CaughtInTheTrap (2 page)

Twigs snapped under her feet and leaves from low-hanging branches slapped her in the face as they ran.  She tripped over tree roots sticking from underneath the ground, causing her hand to separate from his grip.  She lay on the ground in pain unable to get up right away.

Carla heard the mad curse as he turned around and came back. “Get up! We have to keep moving.”

The pain in her hip tore through her; she wasn’t going anywhere. Annoyed, she shouted at the man that didn’t have any compassion or kindness in his voice. “Look, asshole! I don’t know who you are or what trouble you’ve gotten my ass in, but I’m not going anywhere.  I can’t move.”  She touched her hip; the wet spot had spread.  It had rained the night before and she could’ve fallen in a puddle of water.

“
You have to get up.  I’m trying to save your life.”
 

Her leg was numbing from the thigh down to her knee. “I can’t run anymore.”

He walked behind her and lifted her shirt. She heard his faint cursing. “You’ve been shot in the hip.”

Shot! Stunned, Carla panicked.  She was going to die in the woods, and no one would know where to find her body.  He would leave her there to die while he escaped, saving his own life. “God, I’ve been shot! Why, Lord, is this happening?” She cried.

“
You have to be quiet.  It’s just a flesh wound. I have to get you out of here.  Do you have any friends that live around here?”
 

She ignored the pain long enough to look at him. “Does it look like I would have friends that live around here?”

He frowned and his voice deepened. “Look, I can leave you here and let him find you and finish the job, or you can cooperate; which is it going to be?”

 Carla snapped back. “I don’t have any friends that live around here. And if I lived around here do you think I would be catching a freaking bus?”
 

“
Hey! Keep your voice down. We don’t want to attract attention. We have to get to your place before they find us. Let me think of a plan.”
 

“
I live a long way from here. Unless, you’re able to pull a car from your ass; we’re stuck here. Oh, lawd, I’m going to die and don’t even know why,” she whined again.
 

“
Stop crying! I’m going to get us out of here.”  He picked Carla up and placed her under a tree a few feet into the woods. “Don’t make a sound.  I’ll be right back.”
 

Carla heard his footsteps drift away. The silence of the woods didn’t sit well with her.  She heard a noise in the tall grass not too far away. “Oh, God, please don’t be rats or raccoons…please!”  Her leg went completely numb as she braced against the tree.  Whatever was crawling to her probably smelled the fresh blood dripping from her wound.

What if it’s a snake!
She panicked and stood up using the base of the tree as a crutch.  Standing on her good leg, she would drag her damaged leg behind her.  She might not be a survivalist, but she knew she had to get the hell out of danger.  And with tattoo man gone, now was her chance to escape.  She limped away from the animal stalking her.  Wandering blindly into the woods, she had no idea where she was.  The houses in the area were not close to each other and the dense wood acted as a privacy barrier.  Given where they’d entered the woods there were no homes in the undeveloped woods that led into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
 

Carla hobbled to the next tree and leaned against it to rest.  She needed light.  The moonlight wasn’t bright enough to pierce the thick layers of trees.  She reached into the pocket of her smock to get her cell phone. “My phone! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” Her pocket was empty. “No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” She covered her mouth to keep from screaming out in frustration.  Her phone probably dropped from her pocket in the bus shelter.  All her identification was in her purse that was left in the bus shelter.  The foreign man with the accent knew her name and where she lived if he took her purse.

Carla dropped her head back against the tree wanting to cry but thanking God at the same time that she lived alone.  If the man went to her apartment looking for her, no one would be in harm’s way.  She heard twigs snapping under heavy footsteps in the distance.  Was it the tattooed man looking for her or the well-groomed goon?  She stood behind the girth of the tree perfectly still holding her breath until the footsteps faded away from her.  She was stuck in the middle of running or staying put.  She chose to stay put since running was not an option with her injured hip.

