Chapter Five

Elena

The guy comes out of freaking nowhere. My foot slams on the brakes, the tires squeal, and my entire body stiffens. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

My car comes to an abrupt halt on the empty stretch of road, and my body thrusts forward. The seat belt slams me back, and a dull ache erupts in my chest. I breathe in deeply, my pulse pounding through my legs, fingers, and head. My eyes snap open; I didn’t realize they’d even been shut.

My twitchy fingers fumble with the seat belt latch, and all of me tingles from the surge of adrenaline. I crane my neck to check out my surroundings, blink at the afternoon sun, but don’t see any cars out in the distance. Thankful that I didn’t cause a traffic jam, I push the door open, clamber out, and scurry to the front of my car.

The guy is sprawled across the pavement. Unmoving. My heartbeat reacts by spazzing out. Panic slices me in half. Oh no, is he—is he dead?

“Are you okay?” My voice comes out much weaker than I intend. I swallow, inch closer, and try again. “Are you okay? Oh…can you hear me? Are you—”

His arm twitches, then he rolls over with a groan. Air wooshes out of my lungs as relief floods my system. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt, but he’s still alive. That’s all that matters at this point.

I fall to my knees and look him over. His eyes are shut, face pinched in pain. The stranger’s lips part, and a slow, quiet sound escapes them. I want to help him, but what can I do?

Of course, you idiot. Call for help.

I push myself up and off the ground, remembering the ComPad phone lying in my passenger seat. I’ve already wasted enough time. As I climb to my feet, he opens his eyes. For a moment, I’m stunned by the color. Like someone has set flame to a leaf, but the fire burns green instead of red.

All thoughts of his eye color vanish when he springs to his feet and moves toward me. “Get in the car,” he says in a voice that’s one-part silk, one-part needles.

My mouth falls open, and my hands fly up to block my face, as if that will stop him from hurting me. “I…no, please…I don’t—”

“Now.” He inches toward me as I inch back, frantically gesturing with one hand.

Stunned, I back up into the car, heart pounding. I glance around and consider making a break for it.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he growls. “Please. I won’t. Drive. Please, please help me.”

My hand finds the car door that still hangs open, but all I can see is his desperate, wide eyes pleading with me. Just stay calm. Do whatever he asks.

Once I scramble back into the Mustang, he climbs into the passenger seat and points straight ahead. “Drive.”

With trembling fingers, I yank the seat belt strap, once again considering jumping out of the car and making a run for it. He can have it all—my car, my purse, my belongings. But if I run, he’ll probably just chase me, and if he’s faster than me, I’ll end up roadkill.

I stare at the road ahead, through the slightly dirty windshield. My insides twist into fierce knots. “Please. You can have the car.” It might be my most prized possession, but it’s not worth losing my life. “Take it, take whatever you want. Let me go. Please. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“I—I just need you to drive.”

Something in his voice has me sparing a glance at him. He sounds hesitant, nervous even. It gives me hope. “Please,” I croak.

He turns his head, allowing me a perfect view of his profile. I study his face, expecting it to be angry lines, radiating tension, but it’s shadowed, haunted, and I stare for far too long. Is he hurt? I don’t see any injuries, not even a minor scratch or two. He took a serious tumble—how was he able to immediately stand up?

“Drive,” he says, softer now. “I won’t hurt you. Just…drive.”

A part of me almost believes him.

Almost.

He aims his bright, unnaturally green gaze at me, so I whip my face forward again. God, if I had only left the house five minutes later—or five minutes earlier—if I hadn’t decided to take the back roads on my way to Jamie’s, I could’ve avoided this. All I’d been trying to do was save a few minutes of driving time and instead…

I blow out a slow breath, try to steady my voice. It betrays me by quivering anyway. “Where do you want me to go?”

“Right now, I want you to drive. Just. Drive.”

