After I moved out of Zachary’s place, I thought that he would never see me again.
However, fate was a fickle thing.
One day, after I finished a gig with Avalon, he asked me to go back to the hotel first. He had to discuss certain details with the client.

The remote mountain road was bumpy, and it seemed to never end.
So, I asked the person next to me, “How much longer?”
The man did not even look at me as he answered, “Soon.”
It was dark, and I did not remember the path to the shooting location.
There were three men and another woman in the car.
The woman was a staff member. She had been speaking to the client at the shooting location.

After they got into the car, no one said a thing. It was as if they all knew where this car was actually headed.
I felt a little uneasy.
It should have taken only an hour to arrive at the hotel, but the driver had been driving for one and a half hours.
Additionally, the signal in the area was bad.

Half an hour ago, Avalon had asked me whether I had arrived at the hotel.
The message I sent had yet to reach him.
As the driver kept driving further down the road, I felt so nervous that sweat pooled on my palms.
At the next second, I got an idea and frowned to feign nausea.
“I’m feeling a little sick. I really need to puke. Could you stop so that I can throw up? I don’t want to dirty your car…”
The woman cast me a glance. “Hold it in. We’ll be there soon.”
“But I’m feeling really sick. I’m going to throw up…”
The woman scowled and asked the driver to stop the car.
I squatted down at a spot not far away from the car and started “vomiting.”
The driver took the chance to smoke.
Meanwhile, the other two men kept staring at me.
As I pretended to hurl, I sent my friend my location and a message.
My location quickly went through, but my message was stuck at the buffering stage.
I trembled violently and clenched my fists tightly.
Then, the moment they moved their eyes from me, I bolted.
“She’s running away! After her!”
I practically lost my breath from running.
Since it was dark, I could not tell where I was.
I tripped, but I scrambled to my feet and kept running.
For a brief moment, I had a signal.
At the fastest speed I could muster, I sent a message to the first person who showed up in my contacts.
Immediately after, one of the men pinned me down on the ground. They beat me up so badly with a bat that I could no longer move.
They snatched my phone and tied me up. “Where do you think you’re going? Stay still, or I’ll kill you.”
I was dragged back to the car and bound.
It should be about dawn at this point, and it was going to take some time before the sun came up.
I lay in the boot in despair and no longer had any strength to fight back.
However, when a person was at the brink of death, they would always dream of something hopeful.
In my desperation, I thought I was hearing police sirens.
Then, the car stopped, and someone dragged me out of the boot.
At that point, I was delirious. I even thought that the person before me was Zachary.
That person held me and said in a quivering voice, “I’m here to save you, Summer.”