Hip and leg injuries were nothing new to her.  She was athletic. She was a track and field athlete that trained hard and competed for many years to gain a spot on the 2008 Summer Olympics.  At age 19, Carla traveled to China as a member of team USA’s Women’s Track and Field. During a training exercise for the 400m quarterfinals, she suffered a stress fracture in her foot and had to sit out the event. She had expected to win a gold medal. She had achieved her biggest accomplishment and also the worst letdown of her life.  While, all wasn’t lost, she left China with a host of new friends and lots of memories.

Carla wiggled her toes; she had feeling returning to her leg.  She would rest it for a while longer before trying to walk on it.  She wiped sweat from her forehead.  It was humid with no wind blowing to create a breeze. Checking her watch, it was almost 9:00 o’clock.  She could only hope her sister Paula would call the police if she didn’t get an answer from Carla by morning.  It was not her routine to stay away from home all night and not let someone know where she was.  Paula always called to make sure she made it to and from work in one piece. The connecting buses she had to catch to Cleveland Heights took her through some rough areas of town. And when Paula married and moved to Michigan with their disabled mother, the calls gave their mother a piece of mind.

“
Who are you fooling?” she asked looking up at the sliver of moon peeking between the trees and puffy clouds. “Paula wouldn’t know where to begin to tell the police where to look for me.  I have to get myself out of this mess.”
 

Carla took off her jacket and tied it around her waist.  She decided to walk back in the direction they came from instead of getting lost in the dark woods.  If she could make it back to the main road, she would cross the street and take the horse trail to avoid detection in case the gunman or the tattooed guy, were still looking for her.  She had to assume both men had given up looking for her by now.  She hadn’t heard another sound, other than her own breathing, since the footsteps.

She made it to the main road and limped quickly across the street and onto the horse trail. Carla had to find her bearings.  The trail was familiar to her during the day but at night, nothing was visible, and she had to feel her way along the path.
God, how did this day end like this?  I really need to rewind it and start over for a better ending
. She talked to herself to keep her mind off the eeriness of the dark path. She was a city girl and not into camping or trekking through pitch-black woods. 

As she made her way down the trail, she remembered what ended her relationship with Greg.  He was an outdoors type of guy and she knew that before getting involved with him.  It was fun in the beginning, and she was fine doing the hiking and biking in daylight hours but when it came to nightfall, she chose to be home. That was always her rule.  As the years went by, she learned he was an uncompromising person.  When she suggested, they do something different other than play in the woods he would shut her down.  If their vacations didn’t include exploring national parks and forests, he wanted no part of it.

After four years together, Carla decided she was tired of giving in to his demands and broke it off.  Her signature perfume was not insect repellant, and she fancied to go out on the town with her friends dressed nicely once in a while. Since walking away from Greg, she had yet to find another relationship.

Now 28-years old, Carla seemed to attract men that felt they didn’t need to wine and dine her. Because she was athletic, the majority of the men she met were gym rats. She hated they assumed she didn’t eat to keep her figure or that she hated being girly because she was comfortable wearing sports gear.  None of that was true.

Carla stopped walking to rest against a wood railing.  The smell of horse manure surrounded her. She flexed her leg; the pain in her hip was giving way to a dull throbbing ache.  It was too dark to tell if the wound was bleeding, but her jacket wasn’t any damper when she touched it with her hand. “I want to get home and pretend this day never happened,” she whined softly.

Tired, hungry, sweaty, and dirty, she pushed herself off the fence to continue down the path. She slowed after hearing a noise behind her. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Animals are out looking for food; don’t freak out at every sound you hear.”  She kept her feet moving.  They hit the dirt trail with a thud even though she felt she was walking normally.

Carla came upon a sign indicating that the bridle path was closed 100 feet ahead, and a makeshift detour was available.  Feeling defeated, she slumped against a tree.  She couldn’t take the detour path since it was unfamiliar to her. She had no choice but to turn back.

