by Raine, Meli
Chase lets him.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see Chase watching him touch me. His face is impassive. His eyes are dead, but the fingers in his left hand are curling into a fist. His thighs are tensing underneath his well worn jeans. That little shred of hope inside me starts to spark, too.
“The only disease El Brujo has is a disease of power,” Chase says, with a sigh. He nudges Frenchie again. “Look, man, we need to feed her.”
“I got something I can feed her,” Frenchie snaps, thrusting his hips toward me.
Chase punches his upper arm. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Frenchie says back in a suggestive tone.
Chase looks at me. “You hungry?”
I shake my head.
My stomach growls, revealing my lie.
He purses his lips and looks annoyed. “We’ll get Jackie in here, give you some food.” He looks at my hands and my feet, chained to the bed. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I catch his eye and hold it. It’s the only power I have. And then I say, “Thank you.”
His eyes widen, and then he scowls. Frenchie starts laughing. It’s a sound of torment.
“You got her thanking you for chaining her to a bed, Chase. Looks like you gave up a good one. Coulda had fun with her. Bet she’d enjoy some cable ties and duct tape, too. Too bad she’s saved for El Brujo.”
Chase laughs. “Yeah. Too bad.”
I close my eyes slowly and focus on my breath. As long as I can feel it, I’m alive. My chest rises, and falls. I have to remember this. To breathe. All the processes in my body that I’ve taken for granted are shutting down.
My mind sprints forward to what’s coming. How El Brujo will touch me. What he’ll do to me. And I shut it down, making a weird sobbing noise. I can’t cry now. I need to focus. Need to preserve energy.
Need to deaden myself.
This is hopeless.
Frenchie walks out, fingers on his ass pocket. “Somebody’s texting me, gotta go.” He leaves me alone with Chase.
The second Frenchie’s gone, Chase walks over to my head, bends down, and whispers, in the lightest of butterfly sounds, “I’m going to get you out of here. Don’t talk about Marissa. Don’t talk about me. Just do what I say, and I promise Allie, even if they kill me, I’m going to do everything I can to get you out.” His words come so fast I’m not sure I heard them right.
Maybe I imagined them. The difference between reality and my imagination is a really blurry line.
“Chase, what? Uh, uh...” I stumble with my words, because I can’t believe it. Am I hallucinating? Chase can’t be saying these things.
I’ve been hoping for this, praying for this.
I don’t pray.
I do now.
Chapter Three
“Listen,” he says, in a rushed, tight voice. “I don’t have long. Once Frenchie comes back, I have to go back to pretending. I don’t know what’ll happen next, and I can’t stop them if they hurt you part of the way.” His jaw tightens and he takes a swift step forward, sitting on the edge of the bed. The movement makes my hips twist and I moan in pain.
He stands abruptly, his face contorted with too many emotions for me to figure out.
“Part of the way?” I whisper. “What do you mean?”
He squeezes my hand. The comforting touch of Chase makes me think that maybe I’ll get out of this. Maybe I won’t get hurt. Maybe they won’t give me over to El Brujo.
“I can’t get you out of here right now,” he says in a strangled voice. His eyes are filled with love and pity and fury. “If I try, they’ll kill me and they’ll...” He pauses and frowns. “They’ll do worse to you.”
“Your own dad would kill you?”
He shrugs and caresses my cheek. His touch is soothing. It also hurts. I must have a bruise there.
“My dad threatened to kill me if I left the motorcycle club. What do you think he’d do if I tried to get you out of here?”
My body goes limp. It goes numb at the same time. The pain’s gone. He’s looking at me with so much concern, and his voice is so soft and gentle. I think for a minute.
“What about Marissa?”
He shakes his head. “She wasn’t there when they came and got you.” Oh, thank God. She had left to go get cigarettes and food. She must have come home to an empty house and now she’s freaking. I hope she called the police. Maybe they’re searching for me.
Wait a minute.
Right. Allie Boden, the prime suspect in Jeff’s murder. I disappeared. They’re searching for me, all right. I’ll bet they think I skipped town. They’d never look for me here, at the Atlas motorcycle club compound.
