door swings open. The heavyset man snatches my knife away and tosses it into the gutter.
Munich Jacket tightens his arms around my torso and pushes me toward the Mercedes. Arching my back, I lift my feet and kick against the doorframe with the soles of my boots.
“You broke your promise, Sophia,” he snarls into my ear.
Gasping and kicking, I claw at the arms encircling me. I bite the finger nearest me, drawing blood. I scream as loud as I can. But even if someone hears—even if the girl gets help—it won’t be in time.
Their combined weight overpowers me. Together they push me into the Mercedes, and Munich Jacket clambers in behind.
Inside, I scramble for the opposite door. Munich Jacket snatches my wrist and wrenches me back. He throws me facedown onto the seat. He pries my fingers from the door latch and binds my hands together with a cable zip tie. I wince at the pinching pain in my wrists. The Mercedes accelerates away.
The driver doesn’t stop for lights. Doesn’t stop for pedestrians or cyclists. The bald man in the front seat tells him where to turn.
Munich Jacket’s knees jam into my quads, pinning me down. He zip-ties my ankles.
“Get off me!” I snap.
Abruptly, Munich Jacket’s palm collides with the skin above my eyebrow and everything goes momentarily black. Stars flash behind my eyelids. I feel dizzy.
“Who sent you?” I ask Munich Jacket. Blood trickles down from my temple, seeping into my eye. I blink it out.
We ascend a curving road. Steep embankments rise up on either side and merge into a dense wooded forest.
I kick at the door as hard as I can. Furiously, I try to wriggle out of the tie. They aren’t going to do this again. Not to me. Not now. Not ever.
“I know what you’re planning to do, but my father will stop you,” I say in German. “Do you know what happened to the men who kidnapped me last time?”
The bald man in the passenger seat looks back at me like he wants to know.
“First, he broke their fingers. Then he peeled off their skin. Then—”
The car erupts in shouting. The driver pounds his fist on the dashboard. “Keep that girl quiet!” he orders Munich Jacket in heavily accented German.
I know that accent. I recognize that guttural r in the throat …
Munich Jacket hits me again. He pushes down hard on my back, smothering the air from my lungs.
Frustration defeats the rational, self-preserving side of me that says, “stay quiet.” “Who sent you?” I ask Munich Jacket in Chechen.
Munich Jacket puts his dirty lips against my ear. His damp breath is like slime on my skin. “Girls like you shouldn’t ask so many questions,” he says in broken English.
“You should meet Charlotte,” I mutter. Facedown, with my cheek smashed against the seat belt attachment—the metal gouges my jaw.
“Stop talking!” he sneers in my face. Drops of spit burst out of his mouth.
He lifts his arm, but as he makes to strike me a third time, I duck. With my hands tied together forming a solid mass, I hit his exposed neck with my knuckles.
He gasps for air. Recovering, he lunges toward me, using his entire weight to push.
My skull hits the window. I slump, going limp. Blood pools on the leather seat beneath my forehead. I inhale and hold, slowing my heart rate.
Momentarily, the car is quiet.
“Did you kill her?” the driver gasps. “Tell me you didn’t kill her!”
Play dead. Don’t run. Don’t fight back.
Munich Jacket frenetically puts his finger on my wrist, nowhere near my pulse.
“If you killed her, he will kill us!” shouts the driver, panicked.
“Stupid fahişe hurt me!” Munich Jacket yells. “He said she was dangerous but—”
I keep still, motionless, inert.
“She’s a little girl!” the driver hisses. “How dangerous can she be?”
I curl my knees into my chest, pivot to the left, and rocket my legs out from my body. My boot heels collide with the back of the driver’s head.
The Mercedes swerves violently. The tires skid across ice. I grasp the door handle with both hands.
The driver palms the wheel to the left to prevent us careening off the road, but the wheels lock.
In a thundering collision, the car plows through a guardrail, tumbles off the autobahn, and crashes at the bottom of an icy embankment.
CHAPTER 54
… Screeching … Stars … Throbbing …
The Mercedes is sideways.
The bald man in the passenger seat is definitely dead.
The driver is slumped against the wheel, possibly dead.