SAVING MYSELF

The incessant pounding in my skull brought me reluctantly back to consciousness. For a few long, painful moments I couldn’t figure out where I was. Why were my arms wrenched behind me? Why were my knees throbbing? And what the hell was jabbing into the small of my back?

And then, suddenly, I remembered. The stun gun. The stun gun was still wedged into the waistband of my jeans. My eyes flew open, my heart surging with hope. I was in some kind of lounge room, complete with a wet bar, a circular leather couch facing a flat-screen TV, and a poker table surrounded by tall stools. The lights were on, but dim. My feet were bound as well as my hands, and my jacket—and therefore my cell phone—were gone. Luckily, I still had on my baggy black sweater, which accounted for the fact that Cheyenne and Graham hadn’t found the stun gun while tying me up, which apparently one or both of them had done while I was knocked out. My friends were nowhere to be seen, and neither was evil walking-dead girl, but Graham was on the far side of the room, behind the bar, shoveling ice into a glass. Apparently he was going to need a tumbler full of cold vodka before shooting me in the head.

I wanted to say something to him, but then I realized I could use the fact that he still thought I was unconscious to my advantage. I looked around for a clock and found the glowing screen on the cable box. It was twelve minutes after twelve. If Josh kept his word, he’d be calling the police in exactly eighteen minutes. It had taken us about fifteen minutes to drive here. Which meant all I had to do was stall for half an hour or so and pray my friends were still alive.

Now if only I could think of a way to get my hands free. I tugged my wrists apart and found that the ties weren’t exactly tight, probably because my cast had gotten in the way. If I could tear the twine even a little bit, I should be able to slip it off. Jagged barnacles had worked wonders back on that island paradise I was trapped on over Christmas break, but there didn’t seem to be anything sharp lying around.

And then it hit me. Maybe I didn’t need something sharp. Maybe I could singe the twine with the stun gun, fraying it until I was able to pull my wrists apart.

Slowly, quietly, I leaned forward, dragging the back hem of my sweater upward with my tied hands. I had just angled my wrists over the business end of the stun gun, which was sticking out of my waistband by a few inches, when three flaws in my plan suddenly occurred to me. First, the stun gun made that crackling noise, which would definitely catch Graham’s attention. Second, if I attempted this, there was a solid chance I’d set my cast on fire. Third, there was also a solid chance I’d stun myself.

I glanced up at Graham as he poured brown liquid over the ice. The gun was on the edge of the bar. Screw it. Who cared if I stunned myself? This was the only plan I had, and if I didn’t at least try, I was going to be dead. Which was a lot worse than shocked and twitching on the floor. And if I managed to set myself on fire, it would, at the very least, create a diversion.

I took a deep breath and coughed, pressing the small of my back against the wall as I leaned forward. The stun gun sizzled to life, my coughing covering the sound, and I didn’t get a shock. I did, however, get a whiff of the faintest scent of fibers burning. I just hoped it was the twine and not the cast.

Graham dropped his glass, grabbed the gun, and started toward me. I tugged at my wrists, but they didn’t give. Shit.

“You’re awake,” he said.

I kept coughing, kept pressing, shaking my head. The burning scent filled my nostrils. How long would it be until he caught a whiff?

“Water,” I said. “I need water.”

Graham glanced over his shoulder at the wet bar. My arms ached from the effort of not moving while my body was racked with fake coughs. Any second I was going to shock myself.

“Please, Graham,” I choked. “Water.”

He seemed to decide I wasn’t much of a threat. As he turned and went back toward the bar, I yanked my hands apart as hard as I possibly could and they came free. The twine tumbled, singed, to the floor, just as Graham turned around again. My heart hit my throat. I kept my hands behind my back and shifted so that my butt came down atop the twine. I could feel the warm, burnt ends through the fabric of my jeans.

Slowly, Graham approached me with the water in one hand, the gun in the other. He crouched in front of me and held the glass to my lips, tipping it upward. The cold liquid filled my throat and actually did make me feel a bit better. I gauged my chances of knocking the gun out of his hand and getting to it before he did, all with my feet tied together and a cast on one arm.

Answer? Not good.

But at least my hands were free. That gave me the advantage of surprise. Hopefully I had a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

His nostrils flared and he glanced around. “Do you smell something burning?”

I lifted my shoulders. “Nope. And thanks.”

Graham looked down at the half-empty glass of water and suddenly appeared to be offended by it—like it illustrated some kind of weakness. He got up and dropped it on a side table, out of my reach, sloshing some liquid over the rim.

“Don’t know why I bothered. You’re gonna be dead soon anyway,” he said callously.

“Graham,” I said, my stomach twisting into knots. “Why are you doing this? I get Cheyenne with the crazy, but why you? I thought we were friends.”

“We could’ve been,” he said, clenching his jaw. “If it wasn’t for him.”

The word “him” was laced with venom.

“Josh? This is about Josh again?” I demanded.

His eyes widened incredulously. “He killed my sister!”

