Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Fear invades everything inside me, and yet my brain can’t get past the fact that I’d do anything for a shirt.
If Landon had purposefully waited until Bo and I were undressed to start the attack, it would add a whole new layer of betrayal and humiliation. Being bound like this, stripped of our dignity, it’s got me ready to vomit at the way it makes me feel. Maybe that’s the point.
Rusty screws litter the bottom of the van, digging into my side, and the only light that makes its way in is from the small crack between the double doors we’d been thrown through.
Total darkness. It’s so disorienting that I just want to squeeze my eyes shut and try to shut down. Escape into my head, because what’s real is too horrific. But I can’t. Noah and Jesse aren’t here. There’s nobody else to protect Bo except for me.
Emma, get it together.
“Bo, can you hear me?” My voice is weak, and I try to scoot closer. “Bo.”
The van shakes as we hit a hole in the road but I manage to roll to my elbows and knees and scoot closer to the place I saw his body tossed.
The ties cut into my wrists as I move but when I find his warm chest I almost cry in relief.
Curling myself into him, I feel his slow, even breath against my face.
He’s alive. We’re both alive.
Okay, think. What did Noah teach you?
Trying to wrangle my thoughts into a neat line is almost impossible, because my blood is pumping so loudly in my ears it could drown out the steady thump of the tires on the road.
Noah has hammered so much information into my head on how to protect myself, about what to do if I found myself in a situation like this.
Still, somehow I hadn't truly believed they would ever manage to separate us.
Noah is many things, a lot of them dangerous, but most importantly he is insanely competent.
With his computers, his ridiculous intelligence, and that calculating head of his, I just believed he was always a step ahead.
I hadn’t taken his words seriously enough because I’d felt safe with him. He really had known better, known the dangers of this world, and tried to get me to see them, but now it’s too late.
My eyes burn, but there’s no time for regret right now.
Bo’s unconscious, maybe dealing with a concussion or some kind of fracture from the blow at best. The beating he took back at the cabin though…
there definitely could be injuries internally.
That crack of the gun against his head, the crunch that followed, replays in my head like a sick splinter digging further into my head.
You have thirty seconds to break down, and that’s it. He needs you.
I feel so useless. I know nothing. I don’t even have the most basic knowledge about how to help Bo recover from this.
Thanks to Noah’s incessant training I’m somewhat decent with a knife, but I don’t even have one.
I’m a lousy shot at best, and after seeing the men that came for us, my hopes of grappling against one of them is laughable.
I’ve lived such a sheltered life that all I really know how to do is take care of people. How to please my parents. How to appease my husband. How to make my own pain so quiet that nobody around me is ever inconvenienced by it.
I almost hear Noah’s stern voice cut through my self-bashing session, cutting it short.
Above all, you need to stay calm. You’re good at that, Em. You just need to keep a handle on yourself so you can think. So you can plan.
Exhaling shakily, I press my forehead to Bo’s arm, letting myself sink into his closeness. He’s here for now. We could be separated as soon as this van finally stops, and god knows what will happen to us then.
My best friend. My…something more than that, but I don’t know what. After everything he’s been through, I can’t let him get taken advantage of again. I can’t.
“I’m going to keep us safe, Bo,” I whisper. “I promise. You’ve been looking out for me for so long. It’s my turn now.”
I repeat it in my head over and over and over until I feel the van stop. It’s time.
I’m going to keep us safe.
I brace myself as I hear the motor cut, a door open and steps along with muffled voices. The back doors open again and the inky blackness of midnight is visible behind the few masked men standing there.
Stay calm. Keep a handle on yourself.
I stare back at them like I’m not intimidated and it makes one of them laugh.
“Not so scared now, is she?” he teases, stepping one foot up on the back of the van to climb inside.
I bristle, the thought of them separating us, of hurting Bo, pissing me off.
“Come here. It’s better for both of you if you listen and do what we say.”
Going quietly? I can’t, because the thought of us being separated has my entire body screaming in terror.
“You aren’t going to take him from me,” I say, doing my best to hide the fear in my voice.
He only laughs at me again. “I can do whatever the fuck I want, but you’re not being separated. You do need to get the fuck in the other van right now. So make it easier, yeah? Then I won’t have to hurt you.”
I try to rise to my knees, hating the ties on my hands and ankles as I struggle. There’s no way I can take care of us until they're cut.
He loses patience with my squirming, and wraps his ridiculously large hand around the zip tie on my ankles, yanking it toward him so that I fall backward, hitting my head on the metal floor with a thump. My yelp of pain makes one of the men laugh again, and I grit my teeth.
I hate it. Being laughed at is making it easier to hang onto that voice Noah’s lodged in my head.
Stay sharp, Em. Don’t let them get to you.
I’m pulled right into his reach, his lecherous eyes making my stomach roll as I’m swung from the van into his arms. We’ve stopped in an empty parking lot, another nondescript van parked next to the first. Nobody else is in sight, a singular street light illuminating the scene.
“Where are you taking us?” I ask, craning my head behind me to watch another masked man drag Bo out by his arms. The third grabs his feet and they carry him behind us.
“I think you probably know the answer to that,” he says.
“Is it Bundy?” My voice quakes, like I’m a child scared of the Boogie man. The monster under the bed. “Are you taking us to his house?”
“You’re gonna wish you were going to his house,” he laughs.
My stomach sinks. Somehow his words gave me no information while also telling me that we are screwed.
The doors on the second van are thrown open and I’m shoved inside, twisting just in time to see Bo thrown in beside me. He groans, his face tightening in pain as they slam the door shut behind us.
“Bo,” I whisper, but he doesn’t move. If only I was able to use my hands, I could hold him.
I’d be able to claw the eyes of the man that had smashed his gun into Bo’s head, leaving him helpless.
Instead, I cuddle closer again, trying to curve my body around his like that would be enough to protect him from harm.
It can’t, but at least I can feel him breathing.
We drive for what feels like half an hour, the dulled voices of the men in the front the only sound I can make out over the steady hum of the tires. One laughs and my hatred flares hot again. This is nothing to them. Another day, another job. We’re just insignificant cargo being shuffled around.
This time it’s harder to follow Noah’s advice. To remain calm. The words from the stranger play on