Tag: suspense

Everything was blurry.

Fuzzy.

Distant and yet far too close.

Before him Cara climbed out of a dumpster, crying and covered in blood. Then as she lay on the cold, hard ground, she gasps when he throws a dead girl out of the dumpster.

A man climbed out behind them. Dave Davidson. He was laughing and held a knife in his hand. “You like the dumpster, don’t you, because you’re trash,” he called out to Cara and the dead body.

Then the man climbed out, held out the knife, it glinted in the moonlight as it sliced downwards, through Cara’s delicate flesh. She screamed. He screamed. Then …

“Wake up, man, it’s just a nightmare,” a voice ordered. A familiar voicing.

Blinking Liam opened his eyes and saw Graham sitting beside him. Surprised to find himself in a bed, in what had to be a hospital, he shot his best friend and fellow search and rescue worker.

“You must have let them bring me here,” he growled. Sitting around in a hospital bed was the last thing he wanted to be doing while Cara was out there somewhere having who knew what done to her.

“You could barely stand upright and you hadn’t slept, you have a concussion, you need rest,” Graham replied without a hint of remorse.

“Being awake is just as much a nightmare as being asleep,” he muttered.

“She really got to you, huh? In just a few hours.” Graham looked like he couldn’t believe it, and Liam agreed it made no sense.

“She’s … different. Special. And I failed her.”

“You didn’t fail her, man. I think the lump on your head is proof of that.”

“If I didn’t fail her she’d he here right now not in some …” Liam trailed off as what he’d dreamed about clicked.

The dumpster. His mind hadn’t just conjured that out of thin air, the smell on the dead woman under the sheet that Dave had left behind had come from a dumpster.

Shoving off the covers, he ripped the IV from his arm and pushed away Graham’s hands when his best friend tried to keep him in the bed. “I know where she is, and you better not stop me from getting to her.”

It was weird.

As Cara sobbed she was torn between hoping she suffocated once her nose got stuffed up enough that with the gag in her mouth she couldn’t breathe, and absolute terror at the thought of dying. She understood it was probably a better option than whatever her abductor had planned, but she still clung to the hope that someone might come for her.

Probably not Liam.

Chances were if the blow to the head hadn’t killed him then exposure to the elements would. If she was going to be saved it would probably only be because someone stumbled upon her by accident. Even if he did survive, question of all questions – how does he find Cara before it’s too late?

“Do you have to make so much noise?” a voice demanded, the man from the woods, she realised, and a second later light flooded over her.

Okay, no blindfold, just kept in the dark.

In a dumpster it looked like as feet suddenly landed beside her and the bottom of the dumpster shook as the man jumped in to join her.

“No dying until I finished playing with you,” the man continued in what could only be described a childish whine.

But he did lean down and rip the duct tape off, freeing the rag that had been stuffed in her mouth and allowing her to drag in lungfuls of air. Guess it didn’t matter anymore whether or not dying was the better option, because she wasn’t dying.

Yet.

“Out you go.” The man leaned down, dug his shoulder into her stomach and then hoisted her up, before literally tossing her out of the dumpster.

Landing hard and awkwardly since her arms were still bound behind her back, Cara cried out. Her momentary hope that the sound would be heard was dashed when she glanced around to see that they were outside a building site. There were no signs of life, and no buildings close enough that screaming would alert anyone.

The man’s face appeared over the edge of the dumpster and he grinned at her as he held up a knife which glinted in the fading light of the sun.

“Time to play,” he grinned, then began to laugh.

“Where is she? I have to find her!” Liam screamed, feeling his control snapping.

Hours.

It had been hours since he’d woken up in the forest to find Cara and Dave Davidson gone. Because his phone had been flat and he didn’t have a charger, he’d had to walk miles to the nearest cabin to get help.

Which had arrived around noon. Several police cars now sat outside his cabin, an ambulance had been and gone, paramedics had examined him, tried to convince him to let them take him to the hospital, and left when he outright refused.

