The Girl in the Box 01 - Alone Read Free Page B

define, I trusted him – a little. “All right. Let’s go.”
    We watched as the young man (so tempted to call him Hottie) and Oldie split up, each headed in a different direction to search the store. We waited until Oldie had walked down an aisle and Hottie had his back turned before making our move. We walked out the entrance door and into the parking lot, and Reed’s pace quickened. The snow sloshed beneath us and the cold bored into gaps in my clothing that I didn’t know were there.
    As we approached his car, I looked up. The sun was still hiding behind the clouds; I had yet to see it. I looked over my shoulder. The two stooges weren’t following us. I turned to Reed to make a wisecrack and stopped, my mouth agape.
    A monstrous hand with long, pointed fingernails was wrapped around Reed’s throat. His olive skin was turning purple and there was no sound coming from his mouth, which was open. His eyes were locked on me and his hands were wrapped around an arm that looked bigger than my torso. My eyes followed the arm to a man, at least a foot taller than me, built thick and muscled like a pro bodybuilder.
    His head was huge, hair tangled and matted, dark with streaks of gray running through and it almost covered his brow. Furrowed above his black eyes were two eyebrows that were shaped like knife blades. His sideburns rolled down into a scraggly and unkempt beard that ran around his mouth.
    Oh God, his mouth.
    Pointed teeth. I’ve never seen anything like them – and his lips upturned in a cruel smile, his tongue lashing back and forth, not quite concealed by his incisors.
    “Hello, little doll,” he growled in a voice barely audible above the wind as he crept toward me. “My name is Wolfe. I’ve come to collect you.”

 
Three
    I felt fear creep through me; the sudden sickness for home that told me that I wasn’t sure I was ready to be out in the world. It only lasted a few seconds, and then I brought down my right hand in a hammerblow against the weakest part of Wolfe’s wrist.
    And it bounced off.
    Wolfe didn’t even grunt in acknowledgment of my attack. He reached for me with his other hand – and I have to give him credit: he was fast .
    I was faster. I swept in below his arm and rammed my head into his solar plexus. Not my ideal choice, but I was a little off balance and I didn’t want him to get ahold of my neck. I slammed my forehead into his stomach, straightening my spine. I’d broken boards like this training with Mother, and it’s not without discomfort.
    He didn’t react. My head felt like I had hit a wall where it should have been soft tissue. I spun to slide under his arm to get behind him, but the pain from my failed headbutt slowed me. He grabbed me around my turtleneck and lifted me off my feet as if he were picking up a head of lettuce one-handed. I felt the blood pooling in my brain, fighting to get out through the veins he had squeezed shut.
    “Hey!” A voice drew my attention and Wolfe’s. I was still struggling, but two men in their twenties approached wearing heavy coats and jeans. “What are you doing?” Their faces were contorted with rage and the one that was speaking pointed at Wolfe. “You can’t treat a girl that way! Drop her!”
    Wolfe acted as though he did not hear them and the two of them rushed at him. I saw it coming through the haze that was beginning to cloud my vision, even if they didn’t. Wolfe flung Reed into the side of a car and he ricocheted off, coming to rest in a pile on the ground. I would have worried about him if I wasn’t too busy trying to free myself to take a breath.
    Wolfe turned his body so that his left hand, the one he wasn’t choking me with, could deal with them. His backhand sent the first flying a good six feet in the air and he landed with a crack on the asphalt almost fifteen feet away. It was so loud when he landed that it even caught my attention, and by this point sparkles of light were filling my eyes.
    The second guy