by Sam Crescent
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2019 Sam Crescent
ISBN: 978-1-77339-938-6
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To never giving up no matter what.
TWISTED IN CHAINS
Sam Crescent
Copyright © 2019
Be Warned: This is a dark book with many triggers.
PART ONE
Chapter One
Pain exploded behind Skye Carver’s eyes. She closed them and tried to open them again. A bright light distracted her, and as she tried to sit up, the entire room swam. Even as she closed her eyes, she saw another person there.
Forcing herself to reopen her eyes, she tried to focus on the person.
“It’s okay. It’s just me. Do you remember your name?”
She stared into the blue eyes of Noah King, all-star jock and bad boy at her local high school. They’d stayed late at school. She’d been forced to tutor him, and as her stomach rolled, she decided to give in and just lie down on the ground.
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I … something hit me hard, I think. Ugh, I can’t think right now. It’s too much.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“No, I don’t feel fine. What is going on?” She pressed her hands to her face, and still nothing became clear.
“Do you know your name?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Why are you asking me so many questions?” She didn’t want to think right now, or focus, or do anything.
Kidnapped.
This was what happened in movies to really popular girls that were nothing like her.
“I need to know you’re okay.”
She licked her dry lips, staring at him. “Skye. My name’s Skye Carver.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Who am I?” he asked.
“No, I know who you are. You tell me.”
“Noah King. I’m eighteen years old, star of the football team, and you’re my tutor. I’ve been flunking in English and science, all of them. You’ve been helping me. What is the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Skye. We need to keep our heads right now. I need to know everything, and so do you. We were both hit pretty bad.”
“Okay, fine. I remember the day at school. Derek stole my soda and ran around the cafeteria. You asked me to meet you out by the brook.” She paused. “Why did I have to meet you out by the brook?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the studying.”
“Yeah, you wanted to quit and have me do all of your assignments. We got into an argument—”
“And woke up here,” Noah said.
“That’s it. That’s all I remember.”
“Me too. I woke up a few minutes before you.” He held up his cuffed wrist. “You’re on the bed, no cuffs, nothing. I’ve been nominated to be chained to a wall.”
She crawled off the bed and headed toward him, determined to get to him.
Her body wouldn’t work the way she wanted it to, and she had no choice but to grit her teeth to keep on going, to keep on trying.
“Drugs,” Noah said. “Clearly to keep us sedated as long as possible.”
She got to where he sat and touched the cuffs, following the link to the wall. There were bolts on the wall. She gripped the metal chain, putting her feet to the wall and starting to pull.
As she let out a cry, the metal dug into her hands, and she released a sob.
“It’s fine. Don’t hurt yourself.” Noah captured her hands, holding them in his. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid? Noah, look around. We’ve been kidnapped. We’re somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I’m trying not to freak out right now and totally failing.” She sniffled. “I’m scared.”
“I know.” He gripped the back of her neck, pulling her in close. The small movement made pain explode behind her eyes, but she didn’t tell him to stop. “We’ll get out of here. I promise.”
“We don’t even know where here is.” She lifted her head up and glanced around the room. A single light lay in the high ceiling. No window in sight and only one door. The room had one bed, a toilet, and that was all. Not even a sink.
“It’s got to be out in the sticks somewhere.”
“Noah, we don’t even know how long we were out. For all we know we could be in a foreign country or something.” She rubbed at her temples. Getting to her feet, she touched the wall.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” She moved to the door and tried the handle. “Hey! This isn’t funny. We’re just kids. Let us out.” She slammed her hand against the door, wanting to leave, to be free.
“Don’t do that, Skye. I mean it. Don’t.”
“I just want to go home. I want to go back to where everything was normal.”
She heard movement behind the door, and she jumped back in time before the metal door hit her in the face.
With the sudden rush avoiding the door, she caught herself off balance and fell on her ass.
Scrambling back from whoever it was, she went to Noah. Looking up, she saw three men.
“Check her over,” the man said, speaking in a strange accent, not one she recognized.
Two men advanced in the room and grabbed her. She tried to hit one, but they caught her arms against her body, holding her immobile.
“What is this about?” Noah asked. “If you need money or anything, call our parents. We’ve done nothing wrong. This is a mistake.”
The man laughed, and Skye screamed as one of the men started to grab at her body, touching her breasts, lifting her shirt, tugging her back and forth.
“She’s fine, boss.”
