One of my arms shot out, managing a sideways closed fist to the man's jaw under his mask, barely getting a muffled grunt out of him before I saw the handcuffs appear out of nowhere, closing around my wrist.
It was only a matter of seconds before he got the other wrist too, closing the bracelets so tight that they bit into my skin.
"Are you going to make me gag you?" he asked.
If he wanted me to be silent, then hell yes.
But I wasn't going to tell him that.
I shook my head vehemently as he looked down with me with light eyes, likely blue, the only thing visible to me.
Cold.
God, they were such cold eyes.
He searched me for a moment before deciding I was trustworthy, removing his hand.
I wasted exactly no time.
I opened my mouth to scream even as my feet pulled out from under him, ramming him in his lower stomach as I pushed toward the door near my head, trying to reach for the handle with my cuffed hands, tasting freedom, knowing that if I could just get out of the vehicle, that I had a much better chance of getting safe.
"Fucking hell," the man growled, hand clamping on my mouth as his body came down fully on mine, crushing my chest to the seat, his weight pinning me in place.
I was small.
Short, petite, "doll-like" my mother used to say.
I stood no chance against a man who had to be well over six feet with the weight that came with such a tall frame.
"This will be easier for you if you stop fighting it," he growled in my ear as his hand slipped away, but only because he planted it at the back of my head, smashing my face into the material seats that smelled like, oh God, like blood.
But before I could truly slip into the horror of that realization, something was slipping over my mouth, getting tied so tight around the back of my head that I immediately started to get a headache.
"Alright, down you go," he declared. And before I could guess his meaning, he was pushing me off the seat and onto the floor, wrestling with my cuffed wrists and another set of handcuffs until he attached me to a bar under the seat.
And with that, he climbed out of the back like nothing at all had happened, getting into the front, turning over the car, and backing out of the spot.
All the while, in my mind, all I heard was the animated voice of the true crime podcaster I loved listening to talking in my head.
Don't ever let them take you to a second location.
We all knew what happened at second locations.
But, as the car pulled out of my work lot, and the bar under the seat refused to budge no matter how hard I yanked against it, it didn't seem like I had any say in the matter.
All I could do now was try to stop letting the panic fog my brain. I needed to think. I needed to focus. Because wherever he was taking me next, he would have to get into the backseat again and unfasten me from the bar.
If I kept my wits about me, if I looked for the right opening, I might be able to act quickly enough to get away, to flag down a passing car, run to a neighbor's house.
Something.
Anything.
So he drove.
I plotted.
When the car pulled to a stop, anticipation skittered across my nerve endings, made me feel jumpy and strangely weightless.
The door opened at my feet, and the car jolted a bit as the man climbed inside, and unfastened the second set of cuffs from the bar.
Alright.
So I didn't give it a whole ton of thought, as it turned out.
I just reacted in the moment in the best way I could. Which meant I struck outward with the swinging cuffs, knocking the man across the bridge of his nose. It didn't have the kind of impact I wanted what with the face mask on to soften the blow and all.
But it gave me a second of shocked inaction that allowed me to scramble toward the other door, wrenching it open, and tossing myself out the other side.
I wasn't even sure I was seeing right as I took off. My vision was so blinded by my fear that I ran in the exact opposite direction we had come from. You know, the direction that had led to a road at some point. A road where I might encounter cars and people who could help me.
Nope.
I made a beeline for what was a whole lot of nothing. Except an open field that led up to a mountain that made my thigh muscles burn just looking at it.
But I couldn't seem to find any logical thoughts right then. Like the ones that would tell me to turn around, change directions, head back to the road.