Read Online Veiled (A Short Story) by Kendra Elliot - Free Book Online

as he reached between her seat and the door. A low hum sounded, and
her seat moved closer to the steering wheel.
    “How far?”
    “All the way,” she automatically answered.
    “Don’t even think of honking the horn,” he said
at the exact moment the thought crossed her mind. He pressed the gun harder in
her ear, and pain shot through her skull. “I’ve got nothing to lose tonight,
and you’ve got everything.”
    The seat stopped, and she tried to breathe
evenly.
    “Back it up and turn around,” he ordered.
    The headlights went on automatically as she shifted
into drive. “Where are we going?”
    “The Pacific Inn,” he said in a weirdly happy
voice, like they were starting a trip to Disney.
    She turned out of the Marino’s long driveway
and onto the main road.
    What would Jack do when he
realized she was gone?

C HAPTER E IGHT
    Mathews couldn’t hold still. He constantly fidgeted
behind her as she drove, but kept the muzzle of the gun crammed in her ear the
entire time. It hurt. It was one thing to know someone had a gun to her head
and another to feel the weapon digging in just an inch from her brain. Did he
have his finger on the trigger? Sweat rolled down her back. Maybe she didn’t
want to know.
    He kept up a continual rant. “Don’t do anything
stupid. Don’t speed. Don’t go so slow. Don’t even think of causing an accident.
Don’t even think of trying to leap out.”
    She’d be lucky to keep the car on the road. She
could form only one coherent thought as her fingers strangled the steering
wheel. Will he kill me?
    She licked her lips. “What do you want? If it’s
money, I’ll see what I can do for you.” She had no plans to give this killer a
dime, but she knew she needed to start making friends fast. Her words were
hoarse, and it hurt to speak with his forearm pressed against the front of her
throat.
    “Shut up,” he ordered. He grasped a handful of
her hair in his fist and pulled her back against the seat. She couldn’t turn
her head. “I don’t want money.”
    She waited thirty seconds. He wants to talk.
He just doesn’t know it. “Most people want money,” she stated. “I imagine
you don’t make much in a tiny town like this.”
    He snorted. “We don’t make crap.”
    She let another long pause go by. “What
happened with Will?”
    “Shut the fuck up!”
    Okay. She squinted in the dark. Few
streetlights lit the coastal roads. She kept the car moving at a steady speed,
hoping an opportunity would present itself. Someone to see her, somewhere to
get away, something .
    If it didn’t, she would have to create her own
luck. This bastard wouldn’t dump her in a hot tub.
    Why did he have to be so big?
    She’d been in this situation before. Vulnerable
and with a killer at her back. But Mathews was twice the size of the psycho
last winter. Overpowering him wasn’t an option.
    She’d have to run. But first, get him
comfortable.
    “What’s your first name, Mathews? I’ve never
heard Terry say it,” she asked softly.
    He paused, as if examining her question from
all angles and finally replied. “Boyd.”
    She glanced at him in the rearview mirror, his
face lit in an odd way by the dashboard lights. He suddenly looked very young. What
had driven him to kill?
    “Did you kill both of them?” she asked.
    “I don’t want to talk about it. Keep driving.”
    She swallowed hard. At least he hadn’t yelled
at her again. That was an improvement. A road sign told her there were two more
miles until the turnoff to the hotel’s road.
    “I saw your face when you saw Patty by the hot
tub. You were crushed.” Lacey glanced at him again in the mirror. A thought
struck her. “Did you love her?”
    “Shut up! You don’t know anything!”
    I struck a nerve. A big one.
    They were getting closer to the hotel. He’d
killed Patty. Lacey knew it. She remembered Dr. Pillai’s comment about the size
of the handprints on Patty’s neck. She glanced in the mirror at Mathews’s hand
on the