Just as quickly as she was held, she was tossed to the floor. She caught herself against the bed, but not before hurting her hand on the cement floor.
“Good. Good. We don’t want to ruin the merchandise, at least not yet.”
She rested her head against the bed, ignoring the horrible scent of decay and whatever else the bed had seen.
Noah got to his feet. He was a little unsteady.
Being the star football player, he commanded attention. Most of the girls in high school wanted to be his girlfriend or at least be a notch on his bedpost. For Skye, she never had any time for high school guys.
Noah had to beg her to tutor him, as she didn’t want to waste her time with someone who was only giving a half-assed attempt. He’d proven he meant business though and studied hard, until hours or days before. She didn’t know how long it had been.
“You need to let us go,” Noah said.
“Oh, I do, do I?” the man with the accent asked. There was a smirk on his face as if he was sharing some kind of inside joke with himself.
“Yes.”
Accent man stepped forward, right up into Noah’s space.
Considering he wasn’t his normal self and drugged up on whatever they’d given him, Skye was impressed that he didn’t cower away. He stood his ground, holding his own against the much older, and to Skye, far fiercer and more terr
ifying, man.
She got to her feet, crying out as accent man wrapped his fingers around Noah’s neck, squeezing tightly.
“You’ll do exactly as I say. Otherwise, you’re going to be digging your own grave in my back yard. I’ve got a lot of dough riding on this. Play nice, kiddies, and you might leave with your lives attached.”
Skye tried to stop him, but his men held her back, stopping her. She cried out as they kicked Noah in the stomach.
“Let’s not do anything too crazy now.”
She caught herself as they threw her against the wall.
The door slammed closed with the sound of the lock clicking into place. Skye rushed toward it, trying to pull it open, but nothing would give.
They were both locked in.
Noah’s pants drew her attention back to him, and she went to his side, kneeling on the cold floor. She put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse from being choked.
“You don’t sound it.”
“It’s fine.”
“You can’t talk to them like that again,” she said.
Noah chuckled. “You think they give a shit about what I say?”
“They could kill you.” She touched his cheek and quickly withdrew her hand. They were not friends, not out there, and right now, they were nothing. She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against the wall. The last thing she wanted to do was to go and sit back on the bed. “This is bad.”
“I know,” he said.
The silence said so much.
Their situation wasn’t a prank, or a mistake of identity. They’d been taken, and whatever it was the men had planned, it would end badly for them.
Maybe even in death.
Resting her head against the wall, she stared across their small room, a sense of foreboding filling her, and tears flooded her eyes.
Gritting her teeth, she tried not to think about those men, the ones beyond that door, and instead tried to think about what she could do to get out of here.
“They don’t want ransom money,” he said.
“No. They didn’t seem interested in money.”
“Skye?”
“Yeah?”
“I won’t let them hurt you.”
“Newsflash, Noah,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “You’re tied to a wall, and you couldn’t even touch them. You shouldn’t be making promises that you’re not going to be able to keep.”
****
Noah had no way of knowing how much time had passed. Sitting in silence, listening to Skye breathe in and out and occasionally sigh, didn’t exactly help matters.
His throat hurt.
The guy could have crushed it. The strength; Noah had never come up against someone intent on hurting him.
Seeing the way they held Skye, touching her, assessing her, every single part of him was screaming to get the hell out. That he had to get her to safety. He didn’t like her being on display. She had a whole lot of curves that he’d been surprised about. Skye, to everyone at school, was the bigger girl, the fat girl. Right now, he just wanted to protect her.
This was really fucking bad.
They’d been kidnapped. He had no way of knowing where they were, and to top it off, their interest in Skye creeped him out.
He wiped at his head, feeling how sluggish his body was. Every inch of him ached, and he couldn’t find the strength to move even a part of himself.
Skye fell asleep, and her head landed on his shoulder. He didn’t even have the energy to nudge her off. One glance at her and he couldn’t do it. She looked so exhausted.
The cuffs gave him some room to move, just not a lot of freedom around the small room. He moved Skye down, helping her so that her head rested on his lap.
“I don’t need to sleep,” she said, mumbling.
“You’re fine. Go to sleep.” He stroked her brown hair and watched as she snuggled against his leg. She rolled over so that she faced his body. The angle looked really uncomfortable to him, but she seemed to enjoy it so he didn’t see a reason to move her. When she finally woke up, they’d have to talk about their situation, about what was going to happen to them.