Something Chase just said makes the back of my neck tingle.
“They?”
His jaw tenses. “Frenchie, someone else. I don’t know who.” He takes a deep sigh and then whispers. “I hear footsteps. I got to go back to being an asshole.” The sweetness in his eyes drains out, like someone’s pulled the plug. He steps back, crosses his arms over his chest, and looks at Frenchie as he walks back in.
“What the fuck. El Brujo’s delayed,” Frenchie says.
His eyes take in my body. I watch them crawl from my head down to my toes. It’s the least of the awful things he could do to me.
“He says he wants her delivered to his mansion.”
Chase gives Frenchie a nasty look. “Now we’re a fucking delivery service? What do I look like, a pizza driver?”
Frenchie snorts. “You deliver money for the club. You used to deliver smack and crank for the club. I deliver beat downs.” He gives a wide, malevolent grin. “Now I guess we deliver whores.”
Chase’s eyes remain neutral. “Guess so. Can’t call her a whore, though. She’s a virgin.”
Confusion clouds Frenchie’s eyes. “Good point.” He gives Chase a clap on the shoulder and shakes Chase’s body in a good-natured buddy move. “Future whore, right? After what El Brujo’s going to do to her, you ain’t gonna be able to call her a virgin.”
Chase laughs, the sound ringing through my ears, like someone twisting my heart and squeezing all the blood out of it. One of his eyes narrows as he looks at Frenchie, and if I didn’t know better....
It’s only pretend, I tell myself. He’s only pretending. I know I can trust him now. Chase is going to do everything to get me out of this. I will be safe. I will see Marissa again. I will be okay. The question is, will I be whole?
That seems like a luxury now. I’m never going back to the way I was. The only question left is: how damaged will I be from all this?
Actually, that’s the second question. The first is:
Will I come out of this alive?
Frenchie leans down and grabs my wrist, yanking hard. I make a sound of pain in the back of my neck as his grasp pulls on my raw skin, his pull hurting my hips.
“Shut up,” Frenchie says. “You think that hurts? Oh, Girlie, just you wait.” He pulls a tiny key out of his front pocket and unclicks the cuffs.
“What the fuck you doing?” Chase asks him in a rough voice.
“Unlocking her. They want her to pretty herself up.” He unlocks the cuffs on my feet. “Eat, take a real bath. You know, they want her to be all nice for her deflowering.” Frenchie shakes his hips in a vulgar, sexual gesture. He thinks he’s funny. He’s actually disgusting.
“What do you think you’re shaking, Frenchie? It’s not like you have an actual dick in those pants,” Chase says to him.
I move slowly, inch by inch, while the two argue. My body’s not used to moving on its own. For the past—however long I’ve been here—it’s been tied up, or bent over or laid flat. I’ve been restrained constantly. My own flesh doesn’t know what to do when it comes to moving normally.
The strain on my tendons as I move my legs over to the edge of the bed and sit up makes them feel like tight rubber bands ready to snap. My abs clench hard, so tight it’s like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. My arms hang from my
shoulders like pieces of spaghetti. It’s hard to keep my head up on my neck. It’s so heavy.
I take a deep, careful breath. Another one. Another one, as I sit up. I’m wearing red silk underwear and a red half bra. I look down. There are scratches all over my belly, my ribs, my upper thighs. Deep bruises mottle my legs and arms. A thick gash on one hip that is an angry red. If I look in the mirror, what will I see?
I lick my dry lips and watch the two men arguing over whether or not Frenchie has a penis.
“You think I don’t have a dick?” Frenchie says, beginning to unsnap his jeans. Before Chase can protest, he’s unzipped the fly and whipped it out. Frenchie apparently goes commando.
And doesn’t trim his pubic hair. Ever.
“Put that thing back in, for God’s sake, Frenchie. There’s a lady in the room!” Chase barks at him.
A hysterical laugh starts deep in my belly but it just bubbles there, like the beginnings of food poisoning. It gurgles and groans. The Allie before all this would have found the scene funny.
The Allie right now is just trying to remember to breathe.
