The Perfect Alibi - Blake Pierce Page 0,2

the room for a chair but there were none. There was the crate though.

With what little strength she had, Caroline dragged it over so that it rested just under the window. There were cracked shards around the edges of the windowsill and she used her elbows to smash them out. Then she climbed on top of the crate, praying that it would support her weight. It held steady.

Unable to brace herself with her bound hands, she leaned out over the window, resting her forearms on the sill. As she pressed down, she felt a few remaining shards of glass dig into her skin. She tried to ignore them, focusing instead on how far a drop it was to the ground below. In the dull moonlight, she guessed it was about five feet.

She didn’t have much choice. So she braced her forearms on the ledge and pushed off hard against the crate with her feet. It slid away as she moved and she fell, her midsection and hips slamming against the sill and the razor-sharp bits that had collected there.

Luckily, most of her weight had landed on the outside portion of the ledge and she slowly tumbled out headfirst. She landed on her right shoulder before falling onto her back with a thud. Ignoring the bone-rattling pain, she got to her feet and staggered away from the building, looking for anything approximating a road.

After several minutes of searching, she found one by accident when her bare feet moved from grass to dirt and gravel. She looked down, barely able to discern the difference in color between the two surfaces. Still, she did her best to follow the road, using her feet as a guide more than her eyes and trying not to let panic control her.

As she rounded a corner by a hillside, she wondered where he’d taken her that she couldn’t see any city lights. And then, all at once they were there. As soon as she cleared the hill, the bright lights of downtown L.A. gleamed at her like a city-sized lighthouse offering her both warning and comfort.

She stepped forward, dazzled by them. Caroline lived in West Hollywood, where it was almost never dark and she rarely noticed. Now the sudden appearance of the city made her feel as if she’d been in a desert and just come across an oasis. She took another step closer, leaving the dirt and once again feeling the damp grass below her feet.

But all once, she felt her grip on the ground slipping. She realized too late that she had stepped to the edge of another hillside and that it was collapsing under her feet. She twisted around as her body dropped and tried to fling her arms out to grab a root or branch. But with the cords on her wrists, it was impossible.

Suddenly she was tumbling down, rolling and bouncing off rocks and trees. She tried to tuck herself into a ball but found it difficult to do anything other than grunt. At one point her right leg slammed against a tree trunk and bent sickeningly.

Caroline didn’t know how much longer she fell but when she finally came to a stop, it was only the excruciating pain that assured her that she was still alive. She opened her eyes, realizing that they’d been clenched tight the entire time going down the hill.

It took several seconds to orient herself. She found that she was on her back, looking back up the hill. She guessed that she’d easily fallen seventy-five feet down a steep cliff covered in rocks, brush, and dead trees. She tilted her head to the left and saw something that, despite all the pain she felt, filled her with joy: headlights.

She forced herself to roll over onto her stomach. She knew there was no way she could put any weight on her right leg, much less get to her feet. So she crawled, digging her fingernails into the earth before her and pushing off with her still functional left leg. She managed to get her body halfway into the road, where she rolled onto her back and desperately waved her bound arms above her head.

The headlights stopped moving and she heard the vehicle’s engine turn off. As someone got out of the driver’s seat and she saw boots moving toward her, she had a sudden, horrible thought.

What if this is the man who took me?

A moment later her fears subsided when the person knelt down and she saw it was