You Better Run

By Rowan Hanlon

What happens when the predator becomes the prey?

After escaping from her abductor's house of horrors, Hadley Cowan finds that life does not easily go back to normal. She can't stop reliving all the terrible things her abductor did to her, including a game he forced her to play called "You Better Run." However, when she is visited by two of his other victims, she finds out that she's not alone. They want her help to make sure he never does to another woman what he did to them.

Readers who love crime thrillers will appreciate You Better Run, the third offering from author Rowan Hanlon. It is a gripping story about how three women who were abducted by the same man band together to find him and end his reign of terror once and for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Tradition Books
• Release date: Aug 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781938107733

Book preview

YOU BETTER RUN

ALSO BY ROWAN HANLON

The House in the Hills

Beauty Hurts

YOU BETTER RUN

Rowan Hanlon

REVERBERATOR BOOKS

You Better Run. Copyright © 2021 by Rowan Hanlon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. For more information, email [e-mail].

Published by Reverberator Books.

eBook ISBN–13: 978-1-938107-73-3

eBook ISBN–10: 1-938107-73-X

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Muddy Pit of Despair

A Common Enemy

The Light of Day

My Name Is Clara Maye Simmons

Average Monster

Cold Cases

Lone Wolf

No Mercy

The Banality of Evil

Three Angels

Figuratively Speaking

Something Was Amiss

Well, You Three

Normal

Muddy Pit of Despair

There were two things that Hadley Cowan remembered from her abduction. The first was the grinding sound of a drill that sounded like it came from another room on the other side of the house. The second was the silence that occurred when the drill wasn’t going. The complete and utterly terrifying silence that meant her captor was either away from her or he was nearby and watching, perhaps trying to figure out his next move.

She also remembered that she had been blindfolded almost the entire time and, when she escaped, the light from the room nearly blinded her, though it was dull and barely lit. She had trouble gaining her bearings. She had trouble leaving. She had trouble moving. But then she did.

The walk from the house of horrors was harrowing. It was early morning and very, very dark. Her feet were bare and tender and she cut them several times on sharp rocks and on branches that had fallen from the trees that surrounded the house. But she went on, trudging through the woods, bent over, sometimes howling in pain until she reached the road.

The road was nondescript in the early morning light. She didn’t recognize it, even though the light was better now than it had been in the woods. It was a dirt road that had turned to mud via the torrential downpours of spring and was offset on either side by a thatch of dense woods, the ones she’d stumbled through to get there. But with bare feet, Hadley took a guess and turned to her right and started up the road, not knowing where she was going or how long it would take her to get there. She didn’t see any cars, trucks, or all-terrain vehicles that early morning. She didn’t hear any planes or helicopters above her in the dawn. All she heard was the sound of her own labored breathing. She’d inhaled a lot of dust and smoke during her captivity and her lungs burned with it. She coughed and then spat up black phlegm, then she bent over at the waist and her body involuntarily gave a loud heave as she retched, then vomited. She felt her ribcage through the shabby dress she was wearing and knew she had to eat soon, though the thought of food repulsed her. As she straightened up, her head swam and her mind fought to stay alert and keep her feet moving in, what she hoped, was the general direction of safety.

Hadley’s bare feet became caked in mud from the road. The mud was thick and heavy and she had to stop several times to wipe it off. But, still, she persisted. She kept walking, kept surviving, just as she had for those long days that man had held her captive.

That man… Who was that man? Who was he? But, no, now was not the time to think about this. This was not the place. If she fell prey to wondering about him, to thinking about him and all the terrible things he had done to her mind, body and soul, she would collapse and cry. She would break down. That would waste time. And that would mean he might come after her. He might already be after her. He could be on her trail. He might be.

She quickened her pace and kept walking, wishing she could run like she used to, wishing she could stop and cry and get it all out. But she’d cried too much. For too long. She’d cried and she’d begged and she’d pleaded and she’d made promises. All to deaf ears, all to a person who was hell-bent on destroying her, piece by piece, bit by bit, until there was nothing left.

The road seemed eternal. It seemed to go on forever, all of it in its red-clay madness that seemed to stretch for eons over the horizon. Red clay, red clay, mud, mud, mud. All over her feet and the backs of her legs. She’d never felt so tired in her life but her will to survive overtook that feeling and refused to let her give up. It was survival she was after and if she never made it off this fucking road, she would not survive.

An urge to urinate overtook her. She ignored it as long as she could but then she couldn’t. She had to do it, though the thought of doing so made her recoil. But what choice did she have? And so, she stopped walking, took a step or two off the road and squatted down. Once she felt the urine release, she squeezed her eyes shut and bit down on her fist as hot tears filled her eyes and slid down her face. It was so painful. It felt like she was pissing fire. The bastard had done this to her, too. She couldn’t even pee without pain. The urinary tract infection was almost too much to take. But she took it and, once she was done, she was back on the road.

