Held

by Kimberly A. Bettes

About Held
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 6
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Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
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Chapter 9
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Chapter 10
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 12
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Chapter 13
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Chapter 14
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Chapter 15
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Chapter 16
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Chapter 17
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Chapter 18
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Chapter 19
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Chapter 20
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Chapter 21
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Chapter 22
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Chapter 23
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Chapter 24
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Chapter 25
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Chapter 26
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Chapter 27
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Chapter 28
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Chapter 29
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Chapter 30
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Chapter 31
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Chapter 32
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Chapter 33
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Chapter 34
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Chapter 35
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Chapter 36
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Chapter 37
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Chapter 38
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Chapter 39
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Chapter 40
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Chapter 41
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Chapter 42
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Chapter 43
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Chapter 44
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Chapter 45
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Chapter 46
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Chapter 47
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About the Author
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Bibliography
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Bonus Material
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Before the Harvest
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RAGE
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Shiners
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Copyright

I squinted as I stepped out of the store and into the glare of the bright sunlight. As I walked across the parking lot, I went over the purchase in my mind. I was certain that the bubble-gum smacking cashier had overcharged me. I stepped into the narrow space between my smaller SUV and the behemoth SUV parked beside me, and pulled the receipt out of my purse to study it. With my attention on the receipt, I was unaware of anyone else until I felt a gun poke into my ribs.

He wrapped his left arm around me and squeezed my left shoulder
. With his right hand, he shoved the gun into my ribs even harder.

My breath caught in my chest, trapped b
y shocked lungs. Everything happened so fast. He was there, gun pressed to my side, squeezing me against him tightly. I had no time to process the situation.

We
certainly looked to others as no more than a normal couple. I knew no one could see the gun. My arm, bent at the elbow with the shopping bag dangling from it, hid it well. There were only a handful of other people in the parking lot, none of which even glanced at us. How could they? We were hidden by the SUVs.

My mind, every bit as shocked as the rest of me, struggled to grasp the situation and find a way out of it.
I thought of screaming. I thought of wrenching free of him, turning and running. But I also thought of my husband and my son. If I did any of those things, this man would shoot me. It would be easy to do. The gun was already buried in my ribcage, his finger undoubtedly on the trigger. If he didn’t mean me harm, he wouldn’t have the gun. He meant business. And if the pistol were equipped with a silencer, he could shoot me and be long gone before anyone even realized I was on the ground. Had the parking lot contained more people, screaming and running might’ve been an option. Surely he wouldn’t shoot me with so many witnesses. But that wasn’t the case here. Not today. Not on a stupid Tuesday afternoon.

Before I could hate myself for not waiting until later when more people were at the mall before shopping for jeans that were supposed to be on sale but weren’t because the pink haired bubble gum smacker rang them up wrong,
he spoke.

“Open it,” he commanded.

I dug through my purse, wishing like hell I carried a bear spray or Mace or hairspray or anything that would give me the second I needed to get away from him. But I didn’t carry anything like that. I felt the pack of gum, the emergency tampon, the extra pacifier, my wallet, and finally my keys. I jerked them out of my purse, nearly dropped them, and clumsily began to unlock the door.

The closer we got to getting in the car, the harder he pushed on the gun.
I was going to have one hell of a bruise.

When
my trembling hands finally managed to unlock the door, he tightened his grip on my shoulder even more, causing me to wince. He leaned into my ear, which would look to others as if he were whispering something to me. Had he whispered, I wouldn’t have heard him over the sound of my pounding heart echoing in my ears.

“You’re going to get in, slide over to the passen
ger seat, and nothing more. Do you understand?” He spoke evenly, though in a low tone to avoid being heard by anyone else who might be listening.

I didn’t
look at him. I couldn’t. I just stood there, staring at the pavement in shock and very much afraid. My mind was racing, my thoughts a blur.

“If you do anything, and I mean anything at all, other than what I’ve told you to do, I’ll kill you. And if you manage to get away from me, I’ll kill
your family, and I’ll take my sweet time doing it. Do you understand?”

This time, I nodded. I wouldn’t let anything happen to my family.

He kissed me on the cheek quickly, causing the knot in my stomach to roll.

“Good. Now get in.”

