Her hopes rose, and she had to turn her face away from him to hide her smile. He grabbed her shirt, yanking her toward him painfully. Gwen couldn’t help the little whimper that escaped her lips. His eyes were red, his face mottled and tired. Up close, his BO took a back seat to the horrible smell of his breath.
“I know what you’re thinking, bitch, and it ain’t gonna work. You try to get out, and I’ll shoot you like a dog—I don’t care who sees me. You think I’m lying? Give it a whirl. You’ll be dead before you know what happened to you.” He grinned, the joy in his eyes dark and sick. “In fact, I’d love to kill you. So by all means, try to escape.”
He let her go then, pushing her away from him with such violence that she slammed into her door. The back of her head smacked into the window, and the world starred and darkened for a moment. He was already out of the car before she came back to herself, and she watched as he disappeared inside to pay.
Now’s your chance, she told herself, but did nothing. He was right. Trying to escape would be a suicide mission. Still, she tried to turn around to get her hands on the handle of the car door. She didn’t know if he’d locked it, but she didn’t think she remembered hearing the click, so all she had to do was open the door, undo her seat belt, and she could get out of here. She might be able to make it to the highway, get someone’s attention, or at least be seen. Someone might stop and help her or call the police. Or, like he’d said, he’d come out of the gas station and shoot her before anyone noticed.
She’d told herself earlier that if she had to die, she wanted to do it on her own terms. The fact that he’d kept her alive must mean something. Most likely he intended to use her as leverage against Annie and would let her live until then. She wouldn’t let that happen, but she also didn’t want to die, and certainly not before she knew Annie was safe.
Her will to escape faded to nothing, and she stopped struggling, relaxing back into her seat. Annie was all that mattered. Judging by their location now, he was likely taking her to Susan. From what Annie had told her, Susan was the brains of the operation, and Bill the muscle. Susan would have plans for her. Gwen had to hope that Annie would know better than to negotiate with these people.
Bill reappeared, rushing back to the car. He opened his door again to check on her and then left it open while he filled the tank. The morning heat and the fumes did nothing for her headache, and she gagged a little and swallowed hard to keep from being sick. She’d read that concussions caused nausea and could now confirm that was true. She’d be lucky if she didn’t end up with some kind of brain damage.
Already, the world seemed strangely foggy and overly bright, and not from the weather. She needed medical attention for her head, if nothing else, and his frequent punches and smacks weren’t helping. No, she’d play the good girl the rest of the trip and hold her tongue. Goading him wasn’t helping her at all.
He climbed back in and slammed his door, sitting there for a while doing nothing. He stared out the front window, frowning, tapping the steering wheel. Then, as if he’d decided something, he put on his belt and started the car, wrenching the wheel hard enough for the tires to squeal. Instead of getting onto the highway, he turned back on the road they’d driven in on, the car surging ahead and racing back at high speed.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Quiet.” His voice was low but impassive. The question hadn’t bothered him. It clearly didn’t matter to him.
A one-story brick building appeared on the left-hand side of the road about a mile back. Gwen had seen it earlier but hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Bill turned into the lot in front of it, and Gwen saw now that whatever it had been, it was now abandoned—no windows or doors, splattered with bad graffiti. Bill drove around to the far side of the building, away from the empty road. Her stomach dropped with dread, and she stilled. He was going to kill her.
Bill turned the car off again. “We’re going to be on some busy roads for a while, and I can’t risk someone seeing you. In the trunk you go.”
“But you said—”
“I lied. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Which one do you want?”
She licked her lips. She had to find some way to dissuade him.
“Too slow,” he said, and the last thing she saw was his fist drawing back.
* * *
It was dark. Too dark. This wasn’t the same kind of dark she’d seen when the bag had been over her head. This was something else. This dark was full, weighted, as if it crouched above her, waiting for her to wake up. It took her a moment to realize that nothing was over her eyes—nothing blocking her vision. Either she was sitting in total darkness, or she’d gone completely blind. There was no telling which.
She panicked at the sensation of a cloth in her mouth, momentarily afraid she couldn’t breathe, but the sound of her whistling breath rattling in and out of her nose quelled some of her terror, and she tried to make herself calm down and assess the situation.
She had very little recent memory. She could remember him hitting her in the car and then coming to as he threw her roughly into the trunk. Seeing her awake, he’d disappeared again and then come back with something in his hand. He’d leaned down, and she’d felt a stinging sensation in her neck and nothing more. He must have drugged her. Who knew why he hadn’t done that to begin with—it didn’t matter, now. Her head felt stuffy, cloudy, the remnants of whatever he’d injected her with adding to her overall fogginess. It was hard to stay awake.
Now she was sitting upright, but it took her a few seconds to recognize this position and to understand where she was. She pulled each of her limbs, experimenting, wincing at the pain in her wrist and shoulders. Her arms and legs were strapped to the arms and legs of a chair, her waist and chest cinched to the back.
She tipped slightly to the right, but the chair didn’t move. It was either bolted to the floor or tied down somehow. The arms felt thin under her fingers—polished wood, like a dining-room chair. By contorting her middle finger, she could just touch the strap around one of her wrists. It was leather and thick, wider than a belt. Without seeing it, she couldn’t tell or see how it was fastened.
