My fingers ran over the cool wall, feeling grooves that seemed to be in a rectangular pattern. They felt like bricks. There was something slimy on the wall and felt like algae between my fingers. I followed the wall, crawling on my knees and realized that I was going in a circle. It didn’t take long to circle back to where I thought I had started. I could have been wrong because I felt so disoriented, but it felt like I was in a small space.
The ground was moist beneath me and as I ran my hands over it, I felt puddles. That reminded me of how thirsty I was, but I didn’t want to try and drink anything in here, not knowing exactly where I was. I sat down on my butt and stretched my legs, trying to judge exactly how big the space was. I was able to stretch them all the way, but there were only a few more inches before my feet hit the other side. So, the space was probably a little over three feet wide.
I leaned back against the wall, exhausted from just that little bit of movement. I closed my eyes and tried to remember anything from what happened. I remembered being in the room with Wes and he had said something about helping me. But what happened after that? My mind was too fuzzy right now to keep thinking.
I desperately wanted to go back to sleep and let my head rest against the wall, but it kept lulling to one side, giving me a crick in my neck. Against my better judgement, I laid down on the ground, hiking my knees up to my chest so I would fit in the small space and rested my head on my arm. I stared up at the light up above and wondered if I would ever be in the light again.
Slowly, the light started growing brighter. It must be morning. I blinked lazily up above, trying to count the minutes as they went by, but kept dozing off. My muscles were cramping from laying in the fetal position, so I sat up again and stretched my legs out. My stomach growled in hunger and my throat was so dry that I felt like I was choking.
Getting to my knees, I felt around the ground for the puddles I had felt earlier. When I came to one, I bent down and started slurping what water I could. It was disgusting, tasting like dirt and something else that had me gagging. But once I felt the liquid in my throat, I pushed past the disgust and got every last drop I could out of the puddle. As it was, I knew that wasn’t nearly enough. It had been not even one gulp from a glass of water.
“Help.” My pathetic attempt to call out for someone was barely audible to my own ears. I didn’t even have any saliva in my mouth to try and swallow. The little bit that I had drunk wasn’t enough to give me the strength in my voice that I needed.
Feeling around on the ground, I found two more puddles. I would have to save them for later. I had no idea how long I would be down here or if I would ever get out. I looked up at the bright light above and got to my feet again, feeling along the wall. There were small notches between the bricks, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough for me to grip onto.
I slipped off my heels and pressed the back of my right foot against the wall and then fell forward, catching myself on the other side of the wall with my hands. Holding myself as straight as I could, I slowly placed the back of my left foot a little higher on the wall. One hand at a time, I moved a little higher and then started to move my right foot. My arms shook from the strain and my stomach was aching from trying to hold myself up. I moved myself slowly, but by the time I was about five feet off the ground, my arms gave out and I fell back to the ground.
Pain shot through my side and arm because of how I landed and my already cold body felt scraped and bruised. I laid on the ground, panting and staring up at the hole that was just too far out of reach. Feeling around the ground again, I found another puddle and drank up what I could. I rested for a little while, regaining what little strength I had. Who was I kidding? I had nothing left and if I laid here too long, there was no way I was getting up again. I placed my right foot awkwardly against the wall, along with my right hand. This time, I was going to try and move straight up. I didn’t even make it as high as the time before, and when I fell this time, I cut the bottom of my foot on a sharp piece of brick.
I couldn’t see how bad it was, but I could feel the blood trickling out of the bottom of my foot. I winced as I ran a finger over the cut, feeling how long it was. It was a pretty decent sized gash and unfortunately, I didn’t have anything to clean it with.
I started crying, but there were only faint tears leaking from my eyes. There was no way I was getting out of here on my own. Even if I had an endless supply of water, I just wasn’t strong enough to do this on my own. Forgetting the fact that I was probably laying in mud, I sank down on my back and stared up at the light above. It was sunny out and probably a lot warmer up there than it was down here.
My mind drifted to Payton and all the wonderful memories of her. I remembered the day I found out I was pregnant. It had been the best and most depressing day of my life.
I walked into my apartment that I shared with Matt. I hadn’t been feeling well the last week, but I chalked it up to the flu. But when I was only getting sick in the morning, I knew it wasn’t the flu and bought a pregnancy test. Now I just had to tell Matt and hope that he was okay with this.
We had been together for nearly five years, so I couldn’t see him being too upset over this. We hadn’t really talked about kids, but marriage had come up several times over the years. I found Matt in the bedroom, drying off after just getting out of the shower. He turned and smiled at me, his wet hair flopping slightly over his forehead and giving him a devil may care look.
“Hey, I got us reservations at that new restaurant you wanted to try. We have to leave in an hour.”
“Sure,” I said half-heartedly. “Um, can I talk to you about something first?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“You know I haven’t been feeling well this week.”
“Yeah. Are you still feeling sick? Should I cancel?”
“No, it’s not that. Um…” I fidgeted as I tried to gain the nerve to say this. I was worried, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe deep down I thought he wouldn’t want us anymore, which was ridiculous. We loved each other. “I picked up a pregnancy test. I realized today that I’ve only felt sick in the morning.”
