Don't Make Me Beautiful (32 page)

He points a finger in her face as he half-pays attention to the winding road.
 
“Quit spitting on me.
 
I’m not kidding.
 
I’ll fucking smash your teeth in.”

Giving him the ugliest grin she can, she says, “You already did, asshole!
 
See!”
 
She backs away and turns her head as his hand comes out to strike her.
 
He hits the side of her head instead of her face, and she considers that a win.
 
Fighting back feels good.

His hands are back on the wheel, so she dares to glance over at him again.

He looks so smug.
 
So sure of himself.
 
So convinced he’s just going to drive on home and lock her up and treat her like his personal punching bag.

Just seeing him sitting there in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, driving her away from Brian and Liam … it’s more than she can take.
 
Something snaps inside her and in a split-second, she decides she’d rather die in a car wreck than go another mile with him at the wheel.
 
She leaps at him, fingernails out.

She goes for his eyes, succeeding in gouging the one that’s already bloodshot from her earlier attack.
 
As he leans over in shocked pain, she grabs his hair with her bad hand and yanks on it for all she’s worth.

His hands follow his upper body and jerk the wheel in her direction and then sharply the other way.
 
The red truck swerves across the mountain path and off the side of the road.

Chapter Forty-Five

BRIAN MAKES IT HOME IN record time.
 
The police and Helen are waiting for him in the house.

Opening the door, the first thing he does is give Liam to his mother. “I’m so sorry, Helen,” he says, certain she’s going to blame him for this fiasco. She warned him about it, and as usual, she turned out right.

“Let’s talk about it later.” She pushes her son’s hair back away from his face.
 
His sleepy eyes are at half-mast.
 
“You okay, Li-Li?”

“Yeah, but I’m tired.”
 
He yawns big.

“Did you get hurt anywhere?”

“No.”
 
His face sags.
 
“But Briana did.”

“We’re going to need a statement from him,” says a female police officer.
 
“Whatever he saw might be helpful.”

“He’s too tired right now.
 
I can tell you what you need to know,” says Brian.
 
“It’s her ex-boyfriend who attacked her and took her.
 
He followed us up there and grabbed her when I was away.
 
Liam said he was hitting her.”

“Do you know this man?”

Brian sighs heavily.
 
“It’s kind of a long story, but yes, I know of him.
 
He lives on the next street over.”
 
Brian looks at Helen who’s holding Liam on her hip awkwardly.
 
He’s too big to be carried that way, but he understands her need to do it.
 
“Did you tell them what I told you on the phone?”

She nods.
 
“Yes.
 
And I’ll be happy to help you figure this all out, after I’ve put Liam to bed.”
 
She leaves the room and enters the hall.

“We’ve been to the house, but no one’s home.
 
We have an officer parked on the street waiting to see if they show up.”

“Okay, good. But where are they?
 
I assumed he’d at least come home first.”

“We were there within ten minutes of getting your wife’s call.”

“Ex-wife.”

“Ex-wife.
 
Okay.
 
So, what’s your relation to …” She looks at her notepad.
 
“… Nicole, is it?”

“Yes, her name is Nicole, but we were calling her Briana to hide her from her ex.
 
He’s a very violent person.
 
He’s been abusing her for years.
 
She hadn’t left her house for almost three years before we met her.”

“Your ex-wife mentioned something about a baseball going through their window.”

“Yes, that’s how we met her.
 
My son saw her and her face scared him, so I went over to try and smooth things over.
 
That’s when I found her on the ground in the living room with broken ribs, split lip, the works.
 
There were officers in the hospital who tried to get her to give them the story, but she refused.”

The officer shakes her head.
 
“Typical.
 
Okay, I’ll have more questions for you soon, but for now this will work.
 
Can you just quick give me a description of what she was wearing?”

“Yeah, uh …”
 
Brian racks his brain to remember her at the river.
 
“Denim shorts … green t-shirt … white sneakers.”
 
He looks up into the officer’s eyes.
 
“The most distinctive feature about her isn’t her clothes.
 
It’s her face.
 
It’s impossible to miss.”

“How so?” she asks.

He pulls his phone out and presses buttons until he gets to the one she allowed him to take with Liam, baiting hooks.
 
“This is her.”

The officer takes the phone and as soon as her eyes alight on the screen, a range of expressions cross her face. First confusion, then disgust, and finally pity.
 
Handing back the phone, she clears her throat.
 
“Wow.
 
He really did a number on her, didn’t he?”

“Yes.
 
That’s putting it mildly.
 
She’s terrified of him, and now he has her again.
 
You have to find him.”
 
Brian’s throat aches with the pain of tears he won’t let out.
 
He has to stay strong for the girl who couldn’t be for all those years.

“We’re doing everything we can right now. I’m going to update the information we have on her.
 
Can you email that picture to the police station?
 
I have an address for you right … here.”
 
She hands him a business card with a general email inbox scribbled on the back.

“Sure.”
 
He knows she might complain about someone other than he and Liam seeing the shot, but that’s just too bad.
 
He’ll do anything to help them find her.
 
He taps out the info on the keys as the officer walks away talking into her cell phone.
 
He hears her giving details of Nicole’s description.

“They’re in a red pickup!” Brian says, probably too loudly.
 
“Shit … I mean … crap.
 
I forgot to tell you the most important part.”

The woman looks back at him, pulling the phone away from her head.
 
“You saw him in the truck?”

“Not exactly.
 
I saw a red truck following us up the mountain, but then it drove by.
 
