Chapter 34
“Ow,” Carly moaned as her head slammed back against something hard and a burst of pain exploded in the back of her head. She felt groggy but quickly woke up enough to remember what had happened.
Tears began to fall as the vision of Gage kissing the auburn-haired woman appeared in her mind. She remembered getting up to go outside and call Rachel. After talking to her for a while, she’d slipped her phone back into the pocket on the front of her shirt before turning to go back inside the house. As she started to walk toward the garage, the pizza delivery guy turned into the driveway, and she’d waved for him to pull up. Standing by her car, she’d been shocked when Daniel got out of the driver’s side with two pizza boxes in his hand and froze in terror as he walked toward her.
“Well, hello, Carly. Surprised to see me?” he’d said and dropped the two boxes on the ground, grabbed her arm and jerked her across the pavement. She’d struggled but was no match. Almost as tall and nearly as strong as Gage, Daniel had easily pulled her around to the back of his car. Carly had started to open her mouth to scream when he took a pistol from below his jacket and shoved it against her head.
“I wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t want that nice kid you seem so fond of to come out here, would you?” Carly had shut her mouth and shook her head, realizing she needed to keep Jonathan safe.
“What do you want?” she’d finally managed to squeak out.
“I want what’s mine. You shouldn’t have left me, and now I’m going to make sure you never leave again. Get in.”
He’d shoved her toward the trunk he’d managed to open while holding the gun to her head. As he pushed her down, she’d slipped her phone out of her pocket and into a gap between the carpet and the lip of the trunk. She had no doubt he would destroy it if he saw it. She’d hoped, thanks to all the crime shows Sophie liked to watch, someone would be able to track it once they realized she was missing. The last thing she remembered before waking up was a sharp pain in the back of her head. Daniel must have hit her, causing her to pass out before he shoved her all the way into the trunk.
As her head cleared a little more, Carly tried to reach for her phone, thinking she would be able to call 911, but her heart sank when she found her hands tied behind her back. Tears began to roll down her face as she thought about what Daniel might have planned.
Was he going to let her out of this alive?
After one last bump that did nothing to help ease the pain in her head, the car stopped. Carly heard a door open and slam shut. She braced as footsteps came down the side of the car and then stopped at the back. Hearing a click, she watched as the trunk lid opened to reveal Daniel, a twisted smile on his face.
“Come on, cuddle bear. We’re home,” his cruel voice cackled in the night air, making Carly cringe. He hadn’t called her by that stupid nickname since the first year they were married.
She groaned as he leaned in and slid one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, lifting her up out of the trunk. With her head feeling as if it held a hundred bricks, she moaned, too weak to fight back and try to get away. As Daniel turned to walk up a path, she squinted her eyes and saw a small cabin through the trees and in the distance at the edge of a small lake.
Carly’s head continued to throb as she tamped down another wave of nausea while Daniel stomped up the steps of the cabin and reached to open the door. She barely had time to take in the sparsely furnished living area with a small kitchenette to one side before he went through another door toward the back of the cabin and over to a full-size wrought iron bed.
Carly screamed in pain as her head jarred roughly when he tossed her onto the middle of the lumpy mattress. Too weak to scramble away, she felt him grab her wrists which were still tied together and pulled them uncomfortably out from her back. Holding tight and climbing onto the bed to straddle both of his massive thighs across hers, Daniel untied the rope, and Carly felt the cold metal of handcuffs encircle each wrist as he lifted them over her head and attached them one at a time to the bedframe.
Scooting down her legs, he stood at the end of the bed while grabbing both of her ankles before she could think to react and kick at him. Quickly and without saying a word he had each of her ankles locked securely in more handcuffs attached to the foot rails of the bed.
As her head began to clear a little more, she realized he had to have had time to prepare the bed for whatever he had planned. Beds don’t usually come equipped with handcuffs, and the car he had driven with the pizza shop sign attached to the roof was not the one she’d let him have in the divorce. Carly wasn’t sure how he had managed to evade the P.I.’s tracking device, but she didn’t have time worry about it.
“Let’s see you run away from me now.” He sneered down at her, a look of pure evil in his eyes, and her skin crawled with revulsion.
How could she have ever thought she loved him?
Her stomach dropped as she watched him leave the room and shutting the door behind him. Was he planning to keep her here, possibly raping her, or was he planning to get rid of her as he had threatened so no one else could have her?
Her only hope was that Jonathan had quickly realized she was gone and had called someone. Even though Daniel had obviously gone to some lengths to plan out her abduction, he still wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block. As far as she knew he hadn’t even thought to check if she had a cell phone.
Holding on to the hope the police would be able to locate the signal, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander back to that awful picture. Carly couldn’t believe she had been so wrong about Gage. She truly thought he was falling in love with her, and they’d be planning their future together very soon.
Tears slid down her cheeks at the thought he’d turned out to be just another cheater who’d played her for a fool. She swore to herself as her eyelids grew heavy and she started to drift off again that if she got out alive, she wasn’t going to go looking for another relationship ever again. If she wanted children, she could do that without a man, either through artificial means or adoption.
A while later, Carly jerked awake as the bedroom door opened and Daniel walked in. He licked his lips and reached down to rub along the bulge in his pants as he walked closer to the bed.
“I’ve missed you so much, baby. I didn’t think I was ever going to find you again, but thanks to some help from the nice assistant principal at your new school I did. I can’t wait to feel myself inside you again.”
The bile rose in her throat at the thought that Dr. Crawford had anything to do with this. Carly knew she had some problem with her, but she couldn’t believe the woman would stoop so low as to release her personal information when Carly had explicitly asked for it not to be given out.
Groaning, she turned her aching head to the side only to see Daniel take his shirt off and throw it to the side before he undid the button on his pants. Swallowing the acid taste in her mouth, she frantically tried to think of something to get him to stop what was going to happen next.
“Please, don’t do this. If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone. Please.” Carly begged as Daniel got closer to the bed.
“Oh, don’t say that, cuddle bear. I’m going to make you forget all about Gage Wilson. You’ve always lusted after him, but I’m going to remind you of what you gave up.” Carly twisted frantically as her obviously sick in the head ex-husband crawled up the bed between her cuffed legs.
Carly knew she wasn’t going to be able to avoid what he intended, but feeling stronger by the minute, she was determined not to let it happen without a fight. She braced herself as he ripped her top down the middle and then with one hard yank tore the front of her bra apart, exposing her breasts. He reached with both hands to squeeze her nipples hard, and she yelped in pain. While one hand continued to pinch her left breast in a vise-like grip, the other reached down to pull at the waist of her pants. All the while, she kept twisting and bucking against the restraints, making it more difficult for him to get a grip.
He let her go, and before she knew what was happening Daniel backhanded her across the face. When she continued to struggle, he reared back and raised his arm with his hand curled into a fist and slammed it into the side of her face, causing an intense burst of pain to explode through her head. Unable to fight anymore, she felt him scoot down the bed. Just as he reached down with both hands to yank at the elastic in her waistband, Carly felt his body fly off the bed and through a haze of pain saw the small room grow crowded with several uniformed men.
Carly tried to focus as one of the men slowly approached her on the bed, but all she could make out was a huge muscular shape pulling a blanket over her exposed body. At the sound of a scuffle, Carly blinked to clear her vision as the figure uncuffed her wrists and helped her to sit up, only to be blinded by pain as a shot rang out and a searing burn tore through her upper body.