Page 53 of Pretty Stolen Dolls

Where are you, Macy?

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I startle when knuckles rap at my car window.

Checking the mirror, I see a truck has pulled up behind me. I was so zoned out on the woods, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else.

I push the button to roll down the window. No sooner do I have it rolled down, a large hand wraps around my neck, squeezing, restricting.

“You crazy little bitch.”

The man from earlier has his arm in my car and me by the throat.

Just like Benny used to.

My lungs burn and my stomach muscles tense, fighting along with me for air.

Stretching my hand, I power up the window, trapping his arm and forcing him to release me.

Hot, white anger explodes behind my eyes.

How dare he touch me.

No one will ever touch me like that again.

Opening the door with a hard shove, I push him back with his arm still caught.Dick.Serves him right. I clamber out of the car on a mission and he reaches for me with his free arm. The man’s easily six-foot-four, but he doesn’t have a gun.

Bending, I snatch my Glock from the holster strapped to my ankle and point it directly at him. His hostile posture quickly changes to surrendering victim.

“Don’t shoot me,” he begs. “I just wanted to teach you a lesson.” As if that will make what he did any less violent and a freaking crime.

“What lesson would that be?” I ask, my hand firm, the blood inside my veins sizzling and vibrating with the need to punish.

He shakes his head, tugging to free his jammed arm.

“Well?!” I scream.

Dragging his arm from the binds of the window and frame, he screeches and rubs down the now sore, scraped skin.

“I’m just going to get in my truck,” he tells me with his arm cradled to his chest. His feet shuffle in a semi-circle three feet around me. I turn with him, keeping the gun pointed at his head.

We both hear the engine, but it’s too late. As his head turns to see the oncoming truck, it hits him, taking him up in the air like he weighs nothing. Blood spatters my face, causing me to gasp in surprise. My hand shakes, still holding my weapon out in front of me.

Thump.

His body hits the asphalt like a bag of meat being thrown from a bridge. The truck doesn’t stop. It just drives away and I can’t move. I’m solidified to the spot I’m standing in. Then, my body does the unthinkable. It’s moving into the driver’s seat and I’m driving away, leaving him there dying…or dead.

I turn the lights on and watch them illuminate the road before me.

Red…blue…red…blue…red…

“Dispatch, Phillips two thirty-one.”

“Go ahead, Phillips two thirty-one.”

“I have a four-eighty. I’m in pursuit of the vehicle, traveling south on Route Nine, requesting eleven forty-one.”

“Copy that, Phillips. Hit and run. You’re in pursuit. You have a victim with severe injuries.”

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