54. Montana

“I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.”

Iremained silent because now, more than ever before, I understood that Anya”s well-being was in my hands. The best method might be to cooperate with them, but I kept my eyes shut and tried to recover my mental clarity so that I could seize any opportunity to escape that came by. For the moment complete submission was the only thing that was going to work in our favor.

They kept us around the dining table. I opened my eyes to look at Anya and I couldn’t believe it was only a short time ago we had sat at this very table with light hearts and peace. Now we were basically hostages to gruesome men. Our lives were on the line, and there were dead bodies in the house with us. It was incredibly terrifying, but this was not the time to indulge in my emotions, so I took a deep breath and focused. The men seemed especially angry because of their dead companions. I soon learned from their conversations that it was a man named Luca.

Because we were a clueless child and a troublesome female, they didn’t censor themselves as they spoke angrily to each other. I figured out from their conversations they must be Mafia or something and they wanted this man Luca to do something for them. As their conversation went on I suddenly realized that Luca was Cole!

Luca was Cole?

I turned to look at Anya in astonishment. If Luca was Cole, then Anya must be the girl they called Bianca.

“Bianca,” I whispered.

Immediately the child turned her head.

Yes, that was her name.

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the men snarled.

I looked away quickly.

Jesus! Everything was a lie. All of it. But finally, it all made sense. The designer shoes, the stupid beat-up car, his effortless sophistication, the high specification panic room that must have easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build.

Cole, or rather Luca, was running away from these people, but they wanted him back. They needed him back for some reason. He was valuable to them. They had gone to all this trouble to come looking for him in a tiny town like Bison Ridge. I remembered Cole, well Luca, telling me he was good with numbers. The way he instantly remembered my number, without even repeating it back to me, even though I had called it out only once in a crowded, noisy schoolyard.

One of the men made a sudden noise and my eyes swung over to him.

We were seated now, and not dead … yet.

But that was probably only because they were waiting for instructions.

Anya had been forced to record the voice note to her father, and they were no doubt going to use that to manipulate him. Maybe they planned to kill him after he gave them whatever they wanted from him, especially since he killed two of their guys. I was sure this was going to be the case, and so it dawned on me more than ever that keeping Anya safe and escaping could be the only thing that could save us all.

I looked at the little girl, and she lowered her head. She was surprisingly calm, and I wondered if it was because of her history with her dad, which I could see could have been a cakewalk. She was used to dangerous situations like this, or was it because she couldn’t process the extent of the danger we were in? Regardless, I gazed at her until she finally noticed I was looking at her, and then when she lifted her head, I managed to work up an encouraging smile for her.

She seemed confused by it, but she returned a tremulous smile. From the pain I could feel on the bruises on my face, I imagined that there was no way I could appear comforting to her.

”At least I don”t have a gun pointed to my head any m-” I whispered. But before I had even finished my sentence another blow was struck across my face.

Anya gasped and began to cry.

“I said, shut the fuck up,” a man’s voice bellowed close to my ear.

”Do we need her?” one of the other men asked. ”Isn”t it just the kid?”

”Boss said we should keep both until he gives us the signal.”

My blood turned to ice at their words. I was left in wonder at how casually they talked about my death right before me and right in front of Anya. She cried even harder because she heard every word. I tried to calm her down.

”I”m fine, sweetheart,” I mouthed, terrified that the men would attack me again.

”Shut up,” one of them shouted to Anya, but she couldn’t. She cried even harder from terror.

One of the men started to approach her then, and I yelled. ”Don”t touch her. She”ll be fine. She”ll stop.”

He ignored me, and then he hit her across the cheek. It wasn’t too hard, but the sting was enough to make her go crazy.

“Jesus. What the fuck? What you go do that for, Tony? She’s just a kid,” the youngest of them spoke up.

“Ah fuck! This is just a fucking mess,” the bearded man said. He sounded totally fed up.

”If she keeps going like this, we can”t continue on here,” the man who had hit me said. ”It”s bound to draw attention.”

”Let”s get out of here then,” came the response from the younger one.

”It”s not as though the boss has ordered us to remain here. He”s going to tell us to go back to the city anyway, so we might as well just start to leave now. This town gives me the fucking creeps. All these busybodies every-fucking-where.”

“I think Tony’s right. We should get out. I don’t like this place. Too quiet. And these people … they’re not normal.”