“He did not kill her!” I blurted, my heart pounding over my own recklessness. I couldn’t believe I was going to die for the two most obscure, insane reasons anyone could imagine dying for—some hundred-year-old supposed curse and the fact that a girl I never knew had dated my boyfriend two years ago, then taken her own life. “Jen killed herself. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s the truth! You’re going to kill me because Jen committed suicide? Do you not realize how crazy that is?”

Graham’s mouth flattened into an angry line and I saw his jaw working, tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. “You sound just like Sawyer,” he griped.

Sawyer. Sawyer was here somewhere. He wasn’t planning on hurting his own brother too, was he?

“Where is Sawyer, Graham?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even as I looked at the clock. It was now 12:20. “Is he okay?”

“Of course he’s okay,” Graham said with a scoff. “What do you think I’m gonna do, kill my own brother?”

He brought his hand, the one holding the gun, to his heart and pounded. Tears filled his eyes and I took a deep breath. He was becoming unhinged, and unhinged was not going to be good for me.

“I took that stupid phone he was using to warn you and we locked him here in one of the bedrooms until we could be done with this,” Graham said. “That’s how I got you here tonight. I texted you the directions from his dummy phone.”

So it was Sawyer all along. Sawyer was MT. Of course. It all made sense. He couldn’t come to me and tell me what was going on, or go to the police, without implicating Graham, so instead he’d tried to protect me anonymously—to protect us both. And what had he gotten for his efforts? He’d ended up jailed by his own brother and crazy Cheyenne.

“I just don’t get why he doesn’t get it,” Graham rambled, pacing away from me, his heavy shoes clomping across the gleaming wood floor. The second his back was turned I withdrew my hands from behind my back and yanked at the knot around my legs. But seconds later he started to turn around again and I had to hide my fingers after getting exactly nowhere. I bit my lip in frustration and tried not to let my desperation show in my eyes. “Josh Hollis drove Jen to kill herself. She was perfectly fine before he broke her heart. If it wasn’t for him, she’d still be alive right now!”

“I know you believe that, Graham, but please, think about it,” I said. “People in their right mind don’t kill themselves over breakups. They get makeovers, they find rebound guys, they post nasty videos about the guy on YouTube. Something had to be fundamentally wrong with her if she was going to—”

“There was nothing wrong with Jen!” he screeched, storming toward me across the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. “She was my best friend! I loved her more than I loved anyone else in the world. And Josh Hollis took her away from me. So that’s why I’m going to take you away from him.”

He pointed the gun at my head and cocked it. My heart stopped beating. His hand shook and his eyes welled. At any moment that thing could go off. At any moment my brains could be splattered all over the wall behind me. If there was ever a time to make a move, it was now.

“Think about Sawyer, Graham. If you kill me, he’ll never forgive you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “And then you’ll have lost your brother and your sister.”

“Shut up!” he said, bending and straightening his elbow, bringing the gun even closer to my skull. I wanted to reach out and grab it, but what if doing that made it go off? What if one flinch caused him to pull the trigger?

“You’re better than this, Graham,” I said, frantically rubbing my ankles together to try to free them from the twine. “Think about your father. Think about your brother. Think about your girlfriend.”

I tasted bile as I thought about Missy. Thought about how happy she would be once she heard I was gone.

Graham’s eyes narrowed. “You know, maybe I’ll just end you right now.”

At that moment the door opened. I prayed it was the police, but then I saw the shiny black boots in the doorway.

“Graham! You promised you wouldn’t do it without me!” Cheyenne whined.

Graham lowered the gun and started to turn. I used the moment of distraction to grab the stun gun out of my waistband with my right hand. Cheyenne’s eyes went wide, but she was too late. I lunged for Graham and hit the button, shocking him right in the lower leg. He went down, hard, and the gun went off. The shot was so loud my ears instantly began to ring. For a second the whole world went black as fear overtook every inch of my body, but then I realized I wasn’t hit.

And Cheyenne was on the floor.

“You bitch!” she screeched, holding on to her shin. Blood seeped between her fingers even as she tried to shimmy on her side toward the gun. My legs still bound, I crawled toward the gun on my one good hand and my knees, snaking past a twitching Graham Hathaway. Cheyenne reached out one blood-covered hand, just as my own fingers clasped around the gun’s handle. I trained it right on her face and braced my cast against the back of the couch, struggling my way to my feet.

“Don’t. Move,” I said through my teeth.

Cheyenne gaped at me for a moment, like she couldn’t believe I was standing there alive. Like she couldn’t believe she had lost. Then she curled into a ball and started to cry.

At that moment Sawyer and Noelle came bursting into the room, out of breath but very much alive, with half a dozen cops at their backs. I looked at them as they took in the scene: Graham on his back, drooling out the side of his mouth; Cheyenne mewling and bleeding all over the floor; and me clutching a gun I had no clue how to use, precariously leaned against the back of the couch with my ankles tied together.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “But this time I saved myself.”