give of his neck snapping.
“Is he dead?” Amy asked in a wobbly voice.
“Yes.”
“Jeremy, they took Jeremy.”
“I’ll get him Amy.” Nate turned and ran along the path the other men had taken. He figured he could continue at this pace for five minutes before he would catch up to them. Hopefully they hadn’t made it to the cabin.
Fuck!
“We have the boy.”
Nate heard Jeremy crying and two of the men talking to one another as the one man continued to shout towards the cabin. She better not come outside. As soon as he thought it he saw the door open. Then he heard the sound of a helicopter.
Fuck!
The helicopter was loud and two of the men had dropped back towards the tree line. Sarah didn’t show any change in expression as she saw Nate come up behind first one man, and then the other and kill them. That left three. He realized the one holding Jeremy had a knife to his throat, and that’s why Sarah stepped onto the porch.
The other two men rushed forward as the helicopter landed, and Sarah yelled, “Save Jeremy.”
The scream was just the distraction Nate needed, because the man looked behind him, and Nate twisted his arm away from Jeremy’s body, before flinging him to the ground. He kicked him in the head and looked up just in time to see Sarah being pulled onto the helicopter by the other two men. He ran towards it, but it flew into the air before he could reach it. There were no markings on the thing. He looked over at Jeremy and the still man. He didn’t have his phone with him, it was in the cabin. He picked up the sobbing child and sped to the house.
It seemed like hours before Sierra picked up. He explained everything. As he left Jeremy in the bedroom he went back into the clearing and picked up the unconscious man dropping him onto the porch.
“I’m sure we can get a trace on it Nate,” Sierra assured him. He knew it was a crapshoot, even though she was trying to sound confident.
“It’s okay Sierra, I have another option,” Nate said, looking at the man on the porch. Suddenly, Amy appeared at the forest’s edge. Damn, he’d forgotten all about her.
“Jeremy’s fine. He’s inside,” he called out to her. She broke into a dead run. He heard the happy shriek of the boy and he gave a grim smile. Then he picked up his new friend and took him into the woods. He really didn’t want the small family to hear what he was about to do.
****
Sarah woke up in a hospital bed. The room was bright and cheerful. She felt really disoriented. She was attached to a saline drip. Scratch that, she could see something else besides saline was in her IV, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. She looked around and saw all the usual monitors.
She tried to move and press the call button and panicked. Her arm wouldn’t move. When she tried to move her left arm instead, it was just as immobile. Nothing moved. Her entire body was paralyzed.
“Nurse!” Thank God, she could talk. “Nurse! Somebody! Can you please come and help me?”
The door opened admitting a middle aged woman in nurse’s scrubs. She was smiling.
“You’re awake. We’ve been hoping you’d wake up soon.”
“I can’t move. What’s wrong with me? Was I in an accident?”
“Yes. You’ve been in a coma for a few days. The doctor gave you some medication so you wouldn’t thrash about as you woke up. You’ll be able to move in a couple of hours.”
What the hell? That didn’t sound right, did it?
“Can I speak to my doctor? How long have I been in a coma?” Nothing made sense. Sarah was dizzy and everything was confused. She needed to talk to the doctor and get some answers.
“I’ll call the doctor immediately. However, she was here about an hour ago and just left to go home. You might not see her until tomorrow morning.”
“Wait a minute, where is here? I mean, where are we?” Sarah struggled, trying to bring up images. She shut her eyes tight and faces flashed in front of her eyelids, but try as
Terra Wolf, Mercy May
Jennifer Collins Johnson
Louise Penny
Tamara Hogan
Mary Hanson
Roderick Gordon
Aimee Agresti
Dean Murray
Amy Malone
Katharine Davis