Page 3 of Fearless
Shuddering, Kitty’s grip on her own shoulders tightened. She tucked her chin, burying the lower half of her face in the vee of her crisscrossing arms.
Simply because he hadn’t done it yet, didn’t mean he wouldn’t. He might do that tomorrow. The last time—her knees almost buckled—the last time, he’d left her in there for two full days.
Kitty began to shake all over again and, for a moment, the darkness in the kitchen seemed to close in tight around her.
She couldn’t do that again. She couldn’t go back in the Box. Ethen could do anything he wanted to her so long as he didn’t—
Kitty froze all over again, every muscle in her body locking as tight as a cramp when her gaze fell on the line of cellphones. Ethen’s blinked an angry red while it charged; the other three showed solid green. Her cellphone had been moved. No longer did she hold that coveted position of preferential rank right next to Ethen’s. Pony had that position now, and Kitty’s had been shifted all the way to the end of the line, in absolute last place. Where Puppy’s had been up until tonight. Where Piggy’s had been right up until she ran away. Because shit rolls downhill, Ethen would say when the mood for cruelty overtook him.
Oh God…
Beating or not, Box or not, Kitty dropped to her knees and crawled around the cooking island to the catchall drawer. Her heart in her throat, hearing nothing but her own frightened breathing, she pulled it open. She expected barking, sirens, for Ethen to come stalking out of his back bedroom, alerted by some hidden alarm and his belt in his hand. But apart from her own panicky gasps as she struggled to keep from throwing up, the house stayed quiet.
Rising on her knees high enough to see into the drawer, she dug past the new phonebook, a loose accumulation of whiteboard markers, and finally found it: Piggy’s abandoned phone and charger.
The alarms really would go off now. Scuttling across the floor to the nearest wall socket, she plugged it in. Flattening herself between the wall and pantry closet, she smashed the phone to her chest so no charging light would be seen. It took almost a full minute before it charged enough even to acknowledge it was plugged in. Kitty jumped as, somewhere in the house, something popped and creaked. A moment later, she all but wet herself when the heater clicked on, circulating warm air through the vents.
Any minute now, she was going to get caught. Any minute now, someone was going to wake up. They would walk in here, take one look at her, and know. Oh Jesus… Oh Jesus… Her leg started jiggling, bouncing rapidly up and down as she fought herself for control.
She looked at the phone display, three percent power. Not good enough yet, but, she noted, it still had service. Not only that, but when her fumbling fingers accidentally tapped the wrong button, the text screen came up. She was shocked to find a message there from someone other than Ethen. It was undistinguished, a number without a name and made up of only a few words: If you need me, call.
Had Hadlee read this message? Was this what had given her the unbelievable courage to run in the first place? Had she called this number to get the help she needed? If Kitty called it, would Hadlee pick up on the other end of the line?
Nine percent.
This was it. The point of no return. Stay or go, go or stay. She would be punished either way.
Kitty closed her eyes, she fought herself for calm. It helped to be pressed this hard up to the wall, the pain across her welted back grounded her.
Twelve percent. Close enough.
She yanked the cord off the phone, clutching it one-handed to her chest while she crawled on one arm and her knees through the dining room (and right over that squeaky floorboard), past the living room (with Puppy still sound asleep in her crate by the cold hearth) and to the front door.
This was it. She reached for the door knob with a badly shaking hand.
This was a bridge-burning event, the kind a girl didn’t come back from. The cold enveloped her as she slipped outside, shutting the door as silently as she could behind her.
She barely had a plan—run until she was safe and then call Hadlee—and she was still every bit as scared now as she had ever been, but she knew what she had to look forward to if she stayed. And still it took the snap of some ice-laden tree branch scaring the hell out of her before Kitty could make herself bolt. But once she did, she put everything her wounded body had into it. The gravel hurt her feet. The ice and snow hurt them more after that, and it was such a crock of shit that cold numbed. It didn’t numb. It prickled and it burned, and anyone who saw her like this likely would not have recognized her as a human being running down the road. She was hunched and crying and probably looked like Quasimodo running for the safety of his bell tower. She fell multiple times. Sometimes she crawled. She cut her feet, her hands and her knees, and she sobbed pathetically every step of the way. Though she followed the road, not once did she ever see the lights of an approaching car. She didn’t know if she would have hidden from one if she had, but eventually, she found that half-thought-out thing she was looking for. Safety.
It came in the form of an archaic phonebooth on the outskirts of an abandoned gas station parking lot. Had she gone all the way to town? Jesus. Her hands were purple and barely obeyed her as she pushed and shoved to get the rusty door open far enough for her to crawl inside. It wasn’t any warmer than outside had been, but it did shelter her against the breeze that periodically cut across her skin as if with actual razors.
Collapsing in a chattering, shaking heap in the bottom, cradling her wet and stolen cellphone to her chest, Kitty gave in to her exhaustion. She closed her eyes, resting her head against the frosty plastic-glass wall while she caught her breath. Cold as she was, she could almost have gone to sleep right there. Through sheer force of will, she dragged her head back up off the wall and looked at the phone. Five percent power.
Her fingers refused to work. It took three attempts and she had to blow on them before she could get the phone on and the screen to swipe. It was nothing short of a miracle that she hit the right number to call, instead of Ethen’s. And still her heart leapt right into the back of her throat when she heard the click as it was answered, almost immediately a male voice, gruff with sleep, mumbled, “I’m up. Be there in five.”
That wasn’t Ethen, although her ears tried hard to convince her otherwise. It wasn’t Hadlee either. What was she going to do if Hadlee wasn’t even there? What if he said ‘Wrong number’ and hung up on her? Where was she going to go? What could she do?
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, and here came a whole new rush of tears, burning her eyes with the kind of warmth no other part of her currently felt. How many tears did one woman have to cry before she ran out? Kitty would have thought she’d hit her limit two damn miles ago.
She was so pathetic.
“Is Hadlee there?” she finally begged, only no sound came out, just a rasp of breath broken by the relentless chattering of her teeth and the movement of her lips.
Panic hit her. Oh God… Oh noNoNO!
“D-d-don’t hang up,” she cried, but still without sound. Just a harsh cough of air where the ‘h’ should have been and a squeak of helpless frustration when that was all.
From the other end of the phone, she thought she heard a familiar female voice sleepily ask, “Who is it?”