He snatched the keys from me and I did as I was told, though the urge to open the passenger side door and flee was overwhelming.

He got in quickly
and started the vehicle. I made myself as small as possible and leaned against the door, watching through the window as we drove through the parking lot and away to wherever we were going. Hopefully someone I knew would see us and the look on my face. But I saw no one I knew. I fought to keep from vomiting as I realized that no one was going to save me. No one was going to stop him from taking me.

If I’d just stayed home today like I had originally planned, this wouldn’t have happened.
But I hadn’t. Damn me and my quest for discounted jeans.

The best thing that could happen
to me now is he’d rape me and throw me out of the car somewhere. Knowing that was the best thing that could happen, I tried not to imagine the worst. But I knew. I knew from the moment I felt the barrel of his gun press against my ribs.

Even if I could somehow manage to escape him at some point, everything was going to be different. Assuming he didn’t kill me first, life as I knew it was over and gone forever.
If he stopped the car right now, told me he’d been joking and was sorry, then left and I never saw him again, everything would still be different. I’d never again park near large vehicles. I’d never let my guard down anywhere. I would constantly be aware of everything that was happening around me at all times. In essence, I’d drive myself mad trying to stay safe.

But I didn’t have to worry about any of that because he wasn’t stopping
, and I was sure he wasn’t joking.

I
n the side mirror, I watched as the parking lot slipped away behind me, taking me farther and farther from my life and from any hope I had of ever seeing my husband and son.

As he drove us through the city to neighborhoods I’d never seen, he took many unnecessary turns. There were times when he turned right four times in a row, taking us all the way around a block and back to where we were. At first, I thought maybe he was lost. Then I realized that he was trying to confuse me so I didn’t know where we were or where we were going. I took this as a good sign. If he planned to kill me right away, he wouldn’t have bothered to confuse me. For a while, I kept my eyes on the Gateway Arch, standing proudly above the St. Louis skyline. But after I realized what he was doing, I stopped using it to keep track of where we were and began just looking at it, wondering if I was seeing it for the last time.

Since it wasn’t doing me any good to try to remember our route,
and staring at the Arch was only making me sad, I decided to check out the man behind the wheel.

From the corner of my eye, I first noticed his shoes.
They were dark brown shoes, sort of a low-top boot type of shoe. His socks were beige. His pants were khaki, his shirt a white long-sleeve button-down with the sleeves rolled up. The top few buttons were undone, exposing a white undershirt and a few chest hairs.

I risked a glance at the driver
. He was a big man. It wasn’t that he was fat and it wasn’t that he was all muscle. It was somewhere in the middle. I guessed him to be about six foot two, maybe three, and he probably weighed two hundred fifty pounds or so. His hair was dark brown, bordering on black, with grey at the temples. He was cleanly shaven. He had no distinguishing features that stuck out or could be identifying. Had he not kidnapped me, I might’ve thought him to be a handsome man.

Though I thought I was being sneaky about stealing glances at him, he must’ve caught me. From his pocket, he pulled a pair of sunglasses and ordered me to put them on. I did as I was told. They were the sporty kind that wrapped around the eyes, keeping out
the sunlight. But these were more than that. They didn’t just keep out the natural light and block the UV rays of the sun. They kept out all light. I blinked, confused as to why I could no longer see anything more than a thin strip of light at the top and bottom of the glasses. Then I realized he had spray painted them black.

A new kind of fear gripped me now. It was bad enough that he had kidnapped me. But now, it seemed that he had planned it. No one carries around painted sunglasses for any other reason. He had come to the mall with a plan.

As he continued to drive, I wondered if he had specifically planned to kidnap me or if I was just the woman who happened along at the wrong time for me, right time for him. I could think of no one I’d wronged, no enemies of mine or my husband’s, and no one who’d wish to harm either of us. And moreover, I didn’t know the man behind the wheel, though he did look vaguely familiar.

Finally,
I felt the vehicle slow as he pulled into what I assumed was a driveway. A few seconds later, he stopped and put the SUV in park and turned off the engine.

I reached up to take off the sunglasses. He didn’t stop me, so I removed them. Risking a quick glance of my surroundings, I saw that we were parked in a garage. His garage, no doubt.