Chapter 121: Trying to escape from him
"No!" Mia cried as he dropped the phone and started running toward her. And without thinking, she bolted around her side of the car, yanking her door open and diving across the front seat, she quickly slapped at the lock on the passenger door before he would enter, but it was too late because he had already grabbed the door, and pulled it open and grabbed her wrist from the passenger side.
With a strength born out of pure terror, Mia managed to yank her arm free from his grip and threw herself sideways through her open door. She hit the ground on her hip and felt the sharp pain rush through her, but she ignored it and scrambled to her feet, and started running, her feet sliding on the slippery snow. She began screaming for soone to help, knowing there was no one around to hear her because of the deserted road she had driven to.
Neil caught her before she could run far and yanked her around, then backed her against the car, trapping her against the side of the BMW.
"Hold still and shut the fuck up!"
"Take my car!" Mia cried. "Take it and leave
here, I won’t tell the authorities anything about eting you!" She cried out, trembling out of fear. Images of her mother’s lifeless body kept flashing to her mind making her struggle even harder to get free from him.
Ignoring her, Neil looked over his shoulder at his map that had blown against a trash container fourteen feet away when she dropped it. As if in slow motion, Mia watched him remove a shiny black object from his pocket and point it at her, while he backed toward the map and picked it up. A gun. Lord in heaven, he had a gun! He...he was going to kill her like he did to her mother!
Her entire body began to tremble uncontrollably while she listened in a kind of hysterical disbelief to the podcast host voice as she said,
"Neil Wayner is believed to be ard and he is ntally ill and very dangerous. If seen, his whereabouts should be reported imdiately to the authorities. Citizens should not attempt to approach him. A second escaped convict, Kai Martinez, has been caught and taken into custody..."
Mia’s knees threatened to buckle as she watched him coming toward her with a gun in one hand and the map and directions blowing from his other hand. She had known five years ago that he was ntally unstable when it was announced after his imprisonnt. They had said he killed without awareness. And those thoughts only made her more scared than ever...
Looking at him, she recalled the last ti she had been with him five years ago. She had seen bloodstains on his shirt and had worried that he was injured, but he had told her that it wasn’t his blood. He had gone to kill her mother and the two students and she’d laid beside him that night and allowed him kiss and touch her. He was a bloody murderer, and he would kill her just like he had to her mother if she dared try to run.
As Mia was trembling and staring at the gun he pointed at her, a car’s headlights crested the hill a quarter of a mile away from them, and he slid the gun back into his pocket to keep it out of sight, but he kept his hand there with it. "Get into the car," he ordered sternly.
Mia flashed a look over her left shoulder at the approaching car, frantically calculating the impossible odds of outrunning a bullet or even being able to attract the notice of the vehicle’s driver before Neil shot her down.
"Don’t try it," he warned in a low deadly voice that immobilized her. Her heart thundering against her ribs, and she watched as the car drove away at the crossroads, but she didn’t dare disobey his order. Not here, not yet. Instinct warned her that this deserted stretch of road was too isolated to succeed in anything but getting killed. She would be shot down before she escape him.
"Start moving!" He took her arm and pulled her towards the open door on the driver’s side.
Cloaked in the deepening dusk of the snowy winter evening, Mia Harrison walked unsteadily beside a murderer who was holding a gun on her. She had the chilling sensation they were both living a scene from the best seller movie of the year where the hostage got killed trying to escape her kidnapper.
Her hands shook so violently she had to grope for the keys in the ignition, and when she tried to start the car she nearly flooded the engine because even her legs were jerking with fright.
Neil watched her unemotionally from the passenger seat. "Drive," he snapped when the engine was started.
Mia managed to turn the car around and guided it to the end of the filling station parking lot, but she stopped at the main road, her mind so paralyzed with terror that she couldn’t think of the words to ask the obvious question.
"I said drive!" He snapped impatiently again.
"W-which way?" she cried, hating the timid, pleading sound of her voice and loathing the animal beside her for making her experience this uncontrollable terror. She hated him so much she wished he would drop dead at this mont. She hated him so much she wished she could take the gun from his hand and blow off his head!
"Drive back the way we ca." He instructed calmly this ti.
"B-back the way?" Her eyes widened.
"You heard , little one."
She didn’t argue. She just pressed harder on the gas and turned the car around to go back the way they ca. But the traffic was slow because of the snow near the city. Inside the car, the tension and silence was suffocating.