The road. When was it going to end? And how long had she been on it? She looked up at the sky to see that it was getting lighter. Though her concept of time was off, Hadley knew that people were going to work at this hour. They had to be. But she knew no one lived on this road. It was as lost to the world and as abandoned as she felt. What if I never get off this road? she wondered.

The thought sprung her into action. Though she was utterly exhausted from getting out of the woods, she tried to run. She tried and stumbled, falling face first down into the muddy pit of despair that this road had become to her. She screamed as she fell, then chastised herself for making noise. He’d repeatedly told her to shut up, shut up, shut up! She’d learned after the first few beatings to do so. She would sit and wait and let him do his malicious things to her body and then, once he was done, she would bite her fist as she held back her screams, as she prayed to God, as she called out to her mother, to her father, to her boyfriend, to anyone, to somebody to help her.

But no one came. No one rescued her. Soon enough, she realized her captor knew what he was doing and he knew how to keep her good and hidden. No one would come because they, simply, couldn’t figure out where she was.

And so, no one came. Once the realization struck that she would not be saved, Hadley accepted the fact that she would have to figure out an escape on her own. So, she prayed to God to help her figure a way out. Her faith never wavered for one second. And, in the end, it paid off. But for how long? Now she was walking on a road that appeared so isolated from the rest of the world, it seemed to be stuck in the middle of another planet.

But then… Then she heard it. She looked to one side and her eyes widened. There it was again! It was the sound of a car. The buzzing sound of small car, perhaps an older one with a stick shift. Yes, that was it! A car! A car was nearby and it was whizzing by somewhere.

Where was it?

Hadley looked around, frantically trying to figure out the location of the car. It was now gone and the all-encompassing silence of the woods that surrounded her had returned. It was so quiet, so eerily quiet… She forced herself to not get entangled in the silence, to not let it bother her as it had at the house and then focused back on the sound of the car, which was all but gone. But it had been there. She had not imagined it. And that gave her hope. She knew if there was one car nearby, there could two or even three or even… Dear Lord, there could a whole road full of cars! And any number of them would help her, she just knew!

But where was that road the car had been on? She closed her eyes and fully concentrated on the silence until it was broken again by the sound of another car, this one’s engine sounded lower and seemed newer. She looked to the side again and her eyes settled on the woods. The sound was coming through there. She started off, towards the sound and into the woods, then she hesitated, feeling reluctant about going into the woods again, as it had taken her hours to get out of them not so long ago.

What if I go back into the woods and never come out again? Hadley shuddered at the thought but knew if she didn’t get off this road soon, he might find her. She knew she had no choice. She also realized that the road she was on was probably running perpendicular to the road where the cars were. Both were slithering in and out of the thick patch of woods. That’s when it dawned on her that she was probably in a national forest, deep in it, deep in the woods. Then a light bulb went off in her head and she knew exactly where she was. She was in the Smoky Mountains, most likely somewhere near the foothills as the land was leveling out around her. She and her boyfriend had many, many times hiked trails here and even camped once. She had hated camping and told her boyfriend she’d never go again, particularly after she was awakened in the middle of the night by what she thought was a tree-topping plane that had buzzed over their tent for at least an hour. But it hadn’t been a plane. When she unzipped the tent and looked out, she was astounded to see a big black bear sleeping rather peacefully right next to their tent, his loud snores disrupting the peace and quiet of the woods. Her boyfriend had grabbed her, put his finger to his lips and whispered in a very commanding tone, Shhh…. We can’t wake him. Lie back and be quiet. There’s nothing we can do. She had done so and thought her heart would burst out of her chest as she endured visions of a bear mauling. But that hadn’t been what happened. After fretting for a few hours, exhaustion from the hike had taken over and she had fallen asleep. The next morning, she and her boyfriend awoke, gingerly unzipped the tent and saw that the bear was gone, though he had left a huge indention in the ground to accommodate his considerable girth. Her boyfriend had grinned and said, See? I told you it was a good idea to tie our food up in the tree! Otherwise, we could have been goners! to which she had slapped his arm and snapped, Get me out of here and never bring me back!

And now she was back. She was back in the mountains. She was sure that she had to be only an hour or so away from her house in Knoxville, Tennessee by car. She looked up at the sky which was now getting lighter as the sun rose. That’s east, she thought. I need to go east. Armed with this newfound knowledge, Hadley turned in the direction she thought the other road would be in and she started off. Into the woods again. And she didn’t stop until she got to the other side. And on the other side was a paved two-lane blacktop. And, as soon as she stepped onto it, a green truck with the national forest logo on the side of the door came into view. Once she saw it, she collapsed onto the road as both mental and physical exhaustion took over. The truck came to a screeching halt just feet from her head. The ranger inside jumped out, raced to her, bent down and said, Ma’am? Ma’am? You okay? in the most beautiful voice she’d ever heard in her entire life.

