Page 55 of Into the Light

“If she set it up, yeah. You have to connect it to a phone. There’s an app for it. Otherwise, the authorities can access it, but it takes—”

“Show us.” I said, my voice booming a little louder than I meant, but it worked all the same. Alex unlocked Ellie’s phone again and handed it to him.

A bead of sweat trickled down his temple as he took the phone and started looking. After a minute of him swiping around, he smiled triumphantly and turned the phone around to show us the screen.

Alex looked at me.

“Holy fuck.”

twenty-nine

ELLIE

The painin my head was throbbing in time to the beat of an old eighties song. I remembered it because my dad used to sing it to me when I was young. Maybe he was singing it to me now, and I just needed to find him.

I opened my eyes. Well, one opened. The other stayed shut. It might be swollen? I tried to touch it, but my hands wouldn’t move. Come to think of it, my arms hurt too. Were they tied together?

The eye that opened could only see grass. It was dark now, but there was an ambient light coming from somewhere. I slowly realized I was laying on my stomach in the grass, my hands tied behind me.

What the hell happened? I tried to jog my memory, but the last thing I could remember was being in bed with Raf. We were laughing and kissing. It was only good. So why did I have a sinking feeling in my stomach?

Oh, you mean besides the fact that you’re tied up and injured? Good thinking, Ellie.

No, it was something else. Did Raf and I have a fight? Likely, but no. That wasn’t it.

A rustling sound to my left caught my attention and I stilled. Footsteps approached and rough hands grabbed me from behind and propped me up in a sitting position. I whimpered in pain, which made me feel even more vulnerable. Whoever was behind me just laughed. Fucking psycho.

“Don’t worry, this’ll be over soon. I just need to do some damage control.”

The voice was not at all distinctive, but I committed every word, sound, inflection to memory. If I survived this, I needed to have ammunition.

Maybe he was one of those dumbasses that liked to open up to their victims and tell them everything. Alex told me after she was kidnapped, she survived partly because of her knowledge of true crime. She said it helped to keep her attacker talking. I guess it was worth a shot.

“Who are you?” So basic, but whatever.

“Shut up.”

“Come on, you literally attacked me, kidnapped me, have me tied up in some… Wait, where are we? Are we in a graveyard?”

“You were a lot hotter when you were knocked out.”

“Yeah well, I can’t see you, but I’m sure you’d be a lot hotter if you weren’t beating and kidnapping innocent women.”

Slap.

He backhanded me across the face. It hurt like a bitch, but the adrenaline rushed through me, keeping me steady.

“Who are you? I’m just going to keep asking, so you might as well tell me.”

“I’m no one to you. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, seeing as I’m your victim, your logic is a little flawed. Unless you want to let me go.”

“Shut up.”

He moved around to the front of me now and I saw him. It was the same man from the promenade. He lit a cigarette, no, a clove cigarette and took a drag. So it’s definitely the same guy I pepper sprayed, too. Fucking cloves. Who smokes those anymore?

“Okay, if you’re not going to tell me, I’ll have to guess. Let’s see. Ah, are you one of the kids my brother might have bullied in middle school? Look, he was a dick back then, no doubt about it. But he’s grown now, he’s got his life together.”

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