A Time to Run Read Online Free

off the engine, he opened her handbag and fished out her mobile phone. He looked at the screen and noted that there were no messages or missed calls. He turned it off, then opened her purse. He found her driver’s licence, with her full name and date of birth.
    Samantha Leigh Willis. He whispered it, rolling the words around his mouth like a vintage wine. Twenty-six years old. Yes, she would do nicely.

Saturday 5:50 am
    Sammi wasn’t even sure she was awake. She felt pain down the right side of her face and focused on it, because she knew it was real. Her eyes felt like they had been clamped shut and when she finally worked the right muscles to wrench her eyelids open, it did her no good. A thick suffocating blackness enveloped her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember what had happened, but a primitive instinct was urging her to rouse herself.
    Her body was being jolted around and her face knocked against a hard metallic floor. Something hard pushed against her back between her shoulder blades.
    The nausea was overwhelming. Her stomach contracted and the first mouthful of vomit came up. It was only then Sammi realised her mouth was sealed shut. She started to choke as the vomit had nowhere to go but back down. She tried to cough, forcing a small amount of spew out of her nose. She swallowed hard and snorted a burst of air to clear her nasal passage. Trying to ignore the smell of sputum and bile, she took long even breaths through her nose.
    The rising fear helped clear her head, her thoughts slowly crystallising through the haze.
    Sammi’s mouth was taped shut. When she tried to reach up to her mouth, she became aware that her hands were bound behind her back. She inhaled as much air as her lungs would hold and closed her eyes. She lay there, as still as the bumping and jolting allowed, concentrating only on the next slow deep breath of air. She couldn’t tell how long she lay there, doing nothing but breathing, trying to control the nausea. Slowly, as the urge to vomit started to fade, Sammi allowed her focus to shift and started to take notice of her surroundings.
    She slowly stretched her legs and took some satisfaction in being able to push them in different directions. She pushed her right foot forward and touched a wall in front of her. When she stretched out her left leg, she bumped against another wall below her. As her eyes started to adjust to the darkness, she could make out some lines and specks of dim light. The steady and unmistakeable hum of an engine wormed itself into her consciousness.
    Sammi slowly tried to lever herself into a sitting position by using her elbows to push back against the wall. It wasn’t a flat wall; it was metal like the floor and grooved with ledges. A bump sent her back to the floor with a thud and a little groan came from the back of her throat. With her hands bound behind her back, there was no way to catch herself.
    Slowly the jumbled pieces came together. The bar. Candy dancing with the two guys. Climbing into the barman’s ute. A bottle of Coke. The barman’s evil grin, ending in black.
    Sammi was now sure she was in the tray of the white ute with the canopy.
    There was only one explanation as to why she had passed out – she had been drugged. She had willingly climbed into the front seat of the ute and she was now trussed up in the back of it. She had no doubt the barman was behind the wheel.
    The bile rose in her throat as the seriousness of her situation hit her. Sammi tried to breathe evenly. If she threw up, she would most probably choke to death. Only famous people died that way, inhaling their own vomit in trashed luxury hotel rooms, with booze and pills by their sides. She closed her eyes, feeling the cool metal vibrating under her cheek. More than anything, she needed to keep calm.
    How could she have been so stupid? It hadn’t seemed dumb at the time. A lift up the road from an employee of the pub she’d been at.