Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (40 page)

I kind of remembered him hitting me.

Maybe my jaw hurt from that, too.

He hadn’t belabored it, from what I could recall. I’d taken those hits more as a warning, or a reminder maybe, versus any kind of true warm up to the main event.

On the other hand, he hadn’t done much to try and contain his glee. Glee at having me handcuffed in his car. Glee at killing what he thought had been Nik. He’d grinned at me more than a few times, and although I kept my mouth shut, knowing anything I said would only make things worse, for them and for me, Evers took the girls with us, anyway.
 

I didn’t protest that, either, knowing it would only make him happier.

Then again, like a lot of people like him, I imagine, he seemed to have a kind of sixth sense around what I didn’t want him to do.

He hadn’t seemed to know that “Nik” was actually Razmun, though.

It was a slim hope, given the silence on that front, but I held onto it anyway.

I also couldn’t help but hope that Evers not knowing that Razmun had been masquerading as Nik also lent credence to Nik being alive. Meaning, if Nik had been killed back at Misty’s, chances were, Evers would know that already. He wouldn’t have bought the Nik costume Razmun wore...or gloated so intensely at the thought of having killed him with a bullet to the heart. I figured Razmun had Nik somewhere, most likely.

Of course, with Razmun dead, that didn’t help me much.

I wasn’t blindfolded this time, at least.

Then again, Evers seemed not at all worried by the possibility that I might survive this little jaunt, which reminded me it was a slim possibility, at best.
 

Given the gags on all three of us, as well as the tinted windows and separation panel from the driver’s area in the back seat of what I now identified as Evers’ brand new, black, BMW SUV, (license plate BIGBOY6, if I remembered correctly from Gantry’s report), I supposed he didn’t have to worry too much.

Well, depending on how far he planned on going.

Knowing Evers, he likely believed his tremendous good fortune extended to busted tail lights and flat tires, as well as getting off for attempted murder and felony sexual assault. He was definitely one of those guys who thought he was born under a lucky star of some kind. Really, he seemed to think he was invincible.

Hell, maybe he was. Maybe psychopaths had their own version of a guardian angel.

My ribs hurt like hell by then, although I was leaning more towards “cracked” than “broken” at that point. Strangely, I felt more focused, despite having been drugged. More than I had in that meth farmhouse. Definitely more than the last time I’d found myself cuffed to a car door.

I wasn’t alone now, so maybe that was part of it.

I also knew who had me. I knew Gantry had this license plate number, and that if he lost sight of both Evers and me, which he likely had by now, then he’d probably call in the big guns pretty damned quick. I only hoped it was quick enough.

Plus, the guy who had me...was only one guy. A steroid-sized, psychotic guy who hated my guts, liked killing women and just shot someone dead at point-blank range right in front of me––but, yeah. One guy. It was an improvement over a small army of shape-shifting aliens. Barely.

I moved around subtly in the seat, trying to get a sense of my range and watching Evers in the rearview mirror. I could move. A little.

Not enough to do much with it, however, especially with my ankles cuffed to the chair in front of me. I tried to move my legs and feet subtly, but Evers’ eyes flickered to the mirror when I did it, presumably because I’d jerked on his chair. There wasn’t much give there, anyway.

He only grinned at me in the mirror, obviously still getting off on having me tied up.

“Morning, beautiful,” he said, smiling over the partition between the front and the back.

I didn’t answer.

I tried the implant link again, but no luck. Wherever Nik was, I chose to believe he’d been knocked unconscious, not that he was bleeding out somewhere I’d never get to in time.
 

I looked at Jazzy and Hilary, who were still knocked out. I wondered if I could use my teeth somehow to get off one or both of their gags. I wondered if it would do any good, if I did.

Jazzy turned then, blinking at me with bleary, half-focused eyes.

So their drugs were wearing off, too.

That was good. Conscious was always better than unconscious, when it came to risky escape plans. It hit me again that we had a rapidly closing window to get out of here before we were dead. I had no doubt whatsoever that Evers would kill both of the teenagers, if only to get at me. I was fighting to think through my still drug-fogged head when it hit me...my options were really damned limited. Really, I could think of only one.

I slammed my shoulder into the glass of the window next to me.
 

I saw Evers look back. That time, his eyes narrowed.

“Dream on, bitch,” he said, his eyes still holding that predatory look. “How stupid do you think I am? You really think I’d leave you enough room for something like that?”
 

I didn’t answer.

Looking at the window, I realized he was right. I was pulled too low to get at the window with my shoulder. That eyebolt contraption saw to that. So did the padlocked seatbelt. My knee or elbow were out of the question, for obvious reasons.

One option left.

I slammed my head directly into the glass, doing it before I could think about it much.

