Page 178 of Dark Endures

“Yup.”

“What about my money?”

“Well, here’s the thing. My brother was stupid for borrowing money from you, but he isn’t a stupid man. He planned on paying you back in full. He just needed to wait to be paid out. Do you know that billion-dollar companies have this long process before they pay their bills? It’s kinda wild. I didn’t know, and Waylon certainly didn’t know. But he does now. And when he gets paid, he had every intention of paying you off with interest, but now that my boyfriend is in the picture, I don’t know. My boyfriend might not take too kindly to my brother being threatened by a businessman like you. So if I were you, I’d revise the interest he owes you since my brother’s already paid you tens of thousands of dollars. But that’s just a wild idea of mine.”

“Any idea that doesn’t involve us getting dead sounds like a good idea to me,” Knuckles says.

“You’re both crazy.” The boss looks between the two of us.

“And you’re running out of time. My boyfriend is awfully smart. And he has a lot of smart friends, who are kind of trigger-happy.” They don’t have to know I’m exaggerating just a little bit. “So, what are you going to do, wait here to die or run away and collect a small return on your investment?”

The boss looks at Knuckles, then at me. “I think it’s time to go.”

“Good choice. Untie me first.”

The boss rushes out, with Knuckles following quickly behind him. Knuckles turns and whispers, “Sorry.” Then closes the door without freeing me.

I should be happy. The immediate threat is gone. Only now I might die a slow death alone in a rat-infested travel agency. Starvation doesn’t sound like a pretty way to die, regardless of what my mother might say.

Maddox, you better find me soon. I don’t want to die in here as a pretty corpse that was nibbled on by rats.

There’s got to be a way to free myself.

Across the room is a pair of scissors. If I can get to them, maybe I can cut myself free like they do in the movies.

After what feels like ten minutes of shaking the chair, I’ve only moved about a foot. At this rate it’s going to take days to get over to the scissors.

Maddox, can’t you hurry up and find me?

A paper moves in the corner.

Rats! I knew there were rats.

They’re going to eat me!

Go faster. You can do this.

Why did they have to pick such a heavy chair to tie me to? At least it has a little padding, which is helping mitigate the pain of bashing my body side to side, sort of. If I make it through this, I’m taking the longest nap. And a bath.

Except I can’t take a bath until I get my stitches out. Stupid, rotten, lousy Adonis. Stupid kidnappers.

That is, if I don’t bleed to death.

And now that I’m staring at it, the wound starts to throb.

Maddox, why aren’t you here yet? I need you to come rushing in and save me.

But heroes only save the day in movies. You need to save yourself. Stop thinking about the pain and get back to rocking and rolling over to those scissors.

A roach scurries past my foot.

Eww. Now my pretty corpse is going to be eaten by rats and roaches.

Life isn’t fair.

It just isn’t fair at all.

Move faster.

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