“Where?” Frenchie says, pretending not to see me. “Oh, her? She’s about to become the opposite of a lady. You know, I heard El Brujo has this thing about making sure he gets all four holes on a woman.”
“There ain’t four holes on a woman,” Chase says. “There’s only three.”
“Yeah,” Frenchie says, looking me over. “El Brujo finds a way to make a fourth.”
I hold back from looking at Chase. I can’t. If I look at him, I might blow his cover. He’s secretly working to get me out of here. I have to remember that. Nothing Frenchie says matters. I have to screen him out.
My head throbs like someone’s hit me from behind. They probably did.
I need to stop being scared.
I need to just do whatever it takes to get through this, however long it takes, until Chase rescues me.
Chapter Four
All I can do now is comply. I don’t fight Frenchie as he leads me out of the room. Chase looks like he’s pissed at me. He has to act that way. Whatever plans he has to get me out of here depend on it. I understand that now. It makes sense. Maybe he left L.A. in a hurry because he knew something. Knew I was going to be handed off to El Brujo.
Asking myself why he didn’t stop my kidnapping is just a kind of torture. I don’t need that right now. If I get out of this alive, I’ll ask him then.
Too many ifs.
As Frenchie pushes me slowly down a long hallway, I stagger. My legs aren’t used to walking. My feet ache from being bound. My muscles are rubber. I grab the wall for support. It’s so cold for late summer. How can the walls be so cold? The hallway is dim and the floors are tile, clean but old. Most of the tile is white, with a beautiful turquoise border around the edges. If I were in a different situation I’d admire it for its beauty.
But not right now.
I’m dressed in a simple pair of red panties and a half bra. Someone picked these out for me. Someone dressed me up for my meeting with El Brujo. My hair is clean but matted. I can feel all my cuts and scrapes throbbing on the surface of my skin. My mouth feels like someone painted it with turpentine. Even the water they made me drink doesn’t help.
A cramp seizes my calf and I fall. Chase starts to help me and he stops himself. A flicker of emotion passes over his face. Frenchie stops and sighs like I’m doing this to aggravate him. He’s annoyed.
“You need more stamina than that, Girlie Girl. El Brujo won’t take none of this.” I massage my muscle. It’s like a giant chunk of concrete, the pain twisting my leg and pinkie toe. It screams with a burning tear. It’s nothing compared to what I felt when I woke up in the chair in that big room, tied down and naked.
When was that? How many hours was I out cold?
How many days?
I open my mouth to ask Chase and realize I can’t. Frenchie’s eyes meet mine. His eyes are clouded. A little uncertain. For once, he’s not looking at me with scorn.
It feels really, really weird.
“Get up,” he orders, eyes going cold. “El Brujo has strict instructions for you. Jackie don’t wanna wait forever. Now we’re supposed to move you from that other room to the new one. Jackie’ll make you look good for your new man.” He widens his eyes and gives me an air kiss.
Who’s Jackie? I wonder. Again, I want to ask. Again, I realize I can’t. The hallway smells musty, like old books. Nothing in the desert smells quite like this. I know the scent because the basement of our school library has this odor.
I stand and wobble my way down the hall. The wall is smooth and cold against my palms as I stumble by. Chase and Frenchie walk behind me. Frenchie makes comments about my ass the entire time. It appears to please him.
Chase doesn’t say a word.
I finally get to the end and I’m in the big room I woke up in. At least I’m not tied to a chair right now. I also have some clothes on, even if they’re just a bra and panties. My situation is improving. A crazy laugh starts in the base of my throat. I choke it down. Laughing is a luxury I don’t have. Anything that brings attention to me could make this worse.
Anything that might make it hard for Chase to get me out of here can’t happen. I have to make myself an object. A quiet, inanimate thing. A blob. A nothing.
Shouldn’t be hard. They’re already treating me like I’m just a bag of flesh. A thing El Brujo owns. Like a slave. Property. I’m not human to them.
I have to learn to play the part.
We walk across the wide room. It’s as big as I thought, even though I wasn’t exactly in a position, when I was naked and tied to the chair, to really take in my surroundings. The ceilings are high and the walls unfinished. There’s a set of stairs leading up to a kind of walking deck, and a series of doors are up there. Chains hang from the ceiling. I shudder involuntarily, seeing a huge, sharp hook at the end of one.
