Not You It's Me (Boston Love #1) - Julie Johnson Page 0,133
hear it. Is Winnie okay?”
“I think he’s just shaken up,” she says, stroking her fingers through his hair. “We’ll be okay.”
“Good. Mark would’ve killed me.”
“Totally.” Her grin is lopsided, but it’s there. “Listen.”
“What?”
“Listen.” She sits up a little straighter. “Sirens.”
I strain my ears, listening, and when I do, I hear them — the undeniable sound of police cars, racing toward us.
“Thank god.” I take a deep breath and pain streaks through my chest. “Now, you can get to the hospital and have that damn baby.”
“Let’s hope I make it that far.” Her smile fades a bit. “I really don’t want some state trooper looking at my hoo-hah.”
“Seriously, Chrissy, we need to discuss your priorities.”
I hear her laugh, but the sound is swallowed up as my car door is yanked open with a jarring squeal of metal. I turn, fully expecting to find a police officer, firefighter, paramedic — really, any kind of first responder would do, at this point.
Instead, I find The Hulk.
***
I’m so stunned by his appearance, I don’t even fight him as he reaches in, wraps his hands around my biceps, and yanks me from the car without a word.
“Hey!” I scream, when he throws me up over his shoulder. “Put me down!”
“Bring her back here!” I hear Chrissy shrieking. “Or I swear to god, I will kill you!”
“Chrissy!”
“Gemma!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I scream as my fists pound his back, flooded with disbelief that I’m being kidnapped again.
Kidnapped from my kidnappers!
It would almost be funny, if it didn’t totally suck.
I can’t see much, considering I’m hanging upside down, and all, but I can tell the Mercedes is long gone. That’s not much of a surprise — Vanessa and Ralph may’ve been the worst abductors in the world, but evidently even they were smart enough to cut and run when they saw my car spin out of control.
Kidnapping is one thing. Murder is another.
The Hulk doesn’t break stride or bother to respond to any of my curses. He just walks up the dirt incline toward his SUV — which, I’ll have you know, didn’t suffer so much as a scratch — pulls open the passenger door, and tosses me inside. To my surprise, he doesn’t close the door after me — he keeps coming, wedging his massive frame into the seat, until I’m forced to scramble to the driver’s side, to get away from him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I screech.
He doesn’t answer as he settles into the passenger seat, pulls the door closed, and flips the locks.
“Drive,” he says flatly.
“I’m not driving anywhere!” I stare at him like he’s a total crazy person. “And I’m not leaving my friend! She’s pregnant! She needs medical attention!”
“Cops will be here any minute.”
“Exactly! And I fully intend to wait for them!”
His jaw clenches as he stares me down with those eerie, empty eyes for a long moment, before reaching into his jacket pocket and whipping a sleek black gun from his holster. He’s not like Ralph — he definitely knows how to use that thing.
“Drive.”
I swallow hard, glance one last time at my car, still smoking faintly by the wall, and pray to every god up there that Chrissy, Winnie, and the yet-unnamed fetus will be okay.
And then, I drive.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Let Go
We’re silent for almost an hour.
I listen each time he tells me to make a turn, change lanes, merge onto a different road. Every bone in my body aches to the point of distraction. My mind searches for possible escape plans, but everything I come up with ends with me meeting a very gruesome end, either staring down the barrel of The Hulk’s gun or bleeding out in a flipped SUV.
Neither of which sounds very appealing, at the moment.
I can only hope Chrissy is with the police, by now — that she’s safe at the hospital.
Eventually, we leave the highway and merge onto a winding back road, the trees growing denser as we move ever eastward. The coast can’t be far off, now, and I feel dread stir to life in my stomach as thoughts tickle at the back of my mind. Thoughts of another car ride, not so long ago, when Chase told me a story about the house he grew up in.
When we pass an ornate wooden sign that reads MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA WELCOMES YOU, I feel the pit in my stomach morph into a bottomless cavern of anxiety.