Crescendo Part 2

One of the men opened my cell and rushed into the back where I was huddled in the corner, crying. The one who smelled of cigarette smoke and vodka grabbed me up by my neck and forced me to walk in front of him.

Their shoes were brown and tattered, their jeans colored a light denim and dirty from wear and tear. I focused on the details around me until suddenly a black cloth was placed over my head. It smelled like dirt and sweat, a little salty.

Probably from the tears of the girls who had been put underneath it so many times.

I found myself gagging on the smell, wanting to add a few more tears to the hood but refusing to cry. I wouldn't give my captors the satisfaction.

I was forced into a vehicle, probably a van of some sort. I heard sniffles and hiccups, and I realized that I was more than likely not the only girl who was being kidnapped in the vehicle. I just prayed that they wouldn't suffer as much as I knew I probably would.

The vehicle started up and I could smell the exhaust through the black bag. I could see filtered sunlight through the bag and I realized it was either still daytime the same day that I had been abducted or it was the day after. It was sad that I didn't even know what day it was.

I felt someone touch my hand and I stiffened, not wanting to piss off my captors who were definitely in the back watching us. The hand on mine didn't move, instead I felt a sharp object being pushed into it.

Either these girls who had been kidnapped before had come up with a plan to escape before me, or something else was at play here.

I turned the sharp object in my hand over and over again to see if I could find out what it was and I realized a second too late that it was a shim when it sliced into the skin of my inner palm, no doubt drawing blood.

I tried my hardest not to hiss out in pain, my heart beating wildly out of control because I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to do.

Did I reach up to cut the hood off and risk alerting my captors that I had a weapon, or did I stay still and silent, unmoving and wait for the plan?

I didn't even know what the plan was, the only thoughts running through my head were pain, numbness and fear.

I went to work cutting the ties around my wrist as quickly and as quietly as I could, not wanting to draw any unwanted attention to my frenzied actions.

As soon as the ties were cut, I realized that they were zip ties, I realized that it was a good thing that I didn't immediately go for the hood on my head.

We would have lost the sense of surprise.

"NOW!" I heard a female's voice shout out through the vehicle.

A collective battle cry rang out in the air and I quickly pulled off my hood to see what was happening and what I had to do and was met with a blood bath in front of me.

There were three men in the back with all of us, and there had to be at least eight girls being held captive along with me.

All of them had the same shim type of wrap on that I did and two girls were on each man, stabbing them repeatedly over and over again.

The driver heard what was happening behind him and the car screeched to a stop and I heard police sirens in the background.

I wanted to cry out in relief from the sound but then I realized that not every cop is a good cop. My biological father was living proof of that.

One of the men ended up getting away from the girls attached to him and lunged at the back door, closest to me. I had to make a choice.

I slammed the shim weapon down on his blood stained hand and he cried out in pain from the impact.

I looked around at the girls around me, all dirty and bloodied, most of them had their faces painted with bruises and cuts that looked like that had been infected and not properly healed over.

I shuddered with the thoughts of what they had gone through, and I realized that I was lucky. I probably hadn't gone through half of what those other girls had. And then I recognized a familiar face.

Jet black hair and a constant glare on her face, I couldn't miss her anywhere.

"Gwen?!" I exclaimed at her and she shot me painful look that showed me just how much she had suffered since the last time I saw her.

She, along with the other girls, had nasty, gnarly bruises coated across her cheeks, the blood smeared on her chin and forehead. Her eye was blood shot, a few blood vessels in it probably busted.

All of those girls needed immediate medical attention, but they weren't going to get it unless we all got away from our captors.

"No time. Hurry!" Gwen shouted at me and I realized what she meant when she said we needed to hurry. One of the girls motioned outside and I noticed another sketchy looking van was following close behind us from the window in the back. They must have realized that the kidnapped had taken over the kidnappers, because I saw a terrifying automatic weapon being held outside the window of the van following us.

"Duck!" I shouted out at everyone and they all did as I said and not even a millisecond after I had shouted out into the air, the van was riddled with bullets.

I heard the clanking of the steel from the metal bullets hitting the inside of the van and I also heard a shout of pain from the driver, he was probably hit. The van took a sharp left and we were all flung around the inside of the vehicle and I was glad that it was absent of anything besides our bodies, the impact from hitting the side of the van was enough to make a nasty bruise I was sure of it.