Right over the chair I was tied to.
A group of four bikers is at one end. I don’t recognize any of them. All of them are about Galt’s age, with salt-and-pepper beards and scowling faces. They’re just a mass of denim and leather, beards and murmurs. They don’t even look at us as we walk across the room. Chase and Frenchie’s boots make a loud clap on the floor as they walk.
I’m barefoot.
We pass them. Frenchie grunts at one of them. The guy is bald and has hoop earrings in both ears. He’s shirtless and turns.
Hoops in his nipples, too.
That laugh starts again in my throat and I keep it down.
We make a left, then we’re outside, the sun blinding me. No comfort in the fresh air, though. It’s too much sensation, like a fake kind of freedom. I can’t get my hopes up. It’s hotter inside than outside. There’s a rare breeze. I tip my face up to the sun. It’s the first time I’ve seen it in...
I don’t know. The full force of how little control I have over my own body—and, soon, my mind—hits me. I have no idea how long it’s been since I saw the sun.
I am outside, walking on dirt in my bare feet, wearing a silly set of lingerie at a biker compound. Chase assured me Marissa isn’t here, but then where is she? Is she at least safe? Will El Brujo come after her? The smart thing for her to do is go to the police, but they may not believe her. The whole situation is unbelievable. I wouldn’t blame the detective if he thought Marissa was inventing this mess.
My mind starts to race through all the ways that what’s happening to me are unreal. If I can turn off my anxiety and my thoughts, I can survive this.
The problem is that I can’t.
And that may doom me, in the end.
The hot, sandy dirt feels fluid against the soles of my feet. My arms and legs move in wider arcs as I get used to having the freedom to move. I feel like I’m happily baking in the hot summer sun and wish I could just walk outside forever.
Forever. I have to stop that. Stop thinking in terms of forever. Right now, my life is lived in one-minute increments. I
f I survive this minute, I get to think about the next one. I have no future.
Getting one is like having a prayer answered. I need a miracle now.
Frenchie grabs my arm and yanks me to the right, toward a building. It shocks me, his fingertips digging hard into bruises.
“Where’s Jackie?” Chases asks Frenchie. He sounds exasperated.
“Hold your horses. She’s coming. Said to meet her in the offices.”
“The offices? Why there?” Chase spits out. He’s behind me. I don’t dare look back.
“Do I look like fucking 411? I’m no information booth. You want a better answer, go Google it.”
Chase makes a dismissive sound but stops talking. I trip over something and fall on my knees. A bone makes a horrible popping sound as I fall, the pain vibrating up into my hips. My head is bent down and my hair brushes the ground. The black strands look so otherworldly against the brown dirt.
Chase’s legs are behind me suddenly, and his hands are on my shoulders.
“You look like a coupla barnyard animals fucking,” Frenchie says with a sickening glee as Chase hauls me up, hands under my arms. He’s rough, swinging me like a bag of bones.
“Do the pelvic thrust, man,” Frenchie continues, moving his hips to demonstrate.
“Shut the fuck up, Frenchie,” Chase snaps.
“Make me.” Frenchie grabs me around the waist. My skin tingles, fear spearing through me. He starts humping my ass and cackling.
I go limp. If he’s going to treat me like a fleshbag, I might as well become one.
“You fucking bitch,” Frenchie mumbles as he bends down to haul me up. “Get up.”
“I can’t,” I croak. Chase’s eyes catch mine. His widen slightly. I think the message is to stand up and walk. So I do.
He blinks twice and gives me the tiniest of nods.
I feel like he’s kissed me a hundred times. A solid feeling fills me. I’m tethered, even just a little. All the spinning pieces of my broken self come together for a split second.
Hope has a funny way of coming back over and over, even when you think it’s long gone.
I stand. Frenchie smacks me on the ass. “Good girl. Now walk.” We’re headed toward a weathered wood building with an adobe roof. The roof is made of brick-colored tiles layered all over. It’s the kind of roof I’ve seen my whole life out here in the baked southwest.