Page 72 of The Hitch
"I don't know. The Poconos, maybe? I see hills in the distance, but I can't hear any cars. No highways. No gravel roads. Not within a close enough distance, anyway." She crouches down and hangs her head between her knees.
"How do we know we're going the right way?" I mumble between breaths.
"You don't."
Oh, fuck me. Detective Ella steps out from behind a copse of trees with that same sadistic smile across her face. She leans on the butt of a shotgun, the barrel pointing down into the earth.
"Pathetic, really. You spend a few days in a hole and lose all sense of direction? I expected better from you, Helena." Ella flips the shotgun up and cocks it. "C'mon, ladies. Unless you want this to be your final resting place, you'll follow me back quietly."
Helena and I exchange looks. Almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head. I'm so fucking tired. I'msofucking tired, but I know what she wants me to do. She wants me to take down Ella, just like I took down the skeevy little man who brought us food. I grit my teeth and feign acceptance of Ella's demands.
Unsteady on my feet, I rise and glower at the detective. Her smile widens as she points behind us. "Go on, now. Back to the cabin."
Helena shakily follows suit, and we trudge away in the direction Ella gave us. I take note of every fallen tree, every broken branch, anything that I could use to recognize our path. Helena falters in her steps and looks around when we come to a large tree.
"I don't remember this one," she admits.
"Me neither," I quickly follow.
"Absolutely pathetic. I thought you were the best of the best? The most elite security money could buy?" Ella snickers. "Fine, follow me."
The detective takes the lead, and I stifle a grin. Two in one day? Christmas is coming early for me this year. I focus on the back of her head, the perfectly styled fiery red low bun. Not a hair out of place. It's going to feel absolutelyamazingto rip her open.
Ella whistles a jaunty tune into the wind, and I take my chance to tackle her from behind. She goes down with a yelp—Helena snatches at the gun, but Ella's grip is too strong. My fingersintertwine in the detective's hair, and I give it a hard yank as I lean down to shriek in her ear. I am fury. I am death. I am a goddamn banshee.
Ella digs her knees into the ground and kicks back at me, landing her boots squarely into my stomach. Pain lances through my body as I tumble backwards, but not without taking a few strands of her hair with me. "Fuck!"
Faster than I can comprehend, Ella's back on her feet and pointing the barrel of her shotgun directly at my face. "Don't fucking move, Mel-bell."
I freeze. Ifailed. She must have been expecting this. Helena scrambles to my side and throws her arm across my chest, blocking me from the policewoman.
Ella racks the shotgun and fires off one round into a nearby tree. The loudcrackreverberates in my skull, and I can't help but slam my hands over my ears because it's so fucking loud, it's so fuckingclose.
"You want that? You want that for your friend?" Ella snarls, pointing the gun back at us both. "No? I suggest you get the fuck up and march. If you try anything funny, I'll pump you so full of lead that the coroner will need DNA to identify you."
I failed. The words repeat themselves, slithering around my skull as Helena and I stumble to our feet and plod along. Back to the goddamn cabin. Back to our cages. Back to the soon-to-be festering corpse of… whatever his name is. I failed.
I failed.
I failed.
Ella snatches the keys from the basement floor and glances at the corpse in my cage. His blood is already coagulating, a thick black layer crusted to the concrete. She shoves me into the cage,and I stumble over the man, catching myself just before I hit the ground. The door slams shut, and Ella locks it with a clunk.
Helena whimpers as the detective kicks her in the chest, knocking her back into her own cage. Keys jingling signal our defeat with finality. I failed. We lost. We're back where we started, and now we have a corpse. Flies found the body in the short time we were gone. Their metallic green and blue bodies buzz with delight at the feast I provided for them.
"Why don't you sit and think about what you did?" Ella giggles, like I'm a child who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
I don't say anything. How can I? I ruined our one chance at escape. I killedhim, so why couldn't I killher?All I can do is watch her swagger, very much alive, over to the stairs and ascend. The steel door shuts with another godforsaken clank. Helena mumbles something under her breath, but I can't decipher it. I don't want to. I failed her. I failed myself. And the desire to kill again coils around in my brain, in my gut, in my very DNA.
"Melody!" Helena snaps me out of my pitiful misery with an urgent yelp. "You're bleeding."
"No, she didn't cut me." I shake my head. "Must be the dead guy."
"No. Melody. You'rebleeding," she insists.
Looking down at my body with furrowed brow, all I notice is the crusted blood from my earlier kill. Sure, there are a few smears of mud, some leaves tangled in the ends of my hair. That's all to be expected when I killed a man with my bare hands—not to mention running for my life in a forest.
Until the pain finally hits me. As my adrenaline ebbing allows me to breathe, to feel, a sickly warm stickiness becomes apparent between my thighs.