Trying desperately to calm her rampaging nerves while she watched for so chance to escape, Mia lifted her shaking hand and tapped the screen of her car’s infotainnt system to play so music, fully expecting the man beside her to order her not to do it.
When he said nothing, she turned it on. A mont later the car was filled with the lancholy sound of Olivia Rodrigo’s song; Traitor.
While the music played, Mia looked around at the occupants of the other cars closed to hers in the traffic. The man in the car beside hers seed to be listening to a song as well, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, keeping ti with the lody.
He glanced her way, saw her looking at him, and nodded sociably, then he returned his gaze to the front. She knew he hadn’t seen anything abnormal in her car. Because everything looked perfectly normal to him, and if he were sitting where she was in the BMW, it would have seed perfectly normal.
Olivia Rodrigo’s song was playing in the background, just like normal, and the expressway was crowded with cars who were eager to get ho, just like normal, and the snow was beautiful, just like normal. Everything was normal.
Except for one thing.
An escaped murderer was sitting in the seat beside her, holding a gun on her and forcing her to drive him to who knows where!
It was the cozy normalcy of appearances contrasted against the insane reality of her situation that suddenly snapped Mia from her paralysis to action. She had to do sothing, she couldn’t let him force her into driving him away. She had to take him back to right where he belonged: the prison!
Traffic began to move, and her desperation gave birth to inspiration. They had already passed several cars stuck in ditches on both sides of the road by accident. Mia thought she could make it seem like they were skidding to the right, then suddenly turn left, aiming for the ditch. This way, her door might stay accessible while his could get stuck. She wasn’t sure if it would work with the BMW’s four-wheel drive, though.
Beside her, Neil noticed her gaze flick repeatedly to the side of the road. He could sense her mounting panic and knew that fear was going to drive her to try sothing desperate at any mont. If he were to tell her gently to drive him to his destination, she would surely not listen unless he used his way.
"Relax!" he ordered.
Mia’s capacity for fear suddenly reached its limits and her emotions turned crazily from terror to fury. "Relax!" she raged in a shaking voice, whipping her head around and glaring at him. "How in Heaven’s na do you expect
to relax when you’re sitting there with a gun aid at ? You tell
that!"
She had a point, Neil thought, and before she attempted sothing else that might actually get him captured, he decided that helping her to relax was in both of their best interests. "Just take a deep breath and stay calm," he instructed.
Mia stared straight ahead, ignoring him. The traffic was thinning out slightly, picking up so speed, and she began to calculate the possibility of ramming her car into the cars around her in an attempt to cause a major pileup. Such an action would cause the police to be summoned.
That would be very good!
But she and the other innocent people involved in the collision would likely end up being shot by the monster next to her.
That would be very bad...
Mia was wondering if his gun was loaded and whether he would actually massacre helpless people if she tried to bring attention to him, when she heard him say in a calm, condescending voice that adults use on stubborn children,
"Nothing will happen to you, Mia. Just follow my instructions and you’ll be fine. I need a ride to the mountains, and you have a car. It’s that simple. Unless this car is so precious to you that you are willing to risk your life to remove
from it, all you need to do is drive without attracting any attention. If the authorities spot us, there will be shooting, and you’ll be caught in the crossfire. So, be cooperative and stay calm."
"If you want
to relax," she responded defiantly, ignoring the fact that he had used her first na for the first ti, causing a montary flutter in her heart, "then let
hold that gun, and I’ll show you what relaxed ans!" Seeing his furrowed brows, she almost believed that he genuinely didn’t plan to harm her, as long as she didn’t interfere with his escape.
This realization oddly subdued her fears while simultaneously releasing her pent-up anger at the ordeal he had already subjected her to.
"Furthermore," she continued angrily, "don’t speak to
like I’m a little child and don’t ever call
Mia! I was Ms. Harrison to you when I thought you were a respectable man in need of a job, who had purchased those new clothes to impress your em-employer. If it weren’t for those new clothes of yours, I wouldn’t have of-offered you a lift and landed myself in this ss...!" To her dismay, tears pricked at Mia’s eyes, so she shot him a look she hoped conveyed her disdain, then stared fixedly ahead through the windshield while fighting back the choking emotions in her throat.
She hated him so much for making her go through such emotional rollercoaster!
Oh, Lord in Heaven, help her get out of this ss...
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