Page 48 of Burning for You
Grudge makes light of the trek, including the stupid creek, and we arrive back at the ranch in no time. I quickly lead the horse into a paddock, the one close to the hangar.
Yes, there is a plane here, I didn’t make it up. I just hope it still runs and there’s fuel in it. Unable to locate the keys in the shed, I run into the main house. My first stop is the key hooks in the hallway, but there’s nothing.
“Dang!”
I scan the house, opening as many drawers as I can, until I arrive at a room that looks to be a study.
On the desk, I see what I’m sure is a plane’s key. There are a few flyers scattered around—the plane seems to be for sale. I hope it’s in good condition, then.
I run back to the hangar.
“Okay… let’s do this,” I murmur to myself and climb onto the plane.
But my hope of escaping is immediately dashed when someone hauls me back, so brutally that my grip on the ladder snaps loose at once.
It’s not my kidnapper, it’s his enlarged version. This guy stinks like my ex-teenage boyfriend who took ice twice a week.
After dragging me backwards a few yards, he throws me against one of the hangar walls.
He wraps his hands around my neck.
“If you kill me, you won’t get what you want,” I labor.
While I felt at ease being with Levi, this man—which I’m sure is his brother Jesse—is another beast. He will stop at nothing to hurt me.
Or kill me, because his hands are now strangling my neck and there’s no sign of him stopping.
“You’re trying to escape? What the hell did you do to my brother?” he says.
“He’s gone.” I say it in a cough.
“Don’t you dare touch that plane! You hear me? If you try that again, I’ll turn on the propeller and press your face against it, and I will watch every single drop of blood coming out of your exposed flesh. Trust me, it’s better that you die of suffocation.”
There are two types of people that you can’t reason with—the desperate type, and the stoned type.
“God, it feels good to see you scared,” he adds.
This man is not trying to scare me. With the amount of pressure he exerts on my neck, I’m sure I won’t last a minute longer.
And he affirms my thoughts. “Now you can die.”
His face blurs as I feel my windpipe flattening. Is this it? I’m going to die at the hands of a stoned man?
In the few seconds of blood flow I have left, I hear a voice. “Jesse, stop! For fuck’s sake, stop.”
The coarse, thick hands are still holding onto me, persisting in finishing what they started.
I don’t know what happens then, but the strangulation stops. With nothing holding me up, my body slithers down along the wall behind me. Once I have enough air to complete two cycles of breath, I open my eyes, and I see a man’s back. His arms form a ring fence around me.
“You keep away from her!” Levi says to his brother, and then glances back at me, feeling me at the same time. I hold onto his arms and he helps me rise. His taut shoulders heave up and down as he keeps an eye on Jesse.
“Whose side are you on, Jeans?” Jesse says.
Jeans?
“Leave her to me.” Levi pushes Jesse away.
My kidnapper turns to me. His face is burning red, and I’m sure it’s from scurrying through the forest to get to me.