Landon gave the description of the black town car and its current location before ending the transmission.
“All right. You guys stay here. Preston and I are going behind them.”
“I’m coming too. We need to turn these guys into the FBI,” Dylan explained.
“Good luck,” Landon said as he left. Ryker turned back to the monitor, promising to keep them in the loop if anything changed.
***
Her body jostled against the seat and Alexis was taken back to the moment she was lying in the backseat of Heath’s stolen car, barely clinging to life. The car dipped and her head cracked against the door, the pain sending stars behind her closed eyes. Unable to open her mouth, her moan rumbled in her chest.
Her eyes shot open in alarm only to find her mouth duct-taped closed and her arms tied behind her with plastic ties.
“Mmm!” she screamed behind the tape, flailing her legs, which were also duct-taped together at the ankles. “Mmm!”
“Calm down. Don’t want you hurting yourself. Had to take precautions. Couldn’t have you going after me with that gun you tucked into your waistband.” Her eyebrows rose in surprise. How could he have figured that out? “You may have fooled the brawn, but you can’t fool the brains,” her father snarled. Alexis looked up at the rearview mirror, meeting the narrowed gaze of the muscled driver who had stood outside the bedroom door.
Alexis surmised that they were on the outskirts of town on an old back road. She couldn’t have been out of it too long, thirty minutes tops. When she had helped locate Sydney, Alexis had memorized these paths on the map, knowing that they all led to a service entrance of Highway 40.
It was another five minutes before the weaving gravel path gave way to the opening of the main road. The driver pulled the car onto the shoulder and merged into an opening in traffic. They were heading toward Asheville, and if Alexis suspected correctly, to the airport to hitch a ride on a chartered plane. She needed to come up with something fast. Some way to deter the men from getting her on a flight. But what could she do without the ability to speak?
She felt like The Little Mermaid without the happily ever after in her future.
Her aggravation grew as the car zipped and zagged around the slower vehicles, everyone moving out of the way as if the town car was carrying someone of importance. Frustration built and bloomed inside her body, festering under her skin like molten lava ready to explode.
The driver honked the horn as a trucker in the left lane refused to move over despite his lower speed. Beside their car, another trucker pulled up alongside them, and another in the rear. Alexis dared to peek out of her window, silently begging the driver beside them to take notice.
“Yes!” she cried behind the tape as the driver winked down at her then sped up his truck to run beside the leader. She didn’t know how or why, but somehow, they were going to help her. Cliff and Preston must have got word out to them.
Her survival instincts kicked in at the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, that they were all fighting with her.
With renewed spirit Alexis, brought her knees to her chest, twisted in her seat, and kicked at her father’s face. Over and over again, she jerked her legs back and forth, ramming his head against the window.
Victory was short-lived as a lower kick fell at her father’s shoulder, allowing him the chance to grip her ankles and twist, sending her falling face first onto the floor. Alexis tried to get up onto her knees but her father slammed his feet onto the middle of her back and behind her knees.
The pain was excruciating as stars danced behind her eyes.
Her moan went unheard as the driver began to swerve the car.
“What do you want me to do, Boss? They’re saying it is stopped up ahead.”
Faintly in the background, Alexis could hear the guide on the navigation system speaking.
“No more exits for another five miles.”
“Are there any side roads to go around?”
“Not unless you want me to drive in a field.”
“Do it.”
Alexis braced against the floor, her father’s feet pressed against her back, as she prepped for the jostle of the car to veer off the highway.
Instead, she was met with the thunderous sound of tractor-trailer trucks braking beside the car.
“Oh, shit,” the driver cried out as the car spun. Alexis closed her eyes and tucked her head as close as possible against her chest when the first impact landed on her father’s side of the car, the next on hers. A weightless sensation floated through her until she realized that the vehicle was airborne.
Without a seatbelt or any way to hold herself down, Alexis feared for the first time that she may not survive.