Next to me, Jazzy let out a shocked shriek through her gag. It was quiet from the gag, but I still heard it, even through the daze of probably giving myself a concussion. Pausing while I let myself recover from that first hit, I gritted my teeth and did it again.
 

That time, the glass cracked.

My forehead hurt like a motherfuck that time. I knew it was the thickest part of the skull, but also that it was the part of the head with the most nerve endings, so it would hurt the most, thick head or no. Still, I’d be less likely to kill myself. Or give myself brain damage.

“You crazy fucking bitch!” Evers yelled back at me.

He swerved the car, nearly hitting a pickup truck that had been traveling alongside him. I saw him glaring at me in the review mirror once he’d corrected the wheel.

“Stop it!” he snapped.

“Stop it!” I said, mimicking his voice.

It wasn’t easy through the gag, and he probably couldn’t hear my words, per se, but I got that little-kid-mocking tone down enough that he got the idea.
 

His face turned ever redder.

“You fucking cunt!”

“You fucking cunt!” I mimicked, still using the little kid falsetto, only louder, to be heard over the gag and the sound of the engine.

“I’m going to stop the fucking car if you do it again!” he snarled. “I’ll stop the car and beat you senseless right now! Right in the middle of the road! You won’t like it, I promise!”

Actually, that’s pretty much exactly what I wanted.

Not the getting beat up part...more the swerving all over the road like a drunken crazy person part, and the me breaking the window for real and maybe catching the attention of one of the other drivers on the freeway part. Maybe even the Evers losing his shit in public part and him pulling onto the shoulder part, where someone might notice well enough to rubberneck us, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.
 

Maybe ID’ing Evers in the process.

If I made enough of a ruckus, someone would call the cops, right?

One could only hope at least one concerned citizen lived out here.

It was a slim hope, but right then, it was the only one I had.

I knew I couldn’t get out the window, not handcuffed to the car...but I could possibly get someone to notice Evers acting like a psychopath in broad daylight. Maybe even long enough to buy Gantry some time. Maybe long enough to buy Nik some time, too. Maybe long enough for someone to see me and Jazzy and Hilary in the back seat, trussed up like, well...like the victims of a kidnapper and psychotic serial killer. Maybe some good Samaritan would see us and care enough to do the right thing.
 

Maybe I could get Evers to rethink the wisdom of what he was doing. After all, there was a reason he’d never been caught. Usually he was smarter than this.

I was about to smash my forehead against the glass a third time...

When something really damned big slammed into the side of the car.

I gasped, shocked out of the windup I’d been going into, getting ready to hit my head against the cracked glass. I was already dazed...and not looking forward to adding another blow to the migraine forming inexorably behind my eyes.

When the car got hit by...whatever it was...the force threw me backwards, more or less into Jazzy. The locked seatbelt stopped my body in midair, and I found myself staring blankly at a long, pushed-in, crushed part on the inside passenger side of the car.

My wrists were still attached to that metal ring under the door handle, but that had been pushed in towards me, too. Which is why, I realized slowly, I felt Jazzy behind me now, despite still being cuffed to the door. It was also why the cracked window was gone, completely shattered as the bottom part of the door got pushed into the SUV’s frame.

My face was bleeding, but it took me a few seconds longer to notice that.

I blinked at that long, pushed-in piece of metal, unable to comprehend how it had gotten there.
 

Then my eyes shifted up.

Outside that tinted black window, I saw a giant gold eye.
 

The thing was the size of a dinner plate...or maybe a garbage can lid.

For a long few seconds, I was mesmerized by the sight of it. Then my heart lifted for real. “Nik!” I cried out through the gag, staring out the window.

The thing slammed into the back of the car again.

I got thrown backwards, hard, against the seatbelt strap, into Jazzy.

Before I could fully recover, the animal slammed into us yet again, making me gasp against the gag in my mouth. The pain in my upper body had worsened to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe against the strap, it hurt so much. I was being pushed deeper into the middle of the car, I realized, which jarred my arms, my shoulders and my legs. It also forced me up against the locked seatbelt, which now had a stranglehold on my ribs and chest.

I watched, helpless, as the lizard threw its shoulder and head into the body of the SUV yet again. That time, it hit closer to the back of the car, thank goodness. Next to me, Jazzy screamed in terror anyway, writhing and shrieking against the gag she wore.
 

When I glanced over at Hilary, though, the blond girl looked completely blank, just...gone. Slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, she obviously was in shock.

I couldn’t help thinking Jazzy’s screaming was probably better.

Cursing and snarling at the thing outside the car, Evers skidded all over the road, correcting for what the lizard had done and then accelerating. I glanced forward at him, then back out the window, crying out against the gag when the dinosaur-like thing slammed into us again, that time, hitting into the back of the SUV from behind.

That time, the rear window shattered.