I screamed for dear life as soon as I realized that he was on the phone. It was too late, though. He’d already hung up by the time I began and just turned the music back to full blast.

But, still, I screamed. I didn’t know what else to do as I tried to struggle against my bonds.

It didn’t matter, of course, and all I did was scream myself hoarse.

The only consolation I had was that I was pretty sure Matthew had been on the other line. He wasn’t dead, after all. Just that thought brought a small smile to my face. No matter what was going to happen to me, he’d still be all right.

Or, even better, he’d come find me.

We began to slow down, and my little Civic pulled off the main road onto a gravel country road or driveway. I wasn’t sure if we were north or south of town, but from the shifting of the car it felt like we’d turned left off the highway.

We bumped and crunched along the drive, my body doing a bad impression of the worm, for a few minutes until we came to a stop and Derrick put the car in park. He popped the trunk before he got out of the car, the light blinding as it slipped in around the edges of the pure blackness.

I closed my eyes against the glare of the afternoon and tried to turn my head away from the brightness as my world suddenly lit up brighter than the Fourth of July.

My former friend, now my captor, crunched heavily on the gravel as he came back and opened the trunk all the way. I squinted in the bright light, my hair all over my face and my eyes slightly swollen. A faceless silhouette against the day, he just stared down at me.

“Need anything? Water? Food? I’m not a monster. Not really.”

“I just want to know why you’re doing this, Derrick. I thought you were my friend.”

“I was. That’s why I’m offering you food and water, Becks.”

“Don’t call me that. You don’t deserve to call me that.”

“I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want.” Then he slammed the trunk shut again, the lid booming and the air compression popping my ears.

“Fuck you, Derrick!” I screamed, kicking my legs against the sides of the trunk.

He paused for a moment, listening to my tantrum, before his feet began their crunch-crunch on the gravel again as he walked away. I heard him step onto hardwood of some sort, and what sounded like a screen door open and close.

I sat there in the heat of the trunk, breathing hard.

I needed to get out of here. I needed to do something. Lying around here wasn’t going to do me any good, and I knew it.

And then I remembered my jumper cables and their metal, nearly serrated teeth. Back in high school, when Zeke had first been teaching me how to drive, he’d explained that the teeth were cut that way to help keep a grip on the battery terminals. I hoped that they were gnarly enough to cut through the silvery tape enclosing my wrists.

I curled myself up into a ball and tried to slither my body around so I could grab the cables. The trunk wasn’t exactly built for a human body or anything, but it was still large enough for me to maneuver in. I scrambled for a moment, got my hands around the cables, and paused, my ears perked up and listening.

If Derrick found me out of place, he’d start to wonder what I was doing. And I didn’t want to find out what his reaction would be in that case—especially if I was still bound with the duct tape.

Finally, I had them securely in my hands.

I swallowed hard as I moved them around towards the ends, and squeezed the handles to open up the teeth.

As I began to saw through the duct tape, though, I stopped.

The door opened as Derrick came back outside.

Panic nearly froze me, but I kept going, deciding that whatever fate awaited me at the end of this trip couldn’t be any worse than the consequences of him catching me. Almost there, I thought, almost there.

The screen door swung open and he paused on the deck, or stairs, or whatever.

I continued to saw. Continued to try and gain my freedom.

“No, Ma! No! I told you, I’ll be home soon, okay? Meatloaf after I get home, okay? Promise!”

I swallowed hard and tossed the cables aside.

I heard heavy footfalls on wood as he came back down to the gravel drive.

I scrambled as softly as I could, trying to get back into place, muffling my grunts as I shifted back around by one hundred-eighty degrees, to the position I’d been in before.

I heard more footsteps on the gravel as he came back around to the trunk.

I swallowed hard, consciously tried to look meek and broken, instead of on the verge of escape.

He inserted the keys in the trunk of my car and popped the latch.

I closed my eyes and tried to turn away from the blinding light that I knew was coming.

The smell of kerosene, or diesel, hit my nose. I wasn’t sure which.

I opened one eye and looked up at him.

He was still silhouetted against the bright, Colorado sky, the faded blue forming a deceiving halo around him. He held a red metal gas canister in one hand, the kind you used when you were going out to get gas for your snowmobile or lawn mower.

I kept my face slightly turned away in fear. It wasn’t like I had to pretend to pull that off.

He stared down at me and sniffed once. The canister in his hand shifted, the liquid inside sloshing, as he looked down on me with disdain.

“Wh-wh-what’s that?” I asked, my voice trembling. I knew full well what it was, though, and the terror was coursing through me like the Colorado River.

“D-d-diesel,” he mocked as he shoved the canister in next to my head, before slamming the door shut with another thunderous bang.

I breathed a shaky sigh of relief, my whole body on edge as he walked back around to the driver’s side.

On his way to the driver’s seat, though, I could clearly him muttering. “Stupid bitch,” he said. “Stupid fucking bitch.” He got in the car, slammed the door shut, and started it up.

Carefully, I tore the bonds holding my wrists together, separating my arms for the first time in what had felt like hours. I held back my groan of relief.

He flipped the radio back on and turned the music all the way up.

I rubbed my wrists quietly, a soft whine escaping my throat as I tried to figure out my next move. Once we got onto the road, I’d have to wait for him to pull over again. If he drove on the highway like all the other locals during the summer, jumping from the trunk wasn’t going to be an option.

I might not have known why he was doing this, but I knew one thing for sure. This was not going to end well.