She tapped her foot on the ground, listening for an echo. The sound reverberated very near her, explaining the looming sense of something in front of her. A wall or large structure or object was likely a few feet away. The floor felt solid, smooth but almost sandy—probably concrete.
She froze at the sound of something slightly behind her and to her right—a rattling of some kind. She held her breath, straining her ears, and heard it again. This time it sounded more like a horse or dog harness, and, underneath that, she could hear something else: breathing. Something was here with her in the dark.
She flushed with terror and jerked in her chair, straining against the straps across her as far away from the sound as possible. She pinched her eyes shut, shaking her head. Stop it, she told herself. Don’t let the dark get to you. She scrambled for her anchor—the one her work-appointed therapist had taught her as a means of calming down.
The anchor, her therapist had explained, was meaningless except in the significance you gave it. The words could be anything, but if you taught yourself to react a certain way when you thought of the anchor or said it aloud, it could, with practice, have an almost magical effect on your reactions, including those of your body. She hadn’t taken her therapy very seriously at the time, but she nevertheless practiced using her anchor in times of stress, and, with time, it had begun to work. In her fright, however, she mentally continued to stumble over the words and images she associated with it and found herself more frightened the longer she sat there, scared in the dark.
That same rattling noise came from behind, louder this time, and she flinched again, moaning into her gag. The sound stopped, and then she heard something else. She had to fight the horror clouding her mind, but she finally heard it, clearly and without mistake.
Muffled screaming.
The effec
t of this recognition was instant. Relief swept through her like a cold wind, and her heartbeat began to slow. Something wasn’t down here with her; someone was, and that someone was like her—tied up to something and gagged. No threat to her, and no help, either. She drove the thought of this person from her mind and focused on herself again.
She made herself relax back into her chair, testing the bindings on her chest. With her back flat against the chair, the straps over her chest were almost loose, slipping down a couple of inches. She tilted forward and they inched up slightly, but not quite to the same place they’d been before. She’d already discovered that her arms and legs were tightly bound, but now, not straining, they too had a little give, likely to avoid cutting off her circulation. The idea that she had a few millimeters of space that belonged entirely to her worked like a balm on her spirit. Her courage surged back, and her fright finally began to ebb. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough. She could get out of this.
Again, despite the dark, she closed her eyes, breathing as deeply as she could through her nose. She needed a plan of action. Most obviously, getting one hand free would be enough. Her right wrist was throbbing, broken, so freeing her left from its binding was the best choice. Still, before she could try, she needed to get this gag out of her mouth. More than simply impeding her air supply, it was also distracting. For one thing, it made it obvious how dry her mouth was.
She had no idea how long she’d been here, or how long she and Bill had been driving, but her last memory of water was back in her own car, somewhere outside Santa Fe. The drug might have exacerbated her thirst, too. Underneath it, she could detect a kind of metallic tinge inside her mouth. Don’t think about water, she told herself, but the idea overwhelmed her in its intensity. She shook her head and almost moaned again, the pain from the various punches so intense she could almost see stars. Beyond her thirst, the gag pulled her jaw back slightly so that her whole face was aching with the strain. Yes, she thought. Gag first, hand second. If she could just get this damn thing out of her mouth, everything would be much better.
She tested the inside of the cloth with her tongue. Her mouth was entirely dry, but she discovered some residual moisture there and probed it with her tongue, trying to absorb some of it. The sensation of the cloth was familiar somehow—a light cotton, probably a handkerchief, or something very similar. The idea that some brightly colored, paisley thing in her mouth was causing this agony made her angry for the first time since she’d come awake. She tried biting it, pushing it with her tongue, moving her jaw down even farther to loosen it—all to no effect. The back of the chair rose behind her head, and by twisting from side to side, she could feel the individual rungs. She paused at one and moved her head back and forth with the knot of the gag pressed against it. For a moment, she thought she was on to something. The gag actually seemed to loosen in her mouth. Then the light turned on.
She had no warning, no sound that proceeded it—like a door opening or the sound of a switch. It was simply on and so blindingly bright, she had to close her eyes, the pain making them water. She tried to open them, but her vision was foggy, and the light still hurt. Gradually, squinting, she felt her eyes begin to adjust and sat upright in the chair, peering around her.
She was facing a nondescript, concrete wall, very much like she’d pictured in the dark. She was perhaps five feet from it, close enough to have sensed its presence. The face of the wall was unfinished and unbroken, no windows or marks, and stretched some fifteen feet in either direction. Looking down, she wasn’t surprised to see herself bound to a dining-room chair. By leaning as far as she could to the right, she could tell the chair was held in place with metal vises clamped onto beams that stretched the length of the floor in front and probably behind her. She’d seen this kind of thing before when she’d helped her brother put in hardwood floors. The beams were baseboard for a new floor—some kind of home-reno project in its earliest phases.
Her vision was finally beginning to clear, the pain and fog lifting, but she could see nothing beyond the wall and the floor—no doors, no windows, nothing. A sound behind her reminded her that she wasn’t alone down here, and she craned her head and neck around, painfully, to see the other person.
