Beauty

Selena Kitt

Jolee could never stay out of trouble for long and being locked in the trunk of Carlos’s black BMW was no exception to that particular rule of her life. She’d given up trying to kick the side of the car to make noise-luxury car makers practically sound-proofed their trunks. Who knew? She wondered if engineers considered scenarios like this one-after all, any rich husband might have to enlist his hit men tie up and toss his troublesome wife into the trunk for easy disposal, right?

Besides, her feet were secured with zip ties, as were her hands, which stretched painfully behind her back. They didn’t use duct tape-too easy to wiggle out of-except for the pieces over her mouth. And even those weren’t just slapped on-they’d used the roll to wrap the silver stuff around and around her mouth and jaw in layers. Carlos’s guys knew exactly what they were doing. Of course they did. It was their job.

There was just no way out of this bit of trouble. That realization finally hit her in the darkness, the car’s wheels crunching gravel a long time now, off the highway, she surmised, the suspension bouncing her violently up and down. This was going to be the last batch of trouble she ever got herself into in the whole expanse of a life that seemed suddenly very short.

She’d been so focused on escaping or finding a way out since Carlos’s goons had grabbed her out back-zip-tied and duct taped before she could even raise the snow shovel she’d been using-that this final realization hit with such terrifying force Jolee actually wet herself, urine staining the crotch of her jeans with spreading navy blue darkness.

She was going to die.

“No,” she whispered, feeling herself giving in at the same time as she denied the notion.

“Please, no.”

She had no one left to mourn her. Her mother had been gone since she was a baby, her father dead for years, killed in a logging accident. And her husband-Carlos was the reason she was facing this end, a betrayal she still couldn’t wrap her head around. But for the first time in her life she was glad for the miscarriages, that she had no baby or child to leave behind. Her only real regret was that she had never really loved a man who truly loved her back.

Jolee wailed, a muffled cry that wouldn’t have been heard over the pounding bass of Ted Nugent through the car’s speakers even if they’d been stopped in traffic somewhere, but they were far from civilization. She knew where they were. Not exactly, but they’d driven a long way on this back, bumpy, winding road and there was no doubt in her mind they were in the middle of nowhere, deep into the wild, far from the logging camps, but still on the thousands of acres of land Carlos’s father had left him.