He had no doubts it was going to be a nightmare.
No way had anyone ever come home from a kidnapping situation and talked about how much they enjoyed being away. It wasn’t a vacation but hell.
One look around the room and already he was in hell.
Hours passed, or at least it felt like hours, and after some time, he closed his eyes, falling asleep, only to be woken up as Skye gasped.
“What is it?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. The cuffs were still on his wrists.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.” She got up and started to pace the cell.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He watched her, noticing the way she pressed her thighs together and walked across the room.
“You need to pee,” he said.
“Don’t. I’m fine.”
The toilet was right in the corner.
“Go,” he said.
She shook her head, going to the bed across from him, sitting down and bouncing a little.
“I’m fine.”
“Skye, this is ridiculous. Just go to the bathroom.”
“I’m not about to pee in front of you, Noah.”
“You’re going to end up doing it in your pants if you don’t, and you’ll stink of piss.”
“Ugh, there’s no sink to wash my hands. This is horrible.”
He imagined their kidnappers had done this on purpose.
“I’ll close my eyes.”
“You’ll be able to hear.”
“Do you need to take a shit or something?”
“Noah, seriously.”
“Look, go. I’m going to need to go soon myself, and I’m not going to have any problem about doing it in front of you. I’ll even take a dump in front of you. Don’t you think our current situation states we’ve got a whole lot more on our plate than using the bathroom?”
She pressed her hands against her face. “I hate this.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a walk in the park, darlin’,” he said.
He saw her eyeroll.
“You can’t tell anyone about this. No sharing it either.”
“I don’t have my cell phone. Believe me, I will not be telling anyone anything.”
She moved toward the toilet, and he watched and waited.
“Do you think someone died on that toilet?”
Noah wasn’t about to tell her that he believed a lot of people had died in this very room. He didn’t want to freak her out.
“Probably not.” The lie slipped so easily off his tongue. “Just go.”
“Close your eyes.”
He rolled them before closing them. He heard her shuffling around, and then the sound of her peeing. He didn’t know what her problem was.
They were stuck in this hellhole together, and he was going to be watching and hearing a whole lot of stuff he’d never planned on.
“You can look now,” she said.
Opening his eyes, he saw her staring at her hands. “Did you piss on them?”
“No.”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
“It’s gross.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone. This is all … nothing. Okay. How about we agree on that?”
“Agree on what?”
“No matter what happens here, we don’t tell anyone anything. We’ll treat it like a Vegas thing. What happens in this room or here stays here. Nothing goes out, and we don’t speak a word.”
“I like that,” she said. She moved from the toilet, sitting beside him. Her hands were on her thighs.
“You think we’re getting out?”
“I’ve got to have hope.”
“Why?”
“Because, without it, we’re stuck here until they’re finished with us.”
“Tr
ue.” She let out a sigh. “I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
“Why have they kept you chained?” she asked.
“Don’t want me causing waves. Hurting things.” Or hurting himself. They clearly had plans for the two of them.
“Do you think that means there’s a way to escape here that we haven’t seen?” She got up from the floor and started to touch every single inch of the walls.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s that movie where he digs, like, a hole in the wall and escapes?” she asked.
“You mean Shawshank Redemption?”
“You know that movie?”
“It’s a classic,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“There’s no poster here to hide any possible escape.”
She dropped her hands from the wall, and he found it cute that she knew the movie. He wrapped his arms around the cuffs, and while she explored the walls, he gave the restraints a little tug.
Nothing happened. They were secured tight. He tried again, and again nothing happened.
Once, twice, three times.
The chains were not moving. His strength wasn’t what it was. He felt the ache in his body. The need to rest, to just calm down.
The threat to their lives was real. He sensed it with every passing moment.
“Come and sit down,” he said.
Skye took a seat beside him and sighed. “Sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get you out. It’s useless. This would be the perfect time to study though.”
“No books.”
“No books.”
He wondered if she was still mad at him. He’d offered to pay her to do his homework for him. Studying was beneath him, and one of the reasons he’d been with her was because of his grades. He had gotten fed up of always trying and failing. Getting Skye to help him had been great at first. Then one of his friends suggested making Skye do all of the work, and he wouldn’t have to try so hard.
He couldn’t play ball with shitty grades. Counting on Skye to help him was easy. Only, it seemed easier for her than it was for him.