It was Annie.
Chapter Nineteen
It was all Gwen could do not to scream. Annie looked terrified, her face paler than it had been before. Like Gwen, she was strapped to a chair held in place to the beams across the floor. Annie began to mumble and yell against her gag, twisting hard from side to side, and Gwen shook her head and mumbled back at her through her gag, trying to tell her to stop. Watching her struggle was the worst thing she’d ever seen. Terror surged through her, her earlier courage and plans dashed to pieces. It was one thing to attempt to free herself, yet another entirely to get Annie out as well. Before, she hadn’t minded the idea of trying, as she’d rather be dead than trussed up like a sacrificial pig. Now that she knew Annie was here with her, they had to do everything they could to stay alive, and that meant not panicking.
Somewhere behind and to her left, a door opened, and then she heard the tread of footsteps as someone—no, some people—came downstairs. Gwen couldn’t see what was happening, and she made herself stop, trying to look relaxed. Her heart was tight in her chest, her anxiety and terror so powerful they were almost suffocating.
“So you’re awake,” a woman’s voice said behind her.
“I told you,” Bill said.
“Shut up.”
Bill muttered something, and Gwen heard the footsteps gradually make their way toward her. A moment later, a woman appeared in front of her, Bill at her side. Not having seen her before, Gwen still knew this must be Susan, and not simply because of the circumstances. She’d pictured a woman exactly like this despite Annie’s careful evasions and vagueness since she’d mentioned her name. Women like Susan could get away with anything. It was no wonder the police hadn’t realized she was involved. Gwen even understood Annie’s reluctance to turn her in, now. It would be hard to believe she was capable of anything criminal. She seemed professional, confident, and trustworthy, a little like a school principal.
Susan was older than her, but she was that relatively indeterminate age some women were lucky to look well into their forties. She could be as young as thirty, as old as fifty—only the slight lines on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth suggesting she was likely on the upper edge of that range. From farther away or wearing sunglasses, she could probably pass for much, much younger, even in her twenties. She was wearing formal business attire—a blue skirt suit, a silk blouse, and incredibly tall heels. Her hair was loosely curled, thick and dark, straying past her shoulders. Her dark eyes were almost black, even in the bright overhead light. Her features were straight and well-formed, not exactly pretty, but something in or behind her expression lent her face a strong appeal. Gwen sensed the allure there and something else—a warning, perhaps. She was, in a word, mesmerizing, like a dangerous but beautiful snake.
“My associate here,” Susan gestured at Bill, “was stupid enough to drug you without knowing the correct dosage, after I specifically told him not to. We were afraid you might not wake up.” She glared at him long enough for him to drop his eyes before looking back at Gwen. Her expression was lazy, unconcerned. Regardless of what she’d said, she clearly hadn’t cared that much one way or the other.
“Get that thing off her mouth,” Susan said. Her voice was low, almost a growl, but she uttered this command without any kind of rancor. She was clearly used to making demands and being listened to.
Bill pulled a knife from his pocket, flicked a blade open, and approached her. Gwen couldn’t help but flinch, and she saw a slight lift at the corners of Susan’s mouth. She was enjoying this. Recognizing that fact gave Gwen a little burst of indignant anger, and she made herself relax and sit up straight. She wouldn’t allow this woman anything at her expense if she could help it.
Bill cut the gag from her mouth, and Gwen alm
ost moaned with relief. She opened and stretched her lips, the pain in her jaw and neck so intense she could hardly make them function. The thirst was back, and that metallic tang much stronger now that the cloth was no longer masking it.
“You must be thirsty,” Susan said. “Bill, give her some water.”
Gwen saw what was going to happen a second before he bent down and grabbed and threw a bucket of water on her. She managed to close her eyes before it hit her. She sputtered, blowing some of the liquid from her nose and choking a little. She shook some of it off her face and opened her eyes again. Both of them were grinning at her.
“That was rude, Bill,” Susan said, her grin still plastered on her lips.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly not.
“Fuck you,” Gwen said.
Susan laughed, throwing her head back with delight. “I like you. I can see now why Annie was drawn to you. You have some backbone.”
“Untie me, and I’ll show you some more of my attributes.”
Susan laughed again. “No, dear. That’s not going to happen. In fact, pretty soon, you’re going to be begging me to let you help me. Do you know why?”
Gwen didn’t respond, and Susan approached, leaning down close enough toward her that Gwen caught a whiff of her cloying scent—tea rose.
“I said, ‘Do you know why?’”
Gwen could see that dangerous, predatory glint in her eyes again and realized she had no position here but that of obedience. She licked her lips, biting back an angry curse. “No. Why?”
“Because of Annie, silly. You want to help her, don’t you?”
Gwen’s eyes suddenly teared up, and she blinked, furious with herself for showing weakness. Susan saw all of this and smiled, standing up straight again and holding out her hands at her sides.
“Of course you do. And I can help you help her. But only if you do what I tell you to. Understand?”
Gwen was still fighting tears, but she managed to nod. “Yes. I understand. What do you need?”
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