Since it’s not his regular truck, I assumed it was a stranger.
 
But Liam told me he saw a red car parked near our campsite.
 
I’m betting it was him.”

The woman nods.
 
“Okay, thanks.”
 
She continues her conversation on the cell phone.

Brian looks down at his hand.
 
The phone is there showing the email having been sent.
 
He wanders over to the couch and sits down, scrolling through the pictures of Nicole and Liam.

An absent smile comes to his lips as he recalls each situation when the pictures were taken.
 
It hasn’t taken long for Nicole to find her special place in his little family, and now that she’s been forcibly taken away from him, he realizes how much he really doesn’t want her to go.

But to ask her to live around the corner from the man who almost killed her isn’t a solution even Brian can live with anymore.
 
He tried to tell himself before it could work, that he could keep her safe and convince her to talk to the police to have him arrested.
 
But even if the guy went to jail now, it would be too much of a ghost haunting their lives to think it could be ignored.
 
His fingers scroll through his contacts, looking for a former client who might be able to help them out.

Chapter Forty-Six

THE WORLD TURNS OVER AND over and over again.
 
Nicole can no longer tell the earth from the sky, as both are spinning past the windshield too fast to be anything but one big blur.
 
She feels nauseous and her broken arm is on fire, the cast cracked down the side.
 
John’s body keeps banging into it as he’s thrown about the cab.
 
His screams stop on the third revolution when she assumes he finally hits his head hard enough to knock him unconscious.

Her head begins to hit something hard above her, with every fourth bang the car makes. They’re tumbling down the mountainside, and the truck is compressing down flatter and flatter as the side of the hill acts like a wrecker on the weakened metal.

The cab shrinks another few inches in height as the hood of the truck smashes against the ground once again.
 
John’s limp arm slaps her hard in the face, but it’s gone again when the vehicle makes one more revolution before finally coming to a stop.
 
It’s an abrupt halting of movement, jerking Nicole’s head sharply to the left.

She’s weak and dizzy.
 
Giving up on trying to control it anymore, she leans to the side and vomits on the seat and over John’s limp form.
 
She can barely lift her good hand to wipe her mouth off.

Once her vision clears, she realizes it’s dark.
 
Blinking several times, she tries to get her bearings.
 
Her head hurts, but the blood isn’t rushing to her brain like it was during the rolling, so she assumes she’s somewhat upright, although she can feel the truck leaning to the left.

The driver’s side is lower than the passenger side.
 
Looking out her smashed side-window, all she can see is dirt.
 
Side of the hill.
 
That’s the side of the hill.

Looking out John’s window, she sees a wall of green and brown.
 
Branches.
 
Those are branches and a tree trunk.
 
A tree stopped our fall.
 
The windshield is covered in greenery too.

“John?” she asks, pushing on him tentatively.

He doesn’t move.
 
His body is covered in blood flowing from cuts over heavily bruised skin.
 
She’s sickly thrilled to know he’s too badly hurt to stop her from escaping.
 
Now she just has to figure out how to get out of this steel cage and back up onto the road and she’ll have a shot at getting away.

The desperate need to be free of his clutches fills her every pore.
 
Adrenaline rushes into her veins and gives her almost superpowers.
 
The fingers of her good hand reach down to find her seatbelt buckle.
 
She breathes a sigh of relief as she realizes that’s why she’s sitting here awake and conscious and John isn’t.
 
He didn’t have his on.

Depressing the red button, her joy quickly morphs into panic.
 
It’s stuck!
 
The latch won’t release and the belt won’t let her go.

“Nooo!” she screams.
 
“Let me
go!”
 
It feels like John is trapping her here.
 
Even unconscious, he’s controlling her.

She starts hitting him, pushing on him, pulling his hair, but he remains prone and silent.

“Let me go!” she yells.
 
“I
 
hate you!
 
I hate you!
 
Do you hear me?!
 
I hate you!”

A minute later, she collapses in tears.
 
She has no more anger left for the limp body next to her and no more energy for fighting the seatbelt.
 
Her head and knee hurt, she’s dizzy, and suddenly very, very tired.
 
An overwhelming sense of doom closes in around her and shrouds her in darkness.
 
Her eyes drift closed and the cold seeps in.
 
She dreams of being buried alive, next to Kitten in the backyard.

Chapter Forty-Seven

IT’S BEEN TWENTY HOURS AND there’s still no sign of John or Nicole.
 
Brian’s a mess.
 
He’s to the point of nearly pulling his hair out when Agnes shows up at the front door.
 
She’s got on some crazy pink shoes and an orange dress, and she’s got something covered in tin foil in her hands.

Brian tries to smile at her, knowing he must look like a crazy homeless person with his smelly clothes and hair in disarray, but he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
 
He worries if he gets in the shower he’ll miss her call or news that she’s been found, so everyone’s had to stand downwind from him all morning.

“Brought you a tuna casserole,” she says, stepping into the foyer without waiting for an invitation.
 
“I had Willard’s sister come over to keep an eye on him so I could come over here and help.”

Brian steps to the side to avoid having her bump into him.
 
“Thanks, Agnes, but I’m not sure there’s anything you can do.”

“Have you eaten?” she asks from the kitchen.

Brian has to think about it for a few seconds.
 
“I guess not.”
 
He follows her in, watching her work.

“Well, come on and sit down, then.
 
It’s still warm from the oven.”
 
She opens up cabinets and drawers until she finds what she’s looking for.