He just stared at me, his face unreadable and completely devoid of emotion. “Well, we have reservations, so like I said, you should get ready.”
I jerked back in shock. I didn’t understand why he wanted to avoid this. Wasn’t it better to find out and figure out what we were going to do? “Matt, I just told you I might be pregnant and you want me to go get ready for dinner?”
“What does it matter? Is it really that big of a deal if we wait until we’ve had a nice night?”
“I don’t think I can sit through dinner knowing that I might be pregnant and a test is waiting at home for me.”
“Fine,” he huffed. “If you want to take the test, take the fucking test.”
I backed away, shocked at his harsh tone. This didn’t seem at all like the Matt I knew. He was always lighthearted and funny, but this man in front of me was cold and unfeeling. He wasn’t even considering what this was doing to me. I turned and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. With shaky hands, I tore open the package and squatted on the toilet. The wait was excruciatingly slow. It didn’t even take the full three minutes for the lines to show that I was pregnant.
Opening the door, I walked over to where Matt was sitting on the bed and sat down next to him. “It’s positive.”
He scoffed and rested his elbows on his knees. “This is fucking perfect. All I wanted was a nice night out with you and now I have to think about you having a fucking baby.”
How had I never seen this side of him before? Had I been totally blinded by love? “Do you not want this baby?”
“We never fucking talked about it. We’re not even engaged. Did you forget your pills or did you do this on purpose to try and get me to marry you?”
“Excuse me? Do you really think I’m the type of person that would do something like that?”
“I don’t know, Morgan. You’ve always gone on and
on about needing a family of your own and how your parents never gave you what you really needed. Now you’re pregnant.”
“Wait, so you think that because I want a family, I tried to trap you with a baby? Why the hell would I do that? We’ve talked about marriage before. It’s not like I didn’t think we would get married one day.”
“No, Morgan. You talked about getting married. I listened to what you had to say, but I never actually fucking asked you about marrying me one day.”
My brain was struggling to understand what was happening. I thought back over our conversations and remembered him saying, ‘if we were ever married…’ or something similar. It hadn’t just been wishful thinking on my part.
“Whether you want to marry me or not, we still have a baby on the way. If you don’t want to marry me, fine. We can stay together like we are now. We’d have to eventually get a bigger apartment, but we can make this work.”
“I don’t want to stick around and live with a baby day in and day out. I never fucking wanted this life.”
“You…you don’t want the baby?”
“I’ll tell you what I want. I want a woman that doesn’t expect me to change my life for her. I want a woman that I can just enjoy life with. I want to be able to go out on a Friday night and not worry about whether or not you’re going to nag me about going out with friends instead of hanging out like an old man with a kid that I never wanted.”
I stared at the ground, tears pricking my eyes. In a matter of five minutes, my life with Matt had gone from perfectly wonderful to complete shit. He didn’t want the baby and in turn, didn’t want me. This was the end of the road for us. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t keep this baby and he wouldn’t stick around just to be with us, to be a good guy.
“I need a little time to find a new place,” I said quietly.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find someplace else to stay. I never wanted to live here to begin with, but you insisted we didn’t waste money on a nicer place.” He scoffed at me. “Now you can keep the shit hole and raise your kid here.”
He walked out the door, not even sparing me a backwards glance. I slumped down on the bed and ran my hand across my flat tummy. I couldn’t be upset about him walking out. If he didn’t want this baby, life with him would be miserable. But life with this baby would be the best thing that ever happened to me and I wasn’t going to let his lack of responsibility ruin this wonderful thing for me. It was going to be me and the baby for the rest of our lives and that was something to be happy about.
I drifted off to sleep at some point. My mind wasn’t really able to focus on time anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten or drank anything. It had to be going on twenty-four hours now.
Desperate for something to eat and drink, I got to my knees and felt around for my heels. If there was water sitting in puddles, maybe it was coming up from below. I dug with the heel of my shoe, but soon realized that with the ground so soft, it was better if I used my hands. I dug until my arms were sore and I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. There was no water, but I did feel bugs crawling around me.
Leaning back against the wall, I tried to work up the courage to do what I needed to do to survive. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to stomach it, but I was running out of options. Maybe if I was able to do it this one time, the next time wouldn’t be so bad.
Finally, after much debating, I scrambled back to the hole I dug and felt around until something wiggled over my hand. I snatched the worm in my hand and brought it to my mouth before I could think twice about it. I shoved the worm in my mouth and swallowed, but when it started wiggling in my throat, I gagged and threw up what little I had in my stomach. I couldn’t do it.
With the stench of vomit in the hole with me now, I shoved the dirt back in the hole to cover it up and patted the dirt down until it was firmly in place. There was no more water. Unless it rained, I was going to die of dehydration.
