A Blessing in Disguise 5 | COMPLETED

One Hour

A speeding black car took a sharp left turn into another of the city's traffic-jammed streets. Hailey sat on the driver's seat with her eyes repeatedly shifting from her phone's bright screen and back to the road. The text message displayed on it reminded her of her reason for driving so alarmingly fast. With her foot slamming on the brakes, the stoplight turned red. Once again, she found herself reading the contents of the brown folder given to her a few moments ago. Her eyes ran through the lines of text, hoping she could discover a clue on where Vanessa was held captive. In the middle of her reading, her phone suddenly began to vibrate. Immediately tossing the folder aside onto the adjacent seat, she stared at the same unknown caller ID that contacted her moments ago. Pulling up to the side of a road of an alleyway, she took a deep breath before answering the call.

"Hello?" her voice hinted an underlying tone of  urgency. "Hailey?" a shaky voice replied. Her eyes grew wide as she froze at the sound of the voice. "Vanessa?" the blonde's voice slightly trembled. She was relieved that Vanessa was still alive, but this didn't halt her feeling of uneasiness. Just when Hailey was about to ask Vanessa questions of where she was, there was a sound of ruffling at the other end as someone took the phone away from her friend. "You have one hour to get to the address I'm sending you," the unfamiliar voice said. From the deepness and gruffness of the new speaker's voice, Hailey deduced that she was currently speaking to a man. "Why would I do that?" she questioned as the woman tried to find out more about Vanessa's predicament. There was a moment of silence, then a loud shriek erupted from the man's end. 'Shit, what have I done?' 'Did i just kill Vanessa?' Apprehension began to creep its way to Hailey's system. "One hour or she dies," the man said before hanging up. The grip Hailey had on the steering wheel began to become bone-crushing even though her hands were sweating profusely. Pure adrenaline coursed through her body, accelerating her heartbeat. There was nothing else that mattered except to get to that address on time.

As Hailey tried to wrap her mind to what was going on, her phone vibrated again. She briskly opened the message notification. The text message contained the address and a video was sent to her a few seconds after. Her curiosity won over her fear of what it contained. She clicked on the video and it started to play. There was her best friend, Vanessa Rojas, chained up to some kind of pipe in a dimly lit room with droplets of water falling from the ceiling. A fresh purple bruise decorated her face probably caused by the question Hailey asked. "Tik tok, miss Hailey Anne Upton, tik tok," the man taunted and the video ended. 'How did he know my name? Why take Vanessa when he wants me?' These questions continued to pester the blonde. But all these were set aside when she was instantly reminded of the remaining time she had to get to the address. Wasting no time, she placed the address in her GPS and set up a timer on her phone. Once she was all set, she turned her ignition on and started driving to her destination.

Hailey was now driving as fast as the traffic was letting her. She was cursing at every car that overtook her, at the traffic light that took its time to turn green. The only thing that was important to her right now was saving Vanessa. "Turn left," the voice of Hailey's navigation system said. The car in front of her turned left and as she was about to do the same, the traffic light turned red. "Fuck!" she glared at the traffic light that was still red. She prayed that it would just turn green on that exact moment that she needed it to be. Keeping an intense stare at the traffic light, she quickly turned her car to the left at the moment the lights became green. The street she turned into was almost barren. Taking this as an opportunity, she sped through it as she continued on her way.