18th Abduction - James Patterson Page 0,58

of her face taking the brunt of the thorns. And then she was through the barricade. She exhaled as she blended into the relative darkness of the forest.

And then, just when she had gotten free of the brambles, Tony called out to her.

“Adele. Adelll-ah, darling. You could get lost out here. You could get hurt.”

The shaded woodland gave her a big advantage.

She could see where she was going, and the shadows would give her cover. Adele turned her head to see where Tony was and glimpsed his silhouette beside his car—and he saw her. But he wasn’t coming after her.

He called out, “Wait there, Adele. I’ll bring you back to the car.”

Like hell he would.

She pushed on into the woodland, gingerly at first; but gaining balance and confidence, she steadily climbed the gently wooded slope. When the ground flattened, she ran. A hundred yards in, she stumbled over a root and pitched forward to the ground. She ignored the scrapes and bruises and used her strong core muscles to roll up into a sitting position, glad for the tens of thousands of crunches she’d done in the school gym. And thank God for the StairMaster, too; somehow she got to her feet on the incline.

Up ahead was a large tree and Adele got behind it. Tony couldn’t see her as she pressed her back against the trunk, inching down until she was sitting on the leaf litter beneath the tree. Her arms hurt with unrelenting pain, but she twisted and stretched, worked her slim hips through the circle of her arms until her bound hands were in front of her.

She noticed now that the white sweatshirt stood out like neon, looking even brighter as the sun left the sky. Adele pulled the fabric over her head and bunched it around her wrists. Then she pushed up and forward, exhilarated and at the same time certain that if Tony caught her, he would wrap his hands around her throat. He would squeeze and release her airway as he did during sex, the sick bastard, and this time he wouldn’t let go.

Adele was rested now.

She was moving swiftly and she wasn’t alone as she ran. She gave herself affirmations, saying out loud, “Good girl. Keep going.” As she tripped over logs and recovered from stumbles, she felt Susan, her parents, and even Carly flanking her path, encouraging her to run.

As she moved farther from Tony and toward who knew what, she heard the snapping of twigs.

There was a flashlight beam up ahead, swinging from left to right, and it stopped moving when it caught her square on. Adele shielded her eyes and saw another beam coming from her right and another farther up the hill.

Oh, my God. It’s a search party.

They were looking for her.

“Help,” she called out. “I’m over here. Please help me.”

CHAPTER 73

Someone called to Adele from the middle distance.

“Hey, chickie. Don’t stop now.”

That was Marko’s voice. Marko. What the hell was going on?

“Marko?”

“Run, Adele.”

That was Tony’s voice, and she could see him, silhouetted by his car’s headlights, coming toward her. She saw other flashlights in the woods, flickering through the branches, seeking her out, cornering her.

She realized with a shock that she’d made an idiotic mistake. This was no rescue. These were Tony’s men. And this was one of their sick games.

Tony shouted playfully, “You should run, sweetheart.”

Adele’s guess was that this was probably some version of hide-and-seek with a death penalty for getting caught.

She ran from the lights and the voices, and they followed her. “Adellllllllle. Are you afraid of us?”

Without stopping, Adele counted seven lights in the woods. She picked the darkest point between the lights and loped over broken ground, leapt downed branches and the scattered bones of a dead animal, and negotiated the changing grade of the land.

She accepted the numbness of her hands and arms as a handicap and focused on keeping her footing as she sprinted through the woods, frantic for the sight of a home or traffic on a road.

Adele was putting distance between herself and the men when she felt a sharp, glancing pain in her right shoulder.

A man called out, “Good one, Junior.”

A second voice cheered her on, “Run, Bambi. There’s a road not far. You can make it. We love you, Della.”

Something shiny sliced through the air, past her face, and struck a tree, sinking an inch into the trunk. She paused a moment to see what the object was: a pointed, star-shaped piece of metal about five inches