The Girl Next Door

Part 32 - Pierce

Part 32 - We've Got It All Handled

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"Hey Dad," Iris says on the phone, parked outside of the car. "I've been keeping Sophie updated and I'm sorry I forgot to call you. I just wanted you to know we're still okay, we just haven't heard anything about Robert. Robert is his name, right? Yeah. Anyway, we haven't heard anything about him." After a few moments, she nods to herself. "I know, I'm sorry. I promise I'm safe, don't worry about me. We're all good. Where are we at? Colorado, I think, somewhere in Colorado. Just got out of Utah." She sighs, putting a hand to her forehead, "Okay Dad, talk to you later. Bye."

She comes back in the car and nods once to me, showing me that she's good to go. "I'm ready now, I just had to update my dad again. I used the WiFi and I messaged Sophie. I've been mainly keeping her updated because she can communicate."

"Iris," I sigh, putting my head on the steering wheel. I start driving though, going faster than the speed limit. "You do realize that he can track down your phone?"

"What? No, that's crazy talk... How?" She turns her head towards me incredulously.

"IP address. He can find it. So do me a favor and install a new app that hides the real address. Hopefully he didn't see we stayed at a hotel the entire night."

"He definitely saw it," Iris mutters, and I can see as she visibly gets sick in a second.

"Change it now, and then we'll worry more about it later. For now, I'll focus on getting us further down the interstate and then I'll pull off onto an exit once you've got it changed so we'll be off the main path if he follows it."

"But—"

"Just do it, Princess, trust me. I promise it'll be okay."

She does so reluctantly, and I turn on some music that's pretty quiet in the background (as I have been lately). Ruby peaks her head towards the front seat, asking, "What happened?"

"We had some trouble and he might be able to find us, but we know what to do so that that won't happen," I say, putting it as gently as I can.

She starts clicking her tongue while she thinks before leaning back in the backseat. We all listen to the music as it plays softly in the background, feeling the cool air on our faces from rolling our windows down. It would've been a perfect moment had we not been... you know, escaping for our lives.

After just about twenty minutes or so, I watch Iris blink a few times before sitting up straight, her eyes widening as she looks in the rear-view mirror.

"Princess, is everything alright?" I ask, trying to be comforting.

"I-I... uh, b-b-behind us. He's... there," she stutters a sentence out.

I check the rearview mirror of mine, adjusting it a little bit just so I can see. And right there is just a familiar sight — my biological father in the front seat as my mother sits behind with her head down. Her dark hair covers her face, concealing the outside world around her and protecting her face like a curtain.

I mutter some curse words under my breath, looking around at our surroundings. There's some desert mountains surrounding us and after we turn around this next one, we're going to be crossing a bridge over the Colorado River. I start to speed up a little more, keeping a close eye on Robert's vehicle. And I'm calling him Robert because that's his name, and I don't want to call him my father.

He ticks his jaw, his thin, pale lips pulled into a tight line as his car inches up to mine, and he speeds up too. He ends up getting really close to the back of the car and when Ruby turns back to see Robert, she flinches and ducks behind the leather cushioning of the seats.

"I don't like this," Ruby immediately starts with her voice seeming three octaves higher (if that's even possible), "and I don't like him. He found us."

Although I open my mouth to speak, Iris does first and turns around to keep Ruby calm. "It's okay, everything will be perfect," she says with a cute smile. "We've got it all handl—"

Suddenly something makes the car jerk forward just as I start to angle the car to follow the road.

Ruby and Iris both gasp, and I flinch. "Ruby, stay down," I order her, and she does so. I started flooring the car just to finish getting around the mountain but I feel like if I slow down at all the whole car will just get crushed by his.

And that's when it starts to get even worse.

We start to cross the clear water on a bridge of concrete and metal, the water splashing and foaming up on the sharp rocks, creating rapids. I feel the vehicle jolt because of Robert's car again and he smiles with an evil grin as if he enjoys it. Mom still isn't looking up, but looks exactly the same as she did before.

Suddenly he's to the car's my side, and that's when mother looks up. She sees Ruby and nearly throws herself against the window just to see her. But it's not for very long when his car collides with mine and we both plummet into the water below us.

"Get out!" I yell to them, swinging open my own door beforehand. Iris and Ruby do the same but we all scream when the car crashes in the water and crumples up the metal of the car with the same amount of ease as a human would crush a soda can. When our bodies hit the water itself, it feels the same as drying cement seeping through our clothes and threatening to drown us, and in this case, our family, too.

Iris floats to the top and is coughing as she keeps her head barely above the waves, but when I don't see Ruby my panic really starts to kick in and I dive further into the cold disaster to find her.

Ruby's hair is floating around her head with red liquid floating in twisted strips around her head, planting a sick feeling in my gut. I pick her up from the backseat of the still-sinking car, her eyes closed and her lips parted from being unconscious. I take her to the shore and when I finally cross the line between water and air I feel like I've dug myself out of a grave. I set Ruby on the shore, covered with dead grass and dry dirt. I wipe the bleeding spot on her head — thank God it's smaller than I thought — and she starts to cough before waking up.

Ruby sobs hysterically while I'm looking for Iris, who's still struggling just above the water. The river water is washing in and out of her mouth and I hear her try to say something before swimming over in a rush.

"I-I'm stuck!" she struggles to get the words out. I swim to see what's going on and see that her ankle got tangled in blades of long, dead grass. I split them apart in one swift movement as it quickly releases Iris to the top where we both swim to a crying Ruby. Blood starts trickling down Iris's leg but she pays no mind to it, instead looking at Ruby and hugging her without a word.

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