When the light started to dim, I realized that an entire day had gone by. As night crept in, the chill of the bricks started to seep into my bones, or maybe it had already been there and I just hadn’t realized it before. I snuggled into myself as best I could, but the ground below me was too cold to really get warm. Once it was completely dark and I couldn’t see any light from above, I started to wonder if I would ever see my daughter again. Obviously, Wes hadn’t held true to his promise and I had been played. What I couldn’t figure out was why. He hadn’t tried to sleep with me as far as I knew, and that could only mean that I had been onto something and he wanted to get rid of me.
I stared up through the dark hole and swore I saw a few stars sparkling in the sky above. A single tear slipped down my cheek as I realized that I had failed. I would never see my little girl again because no one was coming for me. Nobody knew where I was. Hell, I didn’t even have a fucking clue, but I knew that I was in some kind of hole and there was no way out. It was so dark down here that no one would be able to see me even in the light of day.
Still, I had told Storm about my daughter. I had to hope that he would go after her. He was such a good guy and I knew he didn’t really belong at that strip club. He was wasting time, trying to get over his demons. But he was a warrior, a savior. He could do what I couldn’t for my little girl.
✯✯✯✯✯
“Mommy.” Payton’s sweet voice echoed around me. I opened my eyes and saw her staring down at me, giggling like she always did when she woke me up in the morning. “Mommy, don’t go to sleep. You have to stay awake.”
“I’m so tired,” I said weakly.
“Mommy, I need you.” Her little face was scrunched up, her lips quivering. She kept looking behind her like she was watching for someone. I wanted to reach out and take her hand and tell her everything would be okay, but I just couldn’t.
“I love you, baby. Someone will find you.”
It was just barely a croak, not even audible to my own ears.
“Stay awake, Mommy. Come on, don’t give up.”
“I don’t want to. I’m just so tired.”
The whole world was spinning around me. There was light above me again and it rippled like I was looking through water. The light was coming closer and closer. This was my time. I was fading faster now and I knew it wouldn’t be long. My eyelids were heavy and I could barely force them open.
The next time I did, I was surrounded by bright light. There were fields of green grass all around me and trees that were swaying in the breeze. The sun was hot on my face and the smell of flowers drifted past me. Heaven was a beautiful place. There were people all around me, welcoming me with open arms.
My face stung as something hit me and then my mouth was forced open and cool liquid was rushing down my throat. I choked, spitting up the water that I so desperately craved. It didn’t make sense. If I was in heaven, why did I still feel so worn out? Why was my throat so dry and my eyes so heavy?
My mouth was opened again and this time, the water trickled down my throat slowly and I swallowed greedily. It stung when I swallowed and I could feel the liquid sloshing around in my stomach. As good as it felt going down my throat, it made me feel sick to my stomach. Something cool was brushed over my face and I sighed in contentment.
“Come on, Morgan. Open your eyes.”
The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t my daughter. Where was she? She had just been here. I forced my eyes open and glanced around for her, but she wasn’t there. Men stood around me and one knelt beside me with a bottle of water. I felt him shift under me, like he was cradling my head in his lap. The concern on his face was frightening. He looked at me like I was about to die. But wasn’t I already dead?
I couldn’t place him through the fog in my brain. I stared at him for a moment, but I was just too tired. I let my eyes slip closed and ignored the nagging shake from the man next to me. I felt my body being jostled and my head dropped back, dangling like it wasn’t really attached to my body.
I was dizzy and the movement was mak
ing me feel sick. Opening my eyes made it worse. The sky seemed to be bouncing up and down and I wanted to shout at the men to stop jumping around me. My eyes fell on my hand that hung limply in the air, almost like it was floating next to me. A giggle bubbled up in my throat as I thought about saying hi to my hand as it floated along beside me.
Doors slammed around me and then the man was leaning over me again. I could see his lips moving, but it sounded like his voice was slowed down, like on an old tape. I frowned and tried to read his lips, but then he turned away from me, facing what I now saw was the front seat of a vehicle. There was a prick of something in my arm and then I went to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sniper
I LAID MORGAN down on the bed in the master suite of the safe house. We had gone to the safe house just outside of Pittsburgh because it was closest and we had to get Morgan some treatment. Storm had started an IV line in the SUV and Rocco was on his way with Derek and Hunter. I wasn’t a medic and only knew basic things to keep people alive until help arrived. We were doing that, but she needed Rocco’s help.
We decided against going to the hospital on the off chance that Wes didn’t know that we had found her. We had searched all over that property, but it took all day and all night to cover all the ground. We almost gave up and decided to look elsewhere when Alec found the old stone well buried in the tall grass. Shining a flashlight down didn’t show much, but I had a nagging feeling that she was down there. The guys lowered me down with a pulley system we rigged and there she was, lying at the bottom of the well. She looked like she was already dead, but then she started mumbling about Payton.
I’d never been so scared in all my life. It wasn’t like Morgan and I were an item, but I had fucked this woman. She was basically naked and helpless when we found her and she was so filthy that it would probably take a good hour of scrubbing in the shower to get her clean. Even now, she laid in the bed, still dirty because we needed to get her hydrated first. The shower would come when Rocco had a chance to look her over.
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