One of the girls with blood dripping from her nostrils managed to jump up in the front seat while the van behind us was probably reloading their guns and took control of the wheel. I hopped up as quickly as I could and made it to the front seat area before the bullets started up again.

I looked down at the body of one of the men who had kidnapped me and all of those girls and saw the permanent glare that would be etched onto his face forever.

I closed his grime coated eyes with my fingers while holding in a dry heave and reached into his dirt encrusted jean pocket, searching for his cell phone.

"What are you doing?!" The girl now driving asked me in a panic.

I pulled out his cell phone for her to see.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm going to call for help!" I shouted out at her.

She pointed the makeshift knife in front of my face.

"All of the police are crooked. They will not help us, only lead more to us and make it impossible to escape forever," she said to me with a slight accent. Her dark hair was caked with blood and the fear and anger in her eyes was jarring. It was like she couldn't trust anyone, ever.

Which made sense. I probably wouldn't trust anyone else for a long while after this.

"I'm not calling the police, I want to get out of this mess just as much as you do, but we're not getting away from the Mexican Cartel without help."

"Fine. One call. And put it on speaker."

I used the dead man's thumb to unlock the phone and dialed the number that I memorized by heart because of my affinity for broken phones, hoping that my soul wouldn't be permanently tainted from the things I'd had to do that day. It only rang once before he answered, his voice sounding extremely worried.

"Hello, this is Sebastian Jennings," he said and the girl who was driving gave me a wild look. No doubt she thought I was messing with her.

"Sebastian, its me! Its-"

The bullets started cascading again in the vehicle and I could hear Sebastian on the other line cursing and yelling at people in the background to do something, yelling for me, screaming my name.

The sounds made my ears ring in pain, I was ducking as low as I possibly could and I looked over to the girl driving and realized that she'd been hit. She was clutching her right arm and trying to drive with her left while barely being able to see over the steering wheel from how low she was having to duck to avoid the bullets.

"Faster! Put the pedal to the floor!" I screamed at her but she didn't listen, keeping us at only about fifty miles an hour while we were on the freeway.

I cursed myself and crawled on the floor of the van over to where she was while still clutching the phone tightly.

I looked around at our surroundings and saw that we were on a straight stretch of freeway barely out of town. I saw a few distinguishing markings and finally saw what I was looking for. That green sign was our ticket out of here.

"Sebastian! Sebastian!" I yelled into the phone as the bullets continued to rain down harder and harder upon us.

"I'm here!" I heard him yell back just as loud, probably making up for the fact that I couldn't hear as well due to the cacophony of destruction happening all around me.

"We're on Interstate 70 North passing mile marker 89, passing exit 11 for Green Village now!" I shouted back at him as loud as I could.

Before I could barely even get the words out of my mouth, however, a helicopter flew in overhead and police sirens could be heard over the deafening gunshots.

"I know, we pinged this cell as soon as the call came in!" he yelled back, but he didn't need to. An explosion sounded behind us and I looked back in the rear view mirror just in time to see the white van that had been trailing us implode on itself, the impact from the explosion sending the vehicle a few feet into the air and then careening off of the guard rails we were adjacent to.

The van toppled down the hill and finally came to rest in a creek at the bottom, the toxic smoke billowing up into the air like a smoke signal, begging someone to come to their rescue.

The girl who was driving stomped on the brakes as hard as she could when she came up on a road block, spikes in the road and dozens of police cars blocking the way forward.

I let out a silent breath and my body started shaking in relief.

"Holly? Holly are you still there, are you okay??" I heard Sebastian's worried and strained voice on the other end of the dead man's cell phone and I took another shuddering breath.

"I will be."

*******

Author's Note:

Wow. Did you guys expect that or WHAT?!

I know I said maybe ten chapters left but with everything so up in the air: the trial, her finding out who her real father is, reconciling or not reconciling with Sebastian, I believe there is still a lot more book left to go, what do you think??

What do you think will happen next?

Will her biological father get away with his crimes, or will Holly's testimony put him away for good?

What do you think about Gwen? Is she Holly's half sister?

What are your thoughts on the police chief?

And what do you THINK will happen next versus what you WANT to happen next?!

Please don't be shy I love to hear all of your amazing theories!

As always. Until next time my lovely readers,

-Kristen :)