Touch of Innocence

29

❗️THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES MILD THEMES OF SEXUAL ASSAULT - NO R*PE❗️

"Hadley!" She turned when she heard her name being called from down the street. It was Dr. Acker, walking quickly toward her. She felt a bit uneasy as he approached her but offered him a polite smile anyway.

"Hello, Dr. Acker."

"Hi Hadley, how are you?"

"Good," she answered. "And you?"

"I'm well. I have a quick favor to ask of you. I was going through some more slides of paintings to analyze in class, and I was wondering if you could help me sort them? Extra credit will be rewarded obviously."

She wasn't sure how to respond. The offer of extra credit was appealing, but Clay had told her not to be alone with him.

"It would be very helpful and much appreciated," he added

"Sure," she found herself agreeing, even though she was ill at ease. He seemed harmless, only needing her help. She tried to push the uneasy feeling to the back of her mind.

"That's great, thank you so much. Are you free right now?"

"Now?" She looked around, unable to formulate a good response. Besides, she might as well get this over with now. "Yeah."

He turned and started walking toward the street toward the arts and music building. She followed behind him, trying to put her mind at ease.

When they walked past the main door, that was when she realized that something was not quite right. She slowed her pace and looked around, but did not see anything out of the ordinary.

"Dr. Acker, what are we doi-."

A large hand wrapped around her mouth, cutting off her string of words. Then she felt the cool metal of a blade pressed against her throat.

Fuck. I should've listened to Clay.

"I got her for you. But I don't want anything else to do with this," Dr. Acker said to the man holding her.

"Fine, Steven. She was all I needed anyway."

Without even a glance in her direction, Dr. Acker scurried away and entered the building.

"Walk," the voice said behind her. He pushed her in the direction of a red car parked on the side of the street.

He opened the door for her, but wrapped some cloth around her mouth and also tied her hands behind her back, before pushing her into the seat.

There was a blonde woman on the driver's side of the vehicle. She glanced back at Hadley before turning around and looking out the windshield again. The man who held the knife to her throat got into the passenger seat. He had brown hair.

They glanced at each other before the woman put the car in drive and took off down the road.

Hadley's heart rate increased as she watched the familiar streets of her college disappear. After ten minutes, she had no idea where they were. The two people up front hadn't said a word the entire time.

She wanted Clay.

Then she felt a buzz in her back pocket and remembered her phone was there. An idea popped into her mind. As discreetly as possible, she shifted on the seat to expose her phone. She carefully slid her bound hands over and pulled the phone from her pocket.

She couldn't use the Face ID function since she couldn't twist her body enough to get a decent image of her face, so she had to carefully attempt to type the password in without dropping the phone.