The one-window, cramped cabin was the stuff of horror flicks with its rotting wood smell, dead rodents, the skeletal remains of some kind of small animal, and humid air. With a sluggish brain and partially closed eyes shimmering with tears, Addis followed their kidnapper’s erratic movements as, mumbling something to the effect of ‘no way, never finding them here,’ he scurried between the popped open trunk of his car and back to the “living” area of what amounted to an oversized ramshackle shed with a kitchen sink and bathroom that, from the inside, at least, seemed to be barely standing.

The throbbing pain on the right side of her face from where he had punched her in her dad’s office brought a fresh round of silent tears. In a matter of hours, she’d gone from being a normal teen angry at her mother to an instant orphan, robbed of parents who hadn’t just died but been brutally slain. And then, as if the universe hadn’t thought that was enough for one person to deal with, she and her best friend had been kidnapped by the murderer and brought to God only knew where.

Woken when their captor had dragged her from the trunk of his car and tossed her over his shoulder to carry her inside, Addis tried to see where he’d brought them, but all she could see beyond the door he left ajar when he went to retrieve Em was darkness, and beyond that, more darkness. And that was only when she could keep her heavy lids from slamming shut. The sensation of being weighted down with dozens of wet, woolen blankets coupled with Emerson’s too-still form was all she needed to convince her that the foul-tasting water the kidnapper had forced down their throats earlier had been drugged with something powerful.

Squinting through half-slitted eyes and chomping down on the scream that rested in her throat a mere breath and a tug of tape away from being released, she tried to focus on Emerson. Only the very slightest rise and fall of her chest assured Addis that her best friend was still alive. Feeling selfish and guilty, she simultaneously wished Em would wake so she wouldn’t feel so alone while also hoping she’d stay knocked out for her own sake.

The metallic echo of a trunk being slammed drew Addis’s attention back to the door, though it was still an effort for her to lift her head. At the sound of their kidnapper’s footsteps crunching across the debris covering the creaky wooden porch, she suddenly found herself praying for the drug to drag her back under. If this was where she and Emerson died, it was probably better if neither saw it coming.