Held & Pushed (2 book bundle)

About
HELD

Nicole Lee, a young wife and new mother, steps out of the mall,
squinting against the glare of the midday sun, completely unaware that her life
is about to change forever. In a matter of seconds, she is steeped in fear as
the world she knows and the life she loves fades away. As the panic sets in and
the terror takes hold, Nicole tries to keep calm, though she's now in a frantic
fight for her life. Locked in a deadly battle of wits with a psychopath, she
struggles to keep her sanity as she's held.

REVIEWS

"...one of the best purchases I have made on Amazon. I took a chance on an
unknown author and found a new favorite to follow. I was just expecting a dark
run-of-the-mill thriller and found a writer who can actually scare the
heebie
jeebies
out of me."
— Independent Review
"Brilliant start to finish. I can't believe this came from the mind of a
woman."
— Independent Review
"Texas Chainsaw meets Silence of the Lambs."
— Independent Review
"...grabs you by the throat on the first page and relentlessly squeezes
you to the last."
— Independent
Review

HELD

KIMBERLY A.
BETTES

Table of Contents

About Held
/
Chapter 1
/
Chapter 2
/
Chapter 3
/
Chapter 4
/
Chapter 5
/
Chapter 6
/
Chapter 7
/
Chapter 8
/
Chapter 9
/
Chapter 10
/
Chapter 11
/
Chapter 12
/
Chapter 13
/
Chapter 14
/
Chapter 15
/
Chapter 16
/
Chapter 17
/
Chapter 18
/
Chapter 19
/
Chapter 20
/
Chapter 21
/
Chapter 22
/
Chapter 23
/
Chapter 24
/
Chapter 25
/
Chapter 26
/
Chapter 27
/
Chapter 28
/
Chapter 29
/
Chapter 30
/
Chapter 31
/
Chapter 32
/
Chapter 33
/
Chapter 34
/
Chapter 35
/
Chapter 36
/
Chapter 37
/
Chapter 38
/
Chapter 39
/
Chapter 40
/
Chapter 41
/
Chapter 42
/
Chapter 43
/
Chapter 44
/
Chapter 45
/
Chapter 46
/
Chapter 47
/
About PUSHED
/
Chapter 1
/
Chapter 2
/
Chapter
3
/
Chapter 4
/
Chapter 5
/
Chapter 6
/
Chapter 7
/
Chapter
8
/
Chapter 9
/
Chapter 10
/
Chapter 11
/
Chapter 12
/
Chapter
13
/
Chapter 14
/
Chapter 15
/
Chapter 16
/
Chapter 17
/
Chapter
18
/
Chapter 19
/
Chapter 20
/
Chapter 21
/
Chapter 22
/
Chapter
23
/
Chapter 24
/
About the
Author
/
Bibliography
/
HELD
Copyright
/
PUSHED Copyright

Chapter 1

I squinted
as I stepped out of the store and into the glare of the bright sunlight. As I
walked across the parking lot, I went over the purchase in my mind. I was certain
that the bubble gum smacking cashier had overcharged me. I stepped into the
narrow space between my smaller SUV and the behemoth SUV parked beside me, and pulled
the receipt out of my purse to study it. With my attention on the receipt, I was
unaware of anyone else until I felt a gun poke into my ribs.

He wrapped
his left arm around me and squeezed my left shoulder. With his right hand, he shoved
the gun into my ribs even harder.

My breath
caught in my chest, trapped by shocked lungs. Everything happened so fast. He
was there, gun pressed to my side, squeezing me against him tightly. I had no
time to process the situation.

We certainly
looked to others as no more than a normal couple. I knew no one could see the
gun. My arm, bent at the elbow with the shopping bag dangling from it, hid it
well. There were only a handful of other people in the parking lot, none of
which even glanced at us. How could they? We were hidden by the SUVs.

My mind,
every bit as shocked as the rest of me, struggled to grasp the situation and
find a way out of it. I thought of screaming. I thought of wrenching free of
him, turning and running. But I also thought of my husband and my son. If I did
any of those things, this man would shoot me. It would be easy to do. The gun
was already buried in my ribcage, his finger undoubtedly on the trigger. If he
didn’t mean me harm, he wouldn’t have the gun. He meant business. And if the
pistol were equipped with a silencer, he could shoot me and be long gone before
anyone even realized I was on the ground. Had the parking lot contained more
people, screaming and running might’ve been an option. Surely he wouldn’t shoot
me with so many witnesses. But that wasn’t the case here. Not today. Not on a
stupid Tuesday afternoon.

Before I could
hate myself for not waiting until later when more people were at the mall
before shopping for jeans that were supposed to be on sale but weren’t because
the pink haired bubble gum smacker rang them up wrong, he spoke.

“Open it,”
he commanded.

I dug through
my purse, wishing like hell I carried a bear spray or Mace or hairspray or
anything that would give me the second I needed to get away from him. But I
didn’t carry anything like that. I felt the pack of gum, the emergency tampon,
the extra pacifier, my wallet, and finally my keys. I jerked them out of my
purse, nearly dropped them, and clumsily began to unlock the door.

The closer
we got to getting in the car, the harder he pushed on the gun. I was going to
have one hell of a bruise.

When my
trembling hands finally managed to unlock the door, he tightened his grip on my
shoulder even more, causing me to wince. He leaned into my ear, which would
look to others as if he were whispering something to me. Had he whispered, I
wouldn’t have heard him over the sound of my pounding heart echoing in my ears.