I grip the worn, rubbery material of the shifter tighter than necessary, and forget to skip second gear. There’s a grinding noise that makes me wince, but I ignore the concern for my car and move to third gear. Driving proves to be easier said than done. I can barely concentrate on the road. If I keep swerving like this, I’ll get pulled over before I get out of Dayton, which could be a good thing—but I know nothing about this guy or his intentions. What if he’s got a gun hiding in his jeans? What if he shoots me and the cop?

Briefly, I wonder how much damage my car took, but I scold myself for simply the thought—that’s so not important right now. My unexpected passenger rakes a hand through his hair roughly, then leans his head against the seat without another sound.

We ride in silence. For at least ten minutes. Then longer. Since I was already on the way to Columbus, I continue north in that direction. I can’t even think of where else I could possibly go right now, can’t think of anything but the possibility of my murder ending up on the six o’clock news.

No matter how long I drive, the end result will be the same. This guy might end up shooting me no matter what I do. I push this thought away the best I can. Thoughts like that won’t get me far. They sure as hell won’t save me. I have to maintain the hope that I’ve still got a remote chance of escape. Maybe he’ll…let me go?

“Please,” I say softly, breaking the longstanding silence. “Tell me what you want. I’ll give you anything. Really. Anything. You can take it all. I want—”

“Stop.” His voice bounces around the small interior of my car, loud and reverberating. “I don’t want anything. I don’t want to have to do this.”

Something in his voice sounds so…sad. It’s probably an act. “Then why are you?” I ask. When he doesn’t respond, I push my luck and keep talking. “You don’t have to, you know. Whatever might be wrong, it can’t be so bad that you need to keep me hostage.”

“You don’t know anything.”

True. “I can pull over and—”

He shifts and I yelp, thinking he’s whipping out a gun, and I nearly choke on the terror surging from my chest.

But there’s no gun. Both his hands are splayed against the dashboard, and he’s staring at me like the world is falling down.

And maybe for him, it is.

“They want to kill me.”

I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. “Who? Who wants to kill you?” I breathe in and dare another glance at him. His face is tight, on the verge of tears. Honestly, he looks just like I feel.

He grips his longish brown hair again and grunts. “If I don’t get out of here, they’ll kill me, okay? And I can’t—I don’t want to die.”

Uh, neither do I. “Please just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. You can have the car, my money—please.” I’m a desperate, broken record now, and as hard as I try to keep my voice steady, it still wobbles with uncertainty.

“I don’t know how—” He gives a short, angry grunt. “I can’t drive, and I need to get away from here. Just…keep driving.”

In my peripheral, I see him lower his gaze to his lap. He’s twisting his fingers as though I’m the one with a weapon, holding him hostage inside my Ford Mustang. He’s not watching me. He hasn’t given me a destination. According to all the cop dramas, this is not how you hijack a car. None of it makes any sense.

For the next few minutes, I focus on figuring out how to get to the freeway, wiping my sweaty palms against my jeans, sparing glances at the stranger in my passenger seat. Eventually, when it’s clear he isn’t going to hurt me—at least not right now—my breathing evens out to a nearly normal rate.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so…fucking sorry.”

He’s apologizing? Interesting tactic. “Um…” I intended to say more than that, but I’m unable to find the words, so I shift in my seat, keeping my eyes locked on the road ahead.

“What’s your name?” he says.

The kidnapper wants my name? That probably wouldn’t be smart.

But I said I’d give him whatever he wanted. “Elena.”

He repeats my name back to me, like I’m important, like I’m the only person in the world left to hear him. “I’ll never forgive myself for this.”

Now that the adrenaline rush has faded and my heart no longer thunders, I observe him as a whole person, rather than simply by the parts: haunted eyes, clenched fists, ruffled hair. He’s just a guy—a guy who can’t be much older than me. The red shirt and dark jeans he’s wearing are clean and normal enough. He doesn’t look like he just broke out of prison; he looks like he broke out of freaking high school.

“So…why are you doing this?”