”Alright, let”s go,” the bearded man said.

My heart clenched harder in fear. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? At least here, I still held a measure of hope, though small, that someone would come by, my Dad would send the Sheriff, and we would be found. If we left now with no one knowing there was something wrong, especially my dad, it could take even longer to find us, and by then it might be too late.

But I had no choice. I rose to my feet. My hands were tied behind my back, so I couldn’t do anything but walk.

”The kid isn’t shutting up,” the man who had hit her complained, glaring at Anya who was still wailing with fear and pain.

”Gag the little shit,” the bearded man responded cruelly.

My heart sank. It was going to get even more traumatic for her. I had been hoping that somehow her fright from this experience could be managed, especially with my presence, but if they gagged her now, this trauma would leave even more scars.

They gagged her with a cloth and duct tape, and there was nothing either of us could do but follow the men out. They led us out of the house and talked amongst themselves, and then to my surprise, they took me to my car. They only had one car in the driveway, and two of the men got in there.

”Go with her and the girl,” the bearded man commanded.

The ties around my wrists were cut and I was pushed so roughly into the driver”s seat I nearly banged my head onto the steering wheel.

”Wait,” the man who had hit Anya said. He was sitting in the passenger seat next to me. Outside, the younger man was dragging Anya along with him, and I looked anxiously to see what he would do. To my immense relief, he opened the back door and threw her in.

The way they manhandled her infuriated me, but there was nothing I could do.

I caught her terrified gaze in the mirror. “Wear your seatbelt, honey.”

She didn’t move.

I nodded at her while staring at her, willing her to obey my instructions.

For a few tense seconds, it looked like she wasn’t going to listen to me, probably sapped of energy, but then she complied. She strapped her seatbelt on.

Something about her being in the car, and my car for that matter, made me realize that I might have new options that I didn’t before. When the man got into the back next to her and shut the door, I was able to calm down enough to start the car. It was my car, old but familiar, and I had driven it for years. My ties were gone. I had more options. It felt like an out-of-body experience pulling it out and onto the road. I checked the rearview mirror and could see that there were two men in an SUV behind, and they were closely following us.

Their car could easily outrun my old and rickety one, so there was no hope in trying to do a Hollywood-style car chase. Besides, the man beside me ensured that would never happen. He held his gun pointed directly at me, with his hand on the trigger.

”Any funny business and you will be dead in a second,” he said. ”Don”t test me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Where’s the GPS in this fucking car?”

“It’s an old car. It doesn’t have GPS.”

”Leave the town altogether,” he said. ”You know the way, right?”

“Yes. We can take the shortcut.”

He relaxed slightly in his seat, and I did as I was told. I looked behind at Anya, and she met my gaze. She had calmed down now, but her eyes were swollen and puffy, and I wanted nothing more than to pull her into my arms for a hug.

It took me a little while to build up the courage, but I was eventually able to ask, ”She”s not going to cry or scream any longer. Can you please take her gag off? It makes her terrified.”

The guy ignored me, but I was stupid enough to ask again.

”If you say one more word, I am going to shoot you dead.”

I got the message then, loud and clear, and kept my mouth shut.

I focused on driving and followed the very familiar roads that I had taken countless times in the last few days to exit the town. Every time I had left, it had never felt final, just a temporary exit, but now I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be the last time I would be leaving my beautiful town. I told myself not to be so dramatic.

Especially, when a plan was forming in my head. A plan to escape.

There could be a chance of that right outside the exit of the town. Next to the road was a stretch of woods that led to a bunker my grandfather had built a long time ago. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined how or why it would ever come in handy, but now that I was at the crossroads with only minutes to spare to make the decision of whether I was going to go out of line once again and risk our lives, I understood why.

It was a bunker that he had made for the students. Anyone who got lost or ill while out in the woods could hide out for a couple of days and recover or wait for someone from the school to rescue them.

It was well hidden so that it wouldn’t be raided by random campers for its canned food and other supplies, but it was visible enough to anyone who knew what they were looking for. That was where I had in mind to take Anya. However, in order to do that, first and foremost, I had to find a way to get rid of the men in the car and the others at our heels. The disadvantage was they had guns, and so I had to find a way to stop so near the woods that Anya and I would have a quick head start the moment we slipped into it. Once in the woods, I knew them so well that we would finally have a fighting chance of losing them and then hiding in the bunker until the danger was past.