Noted

Chapter 21

Troy gently shook my shoulder and woke me up. The sun was beaming down on us once again, and it was another day added to our grand escape.

My eyes slowly opened, and I sat upright, covering my eyes with my hand from the sun's rays. Birds were chirping joyfully, and the steady swooshing of the waves made me want to never leave our secluded oasis.

"Why do we have to go?" I asked.

"We have to, I'm sorry," said Troy, even though he didn't really need to apologize; for obvious reasons. He gave me a comforting peck on the lips.

"I wish I could wake up to this every day," I said getting off Shelly's box. "With you, the birds, the waves, the sunshine..."

Troy took my face in his hands and said, "If we make it through this, or when they call off the search, I promise you, we'll find our own paradise to call home."

"I like that idea." I smiled.

"We have to go before it gets harder for us to leave," he said as we both got into the truck. I laid my head against the window as we drove away. "Don't worry, we'll come back one day," Troy added.

We drove for what seemed like merely a few miles before we had to stop for gas. Being an old truck, Shelly drank up a lot more gas than the smaller or more recent vehicles of today, which meant that money was burning faster than anticipated. We had to find a solution to our lack of funds; before we'd become completely broke.

"There's a gas station at the next exit," I pointed out with the tip of my index finger at the passing road sign.

"Too noticeable," Troy said.

"Then where?" I asked, getting impatient. "In the middle of Kansas again?"

"At a ghost town; like usual," replied Troy. "And we didn't pass through Kansas."

"It was a Wizard of Oz joke, Troy," I explained, but he wasn't paying attention. "You know," I continued, "it's kinda weird how your so aware about all these tiny towns that have, like, only thirty residents living in them."

He let out a small laugh and said, "What can I say? I like geography."

"So, you just look at maps all the time and spot the creepiest towns?" I asked.

"Not technically," he replied. "I just like history of geography...kind of a hobby...and many of these towns have a lot of history...or...okay, pretty much what you just said; creepy pasts..."

"You're weird." I laughed at him with the deepest fondness.

"Yeah, but it comes in handy. Like, right now." he said as we took exit 65 to a town called Ginger Hills. We arrived at, yet again, a dusty old gas station, where only one of two pumps was working, as the other had a sign saying out of order.

"Be quick," I said as Troy gave me a quick kiss before exiting the truck. "I hate being alone in these creepy towns." I tried to hide my smile, but I couldn't help but crack.

"Stay inside..." he said in a playfully sinister tone of warning. She nodded as he smiled and winked at her.

I breathed a deep relaxing sigh as I turned on and tuned the radio. Minutes later, after filling the truck with gas, Troy tapped on the window to let me know he was going inside to pay. Meanwhile, I fiddled with the radio knobs some more, but I could only hear static and some sort of jazz or top 40 station, but nothing came in clearly enough to continue listening, so I shut it off. Several more minutes passed, and I grew impatient as I waited for Troy to return.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a large black SUV appeared beside Shelly. A man in the front seat was wearing sunglasses and didn't look as if he was in a good mood, and looked at me in a "move your truck" manner.

"It won't be long, my boyfriend is paying inside," I yelled through the window, thinking that was the reason why the man seemed impatient.

Suddenly, a large man swung open the backdoor of the SUV, stepped out, and came to the passenger side of Troy's truck. I felt uneasy and immediately locked the doors and took off my seat belt. I tried to look into the convenience store to see where Troy was, but the huge SUV blocked my view. Then, as more men came out of the SUV, I moved to the centre of the truck, away from the windows. My heart pounded now at an alarming rate. I knew the men weren't cops, or the FBI, otherwise they'd have identified themselves by now. They surrounded the truck, and I screamed out for help, but still, no one came out of the store.

One of the men smashed the window with a crowbar, and glass shattered all over me. I screamed once more, but before I could do anything to defend myself, the large man grabbed a handful of my hair, pulling me toward him, and then he knocked me unconscious with a simple blow to the side of my head with his giant gloved fist. That's when everything went black.