Page 5 of The Quiet Witness

Chapter 2

Taken

Cold air slid down her aching throat.

Wait, pain… That’s good. Pain means… I’m alive. Someone found me in time.

Her eyes shot open.

Darkness. She wasn’t in a hospital bed, and there was no nurse telling her that she was safe. But if no one had found her, that could only mean… she was dead. A low rhythmical hum purred in her ears. Light snapped over her.

Again. Again.

She shut her eyes against the invasive flashes. Maybe this was heaven, and the hum was the escalator to that Godly place. But the intense pressure pushing down on her throat told her heaven wasn’t her current destination, and that she hadn’t imagined the death of her foster family.

She blinked, something hovered above her. Kate reached out to touch it… only to have something yank her wrist back, biting deep into her chafed skin.

“Good to see you’re back in the land of the living.”

She flinched. The last time she heard that voice… the owner had been right beside her ear, muttering an apology while his arm had been squeezing the life out of her. How then… was she still drawing breath?

He kidnapped me…

The slight rocking of her body, the lights… a vehicle.

She’d been dumped in the backseat of a car.

Kate pushed up, the warm, fuzzy blanket that had been draped over her pooled together in her lap. In a flash of light she saw it, a thin strap of rope.

He tied me up.

Her heart squeezed tight, like a stress ball in an anxious person’s hand.

Breathe Katie. Not now.

Drawing in a choking breath, she raised her gaze to the mirror. Green eyes stared right back at hers, she flinched back in her seat. He left her alive. Even though she’d felt herself slip. Darkness taking a hold. Maybe that… was what got him off. Letting people slip off to death, only to tug them right back before its embrace lasted forever. Twice. She’d nearly died twice.

Her heartbeat climbed.

No… Deep breaths. You’re alive. Gather info, look at your surroundings. What do you see?

A man in front of her. Mid thirties, if she were to guess by the small lines etched on his face, which multiplied generously next to his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Probably caused by his sadistic sarcasm.

Her gaze trailed over his back, easily filling the driver’s seat. The muscles in his arm moved in tune with his tapping fingers as he steered them over the two lane highway.

A man in the glory of his life. The overwhelming strength he held had been her downfall, she could see why.

Phantom fingers pressed over her injured throat, pinching her airway.

Tighter. Tighter.

A panic attack isn’t going to help. Breathe!

But logic, it mingled with urgency, battering her mind.

Out, I need out.

The rope groaned under her wriggling fingers. There it was… the pins prickling in her hands and feet.