“You’re
going to get in, slide over to the passenger seat, and nothing more. Do you
understand?” He spoke evenly, though in a low tone to avoid being heard by
anyone else who might be listening.

I didn’t look
at him. I couldn’t. I just stood there, staring at the pavement in shock and
very much afraid. My mind was racing, my thoughts a blur.

“If you do
anything, and I mean anything at all, other than what I’ve told you to do, I’ll
kill you. And if you manage to get away from me, I’ll kill your family, and
I’ll take my sweet time doing it. Do you understand?”

This time,
I nodded. I wouldn’t let anything happen to my family.

He kissed
me on the cheek quickly, causing the knot in my stomach to roll.

“Good. Now
get in.”

He
snatched the keys from me and I did as I was told, though the urge to open the
passenger side door and flee was overwhelming.

He got in
quickly and started the vehicle. I made myself as small as possible and leaned
against the door, watching through the window as we drove through the parking
lot and away to wherever we were going. Hopefully someone I knew would see us
and the look on my face. But I saw no one I knew. I fought to keep from
vomiting as I realized that no one was going to save me. No one was going to
stop him from taking me.

If I’d
just stayed home today like I had originally planned, this wouldn’t have
happened. But I hadn’t. Damn me and my quest for discounted jeans.

The best
thing that could happen to me now is he’d rape me and throw me out of the car
somewhere. Knowing that was the best thing that could happen, I tried not to
imagine the worst. But I knew. I knew from the moment I felt the barrel of his gun
press against my ribs.

Even if I
could somehow manage to escape him at some point, everything was going to be
different. Assuming he didn’t kill me first, life as I knew it was over and
gone forever. If he stopped the car right now, told me he’d been joking and was
sorry, then left and I never saw him again, everything would still be
different. I’d never again park near large vehicles. I’d never let my guard
down anywhere. I would constantly be aware of everything that was happening
around me at all times. In essence, I’d drive myself mad trying to stay safe.

But I
didn’t have to worry about any of that because he wasn’t stopping, and I was
sure he wasn’t joking.

In the side
mirror, I watched as the parking lot slipped away behind me, taking me farther
and farther from my life and from any hope I had of ever seeing my husband and
son.

Chapter 2

As he
drove us through the city to neighborhoods I’d never seen, he took many
unnecessary turns. There were times when he turned right four times in a row,
taking us all the way around a block and back to where we were. At first, I
thought maybe he was lost. Then I realized that he was trying to confuse me so
I didn’t know where we were or where we were going. I took this as a good sign.
If he planned to kill me right away, he wouldn’t have bothered to confuse me. For
a while, I kept my eyes on the Gateway Arch, standing proudly above the St.
Louis skyline. But after I realized what he was doing, I stopped using it to
keep track of where we were and began just looking at it, wondering if I was
seeing it for the last time.

Since it
wasn’t doing me any good to try to remember our route, and staring at the Arch
was only making me sad, I decided to check out the man behind the wheel.

From the
corner of my eye, I first noticed his shoes. They were dark brown shoes, sort
of a low-top boot type of shoe. His socks were beige. His pants were khaki, his
shirt a white long-sleeve button-down with the sleeves rolled up. The top few
buttons were undone, exposing a white undershirt and a few chest hairs.

I risked a
glance at the driver. He was a big man. It wasn’t that he was fat and it wasn’t
that he was all muscle. It was somewhere in the middle. I guessed him to be
about six foot two, maybe three, and he probably weighed two hundred fifty
pounds or so. His hair was dark brown, bordering on black, with grey at the temples.
He was cleanly shaven. He had no distinguishing features that stuck out or
could be identifying. Had he not kidnapped me, I might’ve thought him to be a
handsome man.

Though I
thought I was being sneaky about stealing glances at him, he must’ve caught me.
From his pocket, he pulled a pair of sunglasses and ordered me to put them on.
I did as I was told. They were the sporty kind that wrapped around the eyes,
keeping out the sunlight. But these were more than that. They didn’t just keep
out the natural light and block the UV rays of the sun. They kept out all
light. I blinked, confused as to why I could no longer see anything more than a
thin strip of light at the top and bottom of the glasses. Then I realized he
had spray painted them black.

A new kind
of fear gripped me now. It was bad enough that he had kidnapped me. But now, it
seemed that he had planned it. No one carries around painted sunglasses for any
other reason. He had come to the mall with a plan.

As he
continued to drive, I wondered if he had specifically planned to kidnap me or
if I was just the woman who happened along at the wrong time for me, right time
for him. I could think of no one I’d
wronged,
no
enemies of mine or my husband’s, and no one who’d wish to harm either of us.
And moreover, I didn’t know the man behind the wheel, though he did look
vaguely familiar.

Finally, I
felt the vehicle slow as he pulled into what I assumed was a driveway. A few
seconds later, he stopped and put the SUV in park and turned off the engine.

I reached
up to take off the sunglasses. He didn’t stop me, so I removed them. Risking a
quick glance of my surroundings, I saw that we were parked in a garage.
His garage, no doubt.

In the
side mirror, I saw that he’d left the door open so we could just pull in, but
now he was going to have to get out and close it. If he had a remote control
for it, he’d left it in his car, which was surely sitting in the parking lot of
the mall.

He sat
behind the wheel for a few seconds, glancing in the rearview mirrors, and then
he turned to me.

“I’m going
to get out and close the door. You are to sit here and do nothing. Don’t move
one muscle. If you do, I’ll kill you. You got that?”

I nodded.

He got out
quickly and I watched in the mirror as he shut and locked the garage door. He then
hurried to my side of the SUV and opened the door.