“Close.”
“Give me the keys”
“I can’t dipshit. Just let me—”
“I’m in charge here!” he barked, shaking me painfully. I felt sick as he took full control of my body and moved me at his will. “Give me the damn keys!”
“I. Can’t. Reach. Them.” My teeth were clamped so hard at this point my jaw was aching and I don’t even know how I got the words out. Fear had officially landed, causing my heart to race in my ears and my throat.
“Fuck,” he spat, looking around himself again. “Okay, I’m letting you go, but don’t try anything funny. I have a gun.”
I didn’t think he had a gun. If he’d had a gun he would have led with it rather than his own strength, but still I couldn’t be sure.
Sweat formed on the back of my neck as I waited for him to release me. The wheels in my brain turned over and over. Tracking how far I was to my car, how long it would take me to run, what if I dropped my keys, what if I fell, goddamn my wrist hurt. Thought after thought flooded my mind, trying to formulate some kind of plan.
I wasn’t doing a great job at hiding my plotting, because he still wasn’t letting go. Instead, he shook me hard enough that I shuddered out a ragged breath, fear leaking out of me for the first time for him to see.
“I know you work at that bitch shelter. Try something funny and I’ll just come back for you,” he warned.
I growled and bucked at him but he just shook me again, making me dizzy this time. When I stopped struggling, he smiled nastily at me. “Good. Now give me those keys.”
Then he let go.
I didn’t take a step back immediately like I wanted to. Instead, I reached behind my back and pretended I was pulling the keys I had tucked away in my fist from my back pocket. My heart pounded as I ran through my possibilities at a mile a millisecond. So many things I could do in that very moment. But I needed it to be therightthing.
Moving my arm back around to my front at the last possible second, I lanced it out hard and fast, catching him with a hard knock under his chin and sending him stumbling a few steps back. Taking the open opportunity, I put a greater distance between us.
“You bitch!” he called, pain and panic coursing through his words.
He started toward me, and I had to make a decision. Me or my car. Definitely me. This guy had me under his complete control and didn’t try to cop a feel once. He was definitely after money over anything. If I gave him the keys to a hundred thousand dollar vehicle that also had my wallet in it, he might just choose that over trying to prove a point.
Cocking my arm back, I threw the keys over his head and they went soaring through the air, landing with a jangling thud behind him. He stopped. Looking at me, then back at the keys, he doubled back in a run for the keys. As soon as he turned, I was running too.
I didn’t take off down the street. I didn’t have a car to go to anymore, and if he had gotten into mine he could catch me on foot. I only knew one other place to go.
The cellar.
It was only about a ten-foot sprint to Paulo’s cellar doors, but with every step I took, my heart pounded in my feet. My injured hand shook as I worked the latch open and my legs shook even harder as I moved myself down the steps. Clicking the inside latch shut, I ran the rest of the way into the cold, dark space, finding the darkest corner underneath one of the elevated barrels of wine to crawl into and curl up.
My phone fumbled out of my pocket, my hands too unsteady to keep it still. Tremors caused me to drop the damn thing twice in a row.
“Fuck,” I spat, scolding myself. I was safe in the dark for now, but if he followed me in here somehow, I would be cornered. I needed to open my phone and I needed to do it now. “Focus, Celestia.”
I did. Apparently clenching my fingers around the device so hard that I could feel my bad hand pulsing was all I had to do to get it to stop shaking. At least for long enough to open my phone and pull up my app central.
A loud bang sounded on the other side of the cellar doors and I jumped, almost losing the phone again. By now, I could hear thundering in my ears and it wasn’t just the sound of the guy slamming against the doors. It was the sound of my heartbeat. The mixture of the two noises created an uproar of crashing sound around me. My jaw hurt as I clamped it shut, stress taking over as he banged and banged and banged.
My head swam. My entire face burning from the pressure of blood rushing through it. This was just my fucking luck. Leave it to me to be followed for miles just to get mugged by the one psychopath in the city who wanted souvenirs.
Finding purchase, I opened the alarm app on my phone and found the external alarm system for my car. Without hesitating, I pressed the panic button. Four seconds later, a blaring horn started outside the cellar doors. Two seconds after that, the banging stopped. Five seconds after that a pop-up on my phone read:
We see that you have alerted Command Central. Would you like to call the police?
DidI want to call the police? On one hand I really, really didn’t want this to become a scene. If I called the police they would show up with their lights and radios and all this other shit. Paulo would find out and then he would tell my family and my family would make it a thing. But on the other hand, how was I ever going to get out of this cellar without knowing if it was safe out there? Making a split second decision, I pressed the‘no’button and waited for another pop up to confirm that the police had not been notified.
Minor relief flooded me but not beforeanotherpop-up shot to the screen, this time from Paulo’s alarm system. It read:
Alert! Breach detected! The authorities will be notified. Set off alarm now?
