Chapter Nine: Will and Emma

A/N: The fact that some of you semi-patiently waited seventeen months for this story to be taken off hold is freaking epic. You guys are the best! So cool to read your comments and I'm excited for this story to continue. It's all mapping out in my head and it's going to be awesome! Anyhoo, enjoy!

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Kidnap My Heart

Chapter 9: Will

Obviously, there was something wrong with Emma van der Bilt. That was the only explanation for her disinterest in me. Maybe she really was from a homicidal alien clan and wasn’t allowed to mingle with us humans. Or maybe she had a boyfriend. Or maybe she was just a lesbian.

I mean, what kind of straight, single, human chick would turn me down in favor of spending the night with a bunch of bugs and rats? That wasn’t normal. I was aware that we weren’t on the best of terms, but I was still a better option than that garage. She should’ve given me a chance. The moment she got a taste of what I had to offer her, she wouldn’t ever want to leave my room—or my bed. That was one thing I was completely sure of.

“Ungrateful little shit,” I muttered to myself, pacing back and forth in front of the garage. I felt stupid for even suggesting the idea to her. If I’d known she was going to turn it down so rudely, I would’ve left her there without saying another word. Damn it. She was the one who was locked away; how could she still make me so angry?

I blamed my physical attraction to her for my stupidity. I would’ve actually been willing to forget about everything she’d done to me if it meant getting to admire her body some more in the privacy of my room. Now that she’d turned my generous offer down, there was no way she was ever getting out of that garage.

A loud crashing sound alerted me and distracted me from my thoughts; it had come from the garage. I took a step forward but stopped myself from walking any closer. I wanted to walk in and see what was going on in there, but… No, that was a bad idea. She’d stab me with some hedge cutters the second I opened that door. It was probably just a trick to get me to open the door.

There was an even louder crash about a minute later, followed by a loud banging noise. I was going to ignore the sound at first, but after a minute, the suspense started to drive me nuts. Shit. What if she was going suicidal in there? My brother and I had been told to keep her alive. There was no telling what would happen if she managed to hurt herself in there.

Oh, damn it all to hell. I ignored the part of me that knew this was a bad idea and pulled my keys out of my pocket, frantically unlocking the door to the garage. What if I was too late? I wouldn’t put anything past this girl.

I ran inside, looking downwards for a limp body. “Are you o—” My words were cut off by the shovel that slammed into my side and knocked me down. Just as I was about to speak, Emma hit me with the shovel again and I shouted, “Ow!”

She kept beating me with the shovel, and then she began to yell. I was glad it was just our midget shovel, but even that thing still hurt like a bitch. “You think leaving girls in your garage to rot is funny?” she shouted. Smack. “You think using sex as leverage is cute?” Smack. “News flash, William: it’s not!”

“I’m sorry!” I cried. I was willing to say pretty much anything by that point if it meant calming her down, even if it was detrimental to my pride. That midget shovel hurt more than I’d thought it would.

I heard her throw the shovel aside and felt her climb on my back, pulling the collar of my t-shirt backwards in an attempt to choke me. If you disregarded the shovel-beating, the bugs and rats, and the smell of the garage, this was just like the dream I’d had the night before, except I wasn’t on my stomach and she wasn’t trying to kill me.

By this point, I honestly thought she was going to choke me to death, but she had something else in mind: stealing my keys. I didn’t realize this had been her master plan from the start until the door to the garage door was being slammed and locked with me still in it.

My hands flew to my throat as I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with much-needed oxygen, and I jumped up, stepping on a roach as I did so. Okay, so this place was a little worse than I remembered.

“Emma,” I said, carefully measuring my words. “Open the door.”

No answer.

“Emma?”

Still no answer.

“Fuck!”

Damn it, she hadn’t wasted any time. But where exactly did she think she was going to go? We were in the middle of nowhere, and Eric hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there was no around for forty, fifty miles. Our closest neighbors had all moved out years ago, and even their old houses were at least ten miles away from our place. There was no way to escape. Why couldn’t she just accept that and stand down?

***

Emma

I really didn’t think he’d fall for it. I knew he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but I didn’t think he was that stupid. Luckily for me, he was. He never even saw that shovel coming.

I hadn’t been sure he was even outside, but I figured it was worth a shot once I managed to cut the rope that held my hands and feet together. He really shouldn’t have left me in a place with so many sharp and blunt objects. Besides, the bugs and rats were starting to colonize, and I didn’t doubt they saw me as a food source. Food was scarce in that garage, ergo, there was none. I needed to get out of there, no matter what the cost was. If I had to beat a few people to get out, then so be it. Will was already getting used to it, I was sure.