He leans forward, burying his face in his hands. “He left me no choice.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “Who’s he? If someone is trying to hurt you, we can go to the police and—”

“I doubt that the police can help me. I don’t know what I’d even say to them. I might as well be considered someone’s property.”

My eyes dart back and forth between the road and the frantic guy to my right. We merge onto the freeway, and I feel slightly better being near other cars, even if the people inside can’t actually help me. His fingers press into his temples where the hair starts to curl around his ears.

“How are you someone’s property?” Shut up, Elena. Why on Earth do I care?

He stares out the passenger window, chest heaving with weighty breaths.

A stretch of trees blur past, and he still doesn’t answer. I drive methodically, hyper aware of all my surroundings instead of on autopilot like all the other times I’ve driven this route to Jamie’s. Seconds stretch like long hours until it feels as though I’ve been locked inside this car for days. I press my lips together to keep from being stupid and blurting out a thought as soon as I think it.

He twists to face me. “What would you do if you knew someone wanted you dead?” I can’t come up with a decent response, so he continues. “He doesn’t think I have any right to be alive, so he plans on ending me like I’m…like I don’t have any rights at all.”

My fingers grip the steering wheel tighter. “You keep saying he. Who’s he?”

“The guy in charge of the place I came from.”

Speaking of. “And where is that, by the way?”

“A facility not far from where you nearly hit me. They…rehabilitated me after a car accident,” he says. “Since I had no memories and no family came looking for me, they let me live there while I recovered.”

Strange. I don’t know of any hospitals or anything like that around that part of Dayton. My eyes bounce between the road, his downturned lips, and those wide, sad eyes. Even if he’s not telling the truth, he clearly believes his story.

“Fuck, this is all wrong,” he mutters, thick and gravelly.

Silence fills the car, and I think of my ComPad sitting only inches from my fingers. Even if I can reach it without a protest from this frantic fugitive, who would I call that’s not the police?

My dad?

Sure, he would be the one person who could help, but what would Dad think of me if I called him now? He wouldn’t be proud of me being brave; he’d think I’m being irresponsible or foolish by doing anything this guy says—probably both.

But what was I supposed to do? Run him over?

As my brain scrambles to figure out the right move, my ComPad goes off with a text message, and after a short consideration, I decide to look.

Jamie: Todd can’t help tonight. Family emergency. He said you can still use the garage, though.

Disappointment swirls within me. The garage won’t do me any good without someone to assist me. I set the ComPad back onto the console just as my car makes the awful grinding noise again. Shit, my distracted thoughts made me forget about second gear. Again.

“Has it always made that sound?” he asks.

“The car? No, it only just started doing that, but it seems like it might be getting a little worse.”

“Sounds like a synchronizer ring is worn out.”

Surprised, I glance over at the boy on the run. “You know about car mechanics?”

“One of my favorite shows is How Stuff Works. They have a lot of episodes about cars.”

“There must be an issue with the clutch, since the transmission is making noise.”

Out of my peripheral, I see him shake his head. “If you had a problem with the clutch, you’d have an issue getting into all gears.”

“Todd seemed pretty sure it was the clutch.” At least according to Jamie when I texted her two days ago. “He’s my older sister’s boyfriend. A mechanic.”

“It’s a kneejerk reaction to hear transmission problem and think clutch,” he says. “Or maybe he’s just not thinking it through thoroughly.” He shifts in his seat. “Todd is probably thinking about modern transmissions with quantum synchronizers that use electromagnetic induction to match the gear speeds magnetically whereas the transmission in this car has the older style that uses friction to match the gear speed.”

It takes me a minute to find my voice. “You learned all of that from a TV show?”

“I also read a lot of books.”

And here I thought I read a lot of books. “Damn.” Suddenly, I have a brilliant idea. “The transmission issue is a little over my head. How would you like to make a trade? Todd had to bail on our plans to tinker with my car, so what if you help me instead? After that, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Only a moment passes before he says, “Deal.”