There was no way he was going anywhere unless it was following up on a lead on Cara. At first the cops had thought he was crazy when he started ranting that a man who was supposedly dead had attacked him and abducted a woman he’d seen crash her car in the storm.

It was more than obvious they’d been ready to slap handcuffs on him and haul him down to the station. It was probably only that he knew a few of these guys and they could vouch for him that had saved him. Thankfully there was DNA evidence on the young woman Dave had left behind under the tarp and it had been quickly compared to the samples they had from Dave and it was confirmed that the supposedly dead killer had killed that woman too.

Proof was good but it didn’t help them find Cara.

Honestly, Liam would rather be sitting in a jail cell right now, charged with murder, if it meant that Cara was safe and sound.

“We’ll find her,” one of the cops, a woman about his age who he’d worked with a few times, who had flirted with him almost every time they met, tried to reassure him.

It didn’t work.

Cara had burst into his life out of nowhere, and nothing could have prepared him for the feelings that were already developing. When he’d watched her car go down the side of the ravine, there was no way he could have predicted he’d wind up falling for her.

But he had fallen for her.

Was falling hard and fast.

And he’d failed her. Failed to protect her. And now she was alone, at the mercy of a man who from the evidence left behind on the body of the unfortunate young woman left outside the cabin, enjoyed torturing his victims before he choked the life out of them.

A dank, rotten smell was the first thing Cara registered.

Pain stabbed behind her eyes, reminding her of the agony she’d felt as her car went sliding down the side of the mountain.

Only this time she was alone.

She’d been alone then too, but then Liam had shown and he’d made everything okay. He’d saved her life. If he hadn’t been there then she had no doubts that she would have perished in the storm.

Now Liam had been left behind. She didn’t even know if he was dead or alive.

What if the blow to the head had killed him?

How long would his body lie out there before someone realised he was missing and went looking for him?

For some reason the thought of him discarded and forgotten made her tear up, and it was only then that she registered the fact that she was gagged.

Which meant crying was out if she didn’t want her nose to get all stuffed up and she suffocated.

Where was she?

After the man had knocked Liam out, he’d come for her. Hit her over the head too. There were vague snippets of memory. Being carried. Her wrists being roughly bound behind her back. Being tossed about in what she thought was the trunk of a car. Pain. Nausea. A sickening feeling of spinning … and spinning … and spinning … that she wasn’t sure was real or imagined.

Now she was here.

Someplace dark.

Or maybe there was a blindfold over her eyes. She was so cold, so numb, it was hard to feel anything properly.

Except the fear.

This is getting intense, she whispered inside her head, the same way she would have said it aloud if Liam had still been here, to break the tension, ease her fear.

Only it didn’t work.

instead she began to sob.

The world felt like it was tipping and turning beneath him.

Liam groaned as he rolled over onto his back, his memories filtering into his pounding head. Despite his head pounding with pain and confusion, his first thought was Cara.

Scrambling up, the world did another sicking spin, and he almost went right back down to his knees again, but he managed to stay upright.

Scanned the area, but the forest was empty.

No Cara.

No intruder.

Dave. The man’s name had been Dave Davidson. The kind of name that stuck in your head, even if you didn’t have a more pressing reason to remember the man.

If both Cara and Dave were gone then it had to mean the man had taken her.

Already running before he even registered it, Liam weaved and staggered as the concussion he was sure he’d been given made everything blur around him.

But he couldn’t stop.

He had to get to the cabin.

Had to save Cara.

Hearing her call him her boyfriend, even if he knew she was just trying to convince Dave that they didn’t know who he was, had shifted something inside him. Made him realise how quickly he was falling for the beautiful woman who was so brave and strong.

He couldn’t lose her.

Not like this.

Only when he reached the cabin he found the car Dave had arrived in was gone. The only sign that it had ever been there was the tarp he’d seen Dave removing from the trunk, now lying on the ground. A pair of feet sticking out from beneath it.

Dave had obviously come here to hide out, to dispose of the body, but he’d left in a hurry because now he had a new victim.

Cara.