* * * * *

Another thing that Hadley Cowan remembered from her time in captivity was the feeling of hopelessness. Not long after she’d been taken, the feeling set in and never seemed to leave. It was an all-encompassing feeling of despair she had ever felt. It made her feel hollow inside and useless. She would sit in the corner of the room and just exist, just wait to see what he was going to do to her next, those awful things that degraded her very existence as a human being. That feeling of hopelessness never ceased and it seemed as though she would never again feel the light of hope cross her mind and brighten her day.

But one day, a feeling of hope sprung up suddenly out of nowhere and that was enough. It was a day or so before she escaped that her captor had made a casual comment to her that he’d been feeling sick. Just offhandedly he’d remarked about feeling unwell, like he was coming down with the flu, like they were friends, like they knew each other on a social level and this was the sort of information they would exchange normally. Like nothing had happened between them, nothing had transpired, like it was just another day at the office. Like they had just met in the break room, had a short conversation, then he’d headed back to his cubicle and she’d headed back to hers.

But then again, he had said. I never get sick. I’ve never been sick, not one day in my life.

But he had been sick. He’d been dreadfully sick. He’d coughed and groaned about his aches. He’d left her alone for a few days he’d been so sick. He had also been so sick that he had forgotten to chain her back up, too. For the first time in months, her hands and legs were free. This meant she could take off her blindfold, as it had rarely been off since she had been abducted. However, whenever she thought he was near, she’d pull it back in place, just to fool him and make him think he was still in control. And in that time, she was able to recover just enough to find the strength to escape. She waited tenuously to see if he’d put the chains back on and she waited until she knew he was sleeping soundly before attempting escape, even though she was terrified of going into the woods alone. He’d told her if she did escape something would get her. That she’d never find her way out of the woods, that she’d be trapped. Never try to escape, he’d said. If you think I’m bad, wait until a wild, hungry animal gets a hold of you. And if you happen to get lost? Well, you’re just fucked then.

For a while, she’d heeded his warning but the torture became so bad, she decided to take her chances outside of the house. And the feeling of hope she’d had promoted her to take action sooner rather than later. But once she escaped, she didn’t know what to do. Once she was outside the door and into the woods, she began to realize that maybe, just maybe she couldn’t make it. It was so dark, it was terrifying. Every sound gave her visions of a wild animal attack and fear continually nipped at her heels. But that glimmer of hope that he was sick and in a weakened position made her trudge forward, onwards and out of the house, out of the woods and onto the road. And that glimmer of hope saved her and got her to the two-lane blacktop and to the hospital, where she was now.

I never gave up on you, he said as tears fell out of his blue eyes. Not once, not for one second, not for one minute. I knew you were going to be okay.

Hadley stared at him and wondered, for a long, intense moment, who the hell this man was. He was quite attractive, very good looking. But he… He had a beard, a big, bushy one and his dark hair was longish and thick. He was dressed in jeans and a blue-flannel shirt. The shirt had a small tear at the hem and the buttons were clear. She recognized the shirt as one she wore sometimes when it was cold in the house she shared with her boyfriend. Then she realized who the man was. It was Huck, her boyfriend of three years. Huck Harding from Devon, England. The man who’d told her he loved her after only their first date. The man who had surprised her one day by buying them a house to live in together, a small, vintage house that was everything she had ever wanted. He had told her she could have another house, a bigger, fancier one even, but he liked this house, he liked simpler things and he thought they could be very happy in it together. And they had been. They’d been very happy. Until she had been taken.

Oh, baby, he murmured and pressed his face to hers. I missed you so much!

He cried harder and Hadley felt his beard, rough and coarse, against her face. She found comfort in that feeling as the man who’d abducted her had always been clean-shaven. However, she rarely saw his face as he kept it hidden under a mask that covered the lower part of his face. He only took it off a few times and, because the light had been so dim, she couldn’t make out what he looked like, not really.

Huck took her face in his hands and said, I love you so much!

Then he kissed her forehead. To this, she recoiled and pulled back, turning away from him, feeling a deep sense of shame rise up in her at his touch. She involuntarily shuddered and wanted him to leave, to leave her alone. She remembered she’d never felt like this before, not with him, not with Huck, and they had a very good relationship.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he said and pulled back. It’s okay. I know you’re not ready for that.

She was about to respond when she heard a woman outside the hospital room