Tears threatened to fill her eyes, but she pushed them away.  She was not a quitter.  Somehow, this test was put to her for a reason, and she was determined to pass it.  She traveled to China alone and back without a scratch, she could definitely find her way out of a suburb of her hometown.  She straightened her shoulders and turned around to walk the distance to the main road for a second time.  Large drops of water hit her on the forehead before a crack of thunder roared, and the clouds burst open in a downpour. “Great! Now it’s raining to top off my jacked up night.”

The rain would act as her tears as gloom consumed her. Her stride slowed as exhaustion began to take over. She’d been up since 5:30 in the morning and wondered how much longer this torture would last.

Not paying attention to her surrounding any longer, Carla let her guard down and it was too late to react to the hand that grabbed her shoulder and yanked her around.  Her eyes widened with fear, but her voice held contempt as she said, “If you want to kill me, I won’t make it easy for you; I’ll fight you.”

The rain had drenched him too.  His hair was slicked to his head. “I told you to stay put.  Why did you take off?”

“
Do I come across as a fool to you? I’m not an idiot who waits for the killer to come back to finish the job.”
 

“
I’m not the one you should be worried about,” he said slowly.
 

Carla wiped the rain away from her face.  She was soaked to the bone.  The thin t-shirt she wore underneath her smock fused to her skin. “Then let me go. Let me go home and forget about this night.”

“
I can’t do that and we can’t stay here and argue about it. Now let’s go,” he demanded.
 

He reached for her, and she drew her arm away from his grasp. “Screw you! I’m getting the hell out of here by myself.  I don’t need or want your help.  You’ve done enough for me tonight.”

“
Lady, you’re making a big mistake.  He will find you and kill you.”
 

“
Who is
HE
and why me? I don’t know anything about what was going on in that bus shelter.”
 

“
You’re in danger and I’m the only one who can protect you. I will do that if you will stop fighting me and cooperate.”
 

Wordlessly she backed away from him.  The flash of lightning gave a brief glimpse of his face.  He did not have friendly eyes and wasn’t a young adult as she first suspected. “This is bullshit.  I’m not going anywhere with you. I did my part to help you, now let me go.”

His voice deepened as he said, “This is bullshit! I’m tired of debating with you.  You helped me for a reason.  So you know I’m not a threat to you.”

“
Then tell me what is going on? One minute I’m waiting to catch a bus to go home from work and I wind up in the middle of a gun battle.”
 

“
I don’t have time to explain.” He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.  Carla stifled a scream when his hand smashed against the wound on her hip.  She tried to beat on his back with her fist but didn’t have the strength.  She was at his mercy now.
 

Zach dumped the complaining female in the passenger seat of the car.  He crawled over her crumpled body to sit behind the steering wheel.  He peeled away from the curb letting the tires spin on the rain-slicked pavement.

Out of nowhere, she yelled at the top of her lungs. “What the hell is going on? Why am I being abducted by you!”

“Can you please shut up and let me think!” He yelled back at her.

She had got quiet before she said in a low but authoritative voice, “Make this the last time you tell me to shut up. You’re not dealing with a timid female that will take that shit from you.”

Zach removed the wet baseball cap from his head and tossed it in the backseat of the car. He had to think of what to do with the woman with the big mouth. If she hadn’t been in the bus shelter, he would have completed his mission and been long gone.  But now he had her. She was in the middle of everything that went down.

The whole plan had blown up, and he should have scrubbed it to regroup. However, it was too late to call a stop to it once she entered the bus shelter.  This case was huge and required help from international police agencies as well as the FBI Special Forces teams and the ATF.  He was infuriated that his backup was not in place as planned, and now her life rested solely in his hands.

“I’m talking to you,” she spat at him.  “Where are you taking me?  My family will call the police if I don’t come home tonight.”

He ignored her and concentrated on the hindrance of having her with him.  He would have to call his commander to report the incident and that he had Carla Parker under his protection; that wouldn’t go over well.  The plan had been set, and the execution was precise down to the last detail.  How it got messed up in the flash of an eye was beyond him. Carla Parker was supposed to be detained before reaching either one of the bus shelters in the area and replaced by a female ATF agent.