Beware Of Me(18)

“When the ride stops, you’ll pay for what you did.”

Definitely going to kill me. So she had to move, and she had to move fast.

Because the elevator wasn’t opening. No one was rushing to her rescue. If she wanted to live, then she had to save herself.

“That’s right, don’t fight,” he said, sounding pleased. With one hand, he yanked open the back door of the van. She saw a rope inside. Handcuffs. Duct tape. Everything a good serial killer would need. “Knew you’d be a good girl…”

She punched her fist into his side, as hard as she could. She’d never been the good girl. She’d been the one breaking the rules, sneaking out, taking risks.

And even if she hadn’t…Good girls know how to fight back, too.

He yelled when she hit him. Carly lunged forward even as she felt the blade slice across her—not her neck, but closer to her collarbone and then—

“Carly!” That fierce roar seemed to shake the entire parking garage. She knew that roar. Ethan. He’d found her.

“Ethan!” She yelled back for him as loudly as she could. She wasn’t going to be quiet. Wasn’t going to be good. She surged forward, even though she fully expected to feel another slash from that knife.

Only…

There wasn’t a slash. Her high heels clattered across the cement and she rushed toward Ethan. He was running out of the stairwell, and she had never been so happy to see anyone in her entire life.

Then she heard the squeal of tires. At that sound, she glanced to the right. The van was barreling toward her. The headlights were so bright as they shone onto her, blinding her for a moment. Her attacker wasn’t coming after her with a knife. He was trying to run her down with his freaking van.

“Carly!” Ethan grabbed her hand and they went flying together, rolling hard when they hit the cement and tumbling over, again and again.

The van sped past them, never slowing and taking the curve on two wheels as it rushed toward the exit.

The squeal of tires echoed like a scream around her. Her body hurt—probably because she’d slammed into cement and Ethan’s hard body. Her breath heaved out, and she fought to calm her frantic heartbeat.

“Baby, baby, please, talk to me.”

She blinked and saw Ethan’s face right above hers. He was staring at her with desperate eyes. A desperate Ethan—a sight she didn’t see every day. “Wh-what do you want me to say?” A crazy man just attacked me. He scared the hell out of me. That pretty much summed up the last ten minutes of her day.

“You’re bleeding.” His hand flew toward her collarbone. “Sonofabitch. It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.”

“Ethan…”

“I have to see how bad it is.”

She almost didn’t want to know. Not if it was bad, anyway. “He’s…getting away.” The man she’d never seen—the man in the mask. The man who’d said that he’d been waiting for her. Waiting with duct tape and handcuffs.

Suddenly, the threats that Ethan had mentioned were horribly, terrifyingly real.

Ethan kept one hand on her collarbone even as he yanked out his phone with the other. His fingers flew across the screen. “Charles, I need an ambulance. Yes, I said a fucking ambulance. No, no, shit, I didn’t kill anyone. It’s Carly.” His fingers pressed a bit harder to her skin. “Some bastard attacked her. We’re in the parking garage. He’s getting away. In a black van, late model, driving hell fast. Find the SOB. Stop him.” Then he dropped the phone. “I’m going to pick you up,” he told Carly. “I’ll take you outside. Charles will get the ambulance, and everything will be okay.”

“Liar.” Things were far from okay.

He lifted her into his arms. Held her carefully and turned—

“What in the hell is happening?”

She didn’t recognize that horrified voice, but when her gaze slid to the speaker, she saw a man in a guard’s uniform. Wait, was he pointing pepper spray at them?

“An attack just happened,” Ethan snarled back. “I told you to get the cops here. She’s hurt, and some jerk in a black van is getting away.”

The guard’s face went slack with shock. But, before he could say anything else, more men were rushing out of the stairwell behind him. Armed men.

Men in…FBI vests?

She saw Special Agent Monroe. He was at the front of that pack. He closed in and as he did, he aimed his gun right at Ethan.

“What the fuck have you done now?” Agent Monroe demanded.

***

The bitch. The bitch. The bitch.

He drove into another parking garage, moving as fast as he could, and he ditched that van. Just jumped out of it and ran into the shadows.