reason, and she disappeared.
She never listened, and that was exactly why I planned to punish her when we got home. Clearly our back-and-forth from the past few weeks has done nothing but make her more rebellious.
A hard knock at my window had me slamming a finger on the button to lower it. Even then, I didn’t spare one glance at the officer.
“License and registration,” the cop demanded. His voice sounded like he was purposely making it deeper, which only annoyed the shit out of me more, on top of his audacity for separating me from my girl like this.
“You’re pulling over the wrong guy,” I warned. I’d paid off the cops in Whiskey Ridge more times than I could count. The three of us didn’t get away with murderso often by sheer luck. We cleaned up the town’s problems from time to time, and law enforcement looked the other way.
“License and registration. I won’t ask again.”
Finally, I mustered the strength to face the man without tearing his esophagus through his thin, skinny neck. My eyes flicked to his name tag, not caring to read it. “You’re new. I get that. But I have somewhere to be, and I wasn’t doing anything illegal.” Yet.
“You were texting and driving.” Even his tone indicated it was a fucking lie.
I chuckled, the sound anything but humorous. “Funny, because I don’t even have my phone on me.”
“Just because you tossed it elsewhere before I made it to your window doesn’t mean what I saw is any less true.”
My fingers continued their impatient thrum on the wheel. “It’s not in my vehicle, dipshit.”
The cop’s hand went to his holster. “What’d you just call me?”
I leaned a little closer, emphasizing the word. “Dipshit.”
He moved back a foot. “Step out of the vehicle.”
“Call your sergeant.”
The dipshit hesitated, and I dipped my chin at his walkie. “Call him.”
A beat later, he was slowly walking back in the direction of his patrol car, hand on his radio. Distantly, I could hear him asking questions and getting stern responses. A smile tilted the corners of my mouth, and when he reappeared at my window, recognition hit me. I’d seen this man before. It was dark, but I remembered him standing beside Grace,McKenna’s cousin, at the haunted house the night Brynne was taken all those weeks ago.
