Southern Heart (Southern 5)

"I got his truck taken care of," he says. "Dad has his burner phone and is going through it. We are also leaving crumbs, so if someone comes after him, we’ll know."

I try to move my hand, and then I feel her hand go into mine. "Mayson," she says, and I turn my head as fast as I can. I see her faintly as I try to open my eyes. Her hair is piled on her head now. "It’s Chelsea." She blinks away the tears that I know are coming. "You’re safe. We have you." I squeeze her hand and then try to open my eye, and I see her blue eyes looking at me with her smile. "Hi," she says, sniffling back.

"Water," I say in a harsh whisper, and she looks over at Ethan, who is bringing me water with a straw.

"Take small sips," Chelsea says, and I take a small sip, my mouth dry and feels like sand is on my tongue. Must be from when I crawled through the forest.

"Not," I start to say, "my truck." My tongue is so heavy, and my throat feels like I have cotton balls shoved down it.

"Don’t waste your energy," Ethan says when Casey walks into the room with two bags in his hands. "We have time for that later."

"I’m not even going to ask how you got all the stuff I asked for in less than"—Chelsea looks at her watch—"twenty-seven minutes."

"It’s better that way," Casey says and walks over to me. "We have you covered, and you’re in good hands."

I nod my head, and I want to stay up talking, but I feel a prick in my arm and see Chelsea look at me. "That should relax you and hopefully put you under. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can."

"Do your worst," I say, right before my eye closes, and I sink into the darkness. Yet I hear everything happening around me.

"Okay, Ethan," she says softly. "I’m going to need your hands."

"Whatever you need," he says, and I know that if I die right here, he would honor me with respect and dignity—two things I don’t think I’m worthy of and never did. I try to stay alert. Try to use the tools I found in the Army, but I can’t fight it anymore and just sink even deeper back to relive the terror of the past five days.

"Wake up, you son of a bitch. I’m not done with you yet." He slapped my face with all his force, causing the back of my head to hit the tree. "No good for nothing. You die when I tell you it’s time to die." With shot after shot, I tasted metal in my mouth, but I shut it out. Once the blows stopped, I counted the steps, forty steps, and I knew he was sitting in my cabin. My fucking cabin. It was only when I counted to one hundred that I knew he wasn’t coming back and started to hatch a plan. My hands were tied, and I had rope burn around my wrists. I fought through it until I heard a noise. He tried to sneak up on me, but the branches snapped under his boots, and I had one second before he plunged the knife into my leg.

I gasp out, and my eye opens. One is still sealed shut as I look around the lit room. My heart is beating so fast in my chest, and my breathing is coming out in pants. With one sweep around the room, I remember where I am. I try to lift my hand, but it’s still so heavy. I blink my eye again, trying to focus and fight off the darkness pulling me under. Ethan looks at me right away, his eyes relaying he’s got my back. "Where am I?" I mumble, trying like hell to leave my eye open.

"Somewhere safe." Ethan comes over to me, and I try to swallow. "Chelsea is going to take care of you. All you need to do is hang in there."

There is so much I want to tell him in case I don’t survive, so many secrets I’ve buried, but some secrets have a way of coming back and haunting us, no matter how much we try to bury them. I look into Ethan’s eyes. "Save your energy for after," he tells me. "There is time for all the answers."

The darkness comes now and sucks me into the hell that I lived.

All I saw was the dark sky, always the dark sky. It could be because the trees were so dense that no sunlight could come through. My favorite time of year was when hardly no one came up here. But I knew these woods like the back of my hand. I studied them, I guess, for this moment. "I’ll fucking kill you," he spat in my face, stabbing me one more time in the leg. I swallowed down the pain and refused to let him see it. If I was going to die, it was going to be without giving him any fucking satisfaction.