All the Little Raindrops(31)

It all happened so fast. Evan knocked the gun out of the wounded man’s hand, but the man succeeded in getting his hands around Evan’s neck, and they both went down, Evan underneath the man with the pick in his eye, blood flying into the air around them.

Noelle screamed, circling behind the man and using the rope to wrap around his neck. She pulled with every ounce of strength in her body, his head bending backward but his hands remaining on Evan’s neck, whose face was a ghastly shade of crimson.

It was not going to end this way, and especially not with this man who had led them upstairs over and over to be used and degraded. She gritted her teeth and let out a yell, pulling once and then again, the man making hideous wet grunting noises as blood spurted from his eye socket.

He almost took her with him when he fell, toppling over and landing on his back. Evan scrabbled from beneath him, his good hand going to his throat as he coughed and wheezed and worked to regain his breath.

Was the man dead? She had no idea, but she hoped so. Rest in hell.

No time. There’s no time.

Who knew how many more were behind those two?

She pulled on Evan, and he stumbled along with her back to the main hallway, where a piece of falling ceiling barely missed them. They jumped over it and then dodged a fiery section of wall as it popped and crackled and burned.

A loading dock. There was some sort of loading dock ahead, a pulley next to the garage-type door. Noelle dropped the rope and used both her hands to pull on the chain. The door rose with a creak and a groan, and when it was open enough that they could scoot under, they both did, rising to their feet on the other side, standing on the edge of a dock.

Outside. They were outside, and it was night.

“This way,” she said to Evan, pulling his shirt as she bolted to the concrete steps that led to the ground. They practically flew down them.

And then they ran.

She had no idea where they were headed. All she knew was that it was away. And they were free.

Behind them, the building was a wild inferno. She glanced back, just once. The building appeared to be a giant factory or some old warehouse, and the entire thing was going up in flames, sparks shooting into the nighttime sky like fireworks. If she weren’t so petrified, fighting for each breath that came into her burning lungs, she might have thought it beautiful. It might have looked like victory.

Instead, she sobbed with fear and pain, grabbing Evan’s uninjured hand as they raced into the night.

They ran until they couldn’t run anymore. The terrain was desertlike, the earth hard packed and cracked from the sun. The light from the fire faded, but the moon shone down, lighting their way.

Her legs gave out, and she crumpled to the ground. Her body had done all it could for her after being virtually immobile for weeks, if not months, brutalized, half starved. It would not go on.

“Noelle,” Evan wheezed. “We have to keep going.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just need to rest. Just for a little while.”

He looked like he might argue, but then he sat down beside her, lying back, both of them staring up at the twinkling stars.

She heard only movements of the night, a soft breeze that stirred the brambly bushes dotted here and there, the faint scurrying of some small animal. She had no idea where they were. Had there only been two henchmen in that building with them? Had the men who had raped her traveled to be there? You’ve been rented.

She pushed that from her mind. It was too much. She had all she could handle not to fall to pieces.

“Do you think there are others coming to look for us?” Evan rasped. His thoughts had obviously traveled along a similar path.

“Maybe,” she said. Who were they? Did they have sweeping helicopters or all-terrain vehicles? Would they find them where they lay in this unknown desert under the stars, the burning building where they’d been held prisoner too far away to see?

It felt like they’d emerged onto the wasteland of some other planet. She knew that wasn’t true because the same stars she’d known all her life were overhead. There was Ursa Major, and her star sign, Gemini. The twins.

They lay there, still and silent for several more minutes, her lungs filling with air and the acrid smoke clearing from her sinuses. She felt his arm brush hers, and then his hand, his two fingers linking with her own and squeezing.

Oh God. Oh God.

They were holding hands the same way they had for so long, but now their shoulders were touching and they were free. She let out a gasping sob, turning to him and weeping against his side. He raised his arm and put it around her, and she thought she heard him crying softly, too, but she wasn’t sure.

Her sobs dwindled to soft cries, and then her tears dried. Wordlessly, they sat up and then stood. They had to keep moving. Soon, morning would come and they would lose the cover of darkness.

They walked this time, Noelle leading as Evan followed behind. She glanced at him now and again, his broken hand cradled against his chest. It wasn’t bleeding, though, which was good. But the damage, she knew, was contained within, the mayhem of which had allowed him to collapse his knuckle so that it could fit through the small opening of the bars of his cage.

His cage.

Horror rose within her at the vision of where they’d been such a short time ago.

It didn’t seem real. Her mind was spinning, hysteria seeping into the cracks of her thoughts.