I didn’t dawdle for even a minute after escaping. The plan I had in my mind was clear, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I ran towards the fields on the side of their house, making sure to leave obvious footprints in the dirt. Once I reached the fields, I walked through them, careful not to step on anything that might hurt me. This was easier said than done; I ended up stepping on some questionable objects. Lacking the time to properly examine what exactly it was that I’d stepped on, I kept going. Eventually, I arrived at the side of the house. Dirt surrounded the entirety of the house, not pavement or grass or anything. They would definitely see my footprints and know I was inside.

Goddamnit. I’d hoped to avoid getting the rest of my body dirty, but there was no other way to get inside without stepping on the dirt. I squatted down in the fields, carefully laying down on the dirt in front of me. I pushed my stomach forward, using my legs and knees to propel myself instead of my feet. This would leave marks, sure, but not anything they’d attribute to a human being.

Once I reached the place mat by the side door, I placed my hands on it and pushed my body forward, going into an awkward handstand. I almost fell on my ass doing this, but I managed to get my feet on the place mat without leaving a footprint in the dirt.

I wiped my feet as best as I could on the mat and, using Will’s keys, I opened the door and quietly tiptoed in after making sure Will’s brother wasn’t around. I found myself standing in the kitchen, and it wasn’t until then that I realized how hungry I was. Like, voraciously hungry. I felt like I could eat two large Big Mac meals and a few shakes all by myself.

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to grab a bit of food... They wouldn’t notice, right? No, they wouldn’t notice.

I went over to the sink, my heart pounding rapidly in my chest with each step I took. It wasn’t the best move on my part since I was trying to be discreet, but I couldn’t eat with dirty hands. There was just no way. I turned the faucet a tiny bit, making sure I had just enough water to work with, and swiftly washed my hands, looking backwards every other second. I’d never felt so freaking paranoid in my life.

Once I’d dried off my hands with a nearby towel, I opened the refrigerator and just went for it. I didn’t even really look at what I was grabbing; I just reached out and stuffed whatever I could find into my mouth. I didn’t have anything to carry the food in, and bags were too loud, so I figured I’d just eat and run.

I heard footsteps as I was shoving some sort of meat into my mouth; I found myself forced to abandon the refrigerator, slowly shutting it so it wouldn’t make any noise. The footsteps were coming from outside the doorway, and there was no way I was going back outside, so my options were limited. In the end, I took advantage of my tiny stature and hid in a nearly empty cabinet under the sink. I shut the door to the cabinet just as I heard a voice.

“What do you want to eat? We haven’t gone to the store lately, so we don’t have much right now, but you have a few options,” a masculine voice said. I recognized it as Eric’s. It wasn’t hard to guess; the only other person it could have been was Will, and he was otherwise preoccupied.

“I don’t know,” Taylor mumbled, her voice so quiet I barely heard her.

There was a pause. “We have cereal, milk, some sort of sandwich meat—I could’ve sworn we had more than this… uh, we don’t have enough sandwich meat.”

Whoops. That was my bad. At least I knew what I’d eaten now.

“S-some cereal is fine,” Taylor squeaked out. She was either terrified or in awe of his good looks. I had a feeling it was a mix of both.

I could hear Eric grabbing the cereal, milk, and eating utensils he needed to feed Taylor, and I found myself counting my lucky stars when I recognized that I was safe for the moment. He wouldn’t need cleaning products for this.

“W-why are you—” Taylor paused, actually choking on her words. Literally choking, and she hadn’t even started eating yet.

“Why am I what?” Eric asked.

“Um.” She let out a nervous laugh. It sounded more demented than anything, really, like she’d finally lost it. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

There was another pause. “I’m just giving you cereal.”

“Yeah, but—I mean—look at Emma. Not literally, obviously, because she’s out in the garage with your brother and you couldn’t actually look at her unless you walked out there, which would mean leaving me alone, which you obviously can’t do, even though I wouldn’t try to escape if you did because I don’t have Emma with me and there’s no way I’d get away on my own, let’s be real here, and—”

He cut her off. “Taylor, you’re rambling.”

Another pause. “Sorry. Um—what I meant was, um… Emma’s out in that dirty garage with no food or anything, but I’m in here eating cereal. Why aren’t you treating me that way? You’re being—well, you’re being nice.”

“Do you want me to treat you badly?”

“No,” she squeaked quickly.

He chuckled. “I’m not a monster. You haven’t done anything to me. I’m not going to throw you into the garage for no reason.”

“But you’re okay with throwing my best friend in there.”

He paused again. These awkward pauses were going to be the death of me, I swear. Each time he paused, I felt like he’d somehow realized I was in the cabinet, and I’d start internally panicking. “She’s not my responsibility now. She’s Will’s. I’m not going to tell him how to deal with her.”

“Why not?” Her voice actually sounded defiant for once, and I couldn’t have been prouder. My pride shriveled up into a tiny prune when she spoke next. “I-I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I just meant, um, in the nicest way possible—yeah.”

His reply came immediately. He’d thought this out. “If I tell him how to deal with Emma, that would give him the right to tell me how to deal with you. And I don’t think you’d like his methods as much as mine.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t want Taylor to have to deal with any of this. She was better off keeping her mouth shut and staying with Eric. He didn’t seem like such a bad guy. He didn’t seem like a bad guy at all, actually. It really made you wonder how he’d gotten involved in this in the first place. The same could not be said for his brother, however.

“Grab the cereal and milk,” Eric finally said to Taylor. “We’ll bring the food upstairs and watch a movie on Netflix or something.”

What the actual fuck? I wasn’t one to use that word, usually, but seriously, what the fuck? While I found myself forced to hide in cabinets and resort to violence, Taylor got free food and Netflix? I mean, sure, she was still being held captive, but her situation wasn’t nearly as bad as mine. That wasn’t even cool.

I found myself having to remind myself that two Taylors would never get us out of this situation. It was my overactive imagination and violence that was going to eventually get us out of this place. I hoped.

I waited a few minutes to make sure they were both gone before I climbed out of the cabinet. Now what? I had never been in this house before, and I needed a hiding place so good, they’d never even think to look there.

I inadvertently found my answer in the bathroom. Going to the bathroom was a risk, but there was no way I was going to be able to control my bladder for much longer. I hadn’t peed in a day. Besides, Will was still in the garage, and Eric was upstairs watching a movie. It was my only chance, at least until they began looking for me. Heh.

As I was going to the bathroom, I noticed a small door in the corner of the room. It wasn’t very big, probably smaller than me, actually, but it looked like a decent hiding spot. Maybe.

Once I’d finished with my business and wiped as much dirt off of my body as I could without making too much noise, I walked over to the door and opened it. It was basically a tiny attic with random stuff stored in it. It was a little musty in there, but nothing too bad. My guess was that they didn’t frequently use this little room, but they used it often enough that it wasn’t absolutely grimy and toxic. Frankly, it was my best shot, unless I could find anything better. It wasn’t the best, but it would do.

I ducked my head and entered the little room, squinting in the darkness. I found a flashlight among the miscellaneous crap in there and grabbed it. I shined the flashlight on several boxes, hoping to find some old clothes or something, but nope. Luck just wasn’t on my side lately.

I didn’t know how much longer the flashlight would last me, so after I found a suitable place to sit down, I turned it off and set it beside me. Now the waiting began. The waiting turned out to be incredibly boring, but it was better than having rats for company.

I lost track of the time and dozed off for a while. I wasn’t sure how long I was out. I had no way to keep track of the time, obviously. The opening of the bathroom door was what ultimately woke me up.

“Will?” It was Eric; he’d finally gone looking for his brother.

“What if he was going to the bathroom?” Taylor asked. Wow, he wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to keep an eye on her. She was glued to his hip. “Eww.”

“Then we’d have to bleach our eyes,” Eric said. “Where the hell is he? I didn’t see him out by the garage. I figured he’d be inside by now.”

Taylor didn’t say anything. She just made some sort of unidentifiable sound.

“We’ll have to look outside,” he went on. “Let me just grab a flashlight.”

Oh, crap. Surely he didn’t mean the flashlight that was sitting right beside me…

His footsteps came closer, and my eyes widened. Yup, he did. I scrambled up, swaying dangerously as I attempted to steady myself. I looked around frantically; I had nowhere left to hide.

What happened next happened in a matter of seconds. It had to have been a gift from the heavens or something because it was a miraculous discovery. Just as I’d accepted my grim fate, I noticed a hole in the corner of the room. It wasn’t very big—two feet in diameter, at most—but it was big enough to squeeze through. My petite size was finally starting to come in handy.

So that was exactly what I did. I squeezed through, and when I realized I could actually keep going, I did just that. I shimmied myself through, only realizing I was between the walls when Eric’s voice sounded like it was right beside me. I stopped moving when everything went quiet.

“Did you hear something?” Eric asked.

“Um. Er—”

“Never mind. I’ll grab that flashlight and we’ll go. Stay put.”

Taylor squeaked in acquiescence, and I heard the tiny door open. He searched through the multitude of crap they had in there for a bit and eventually came out.

“Found it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Taylor didn’t say anything, and a few seconds later, I heard the door close. I breathed a sigh of relief.

My God. I was hiding in the walls. I’d successfully managed to avoid Eric because he hadn’t noticed I was in the walls. If this wasn’t the best hiding spot ever, I didn’t know what was.

***

If I ever find a hole like that while playing hide and seek, I won't think twice about going in there. I would forever be the Hide and Seek Champion and would forever rub it in everyone's faces.

I wonder how mad my parents would get if I made a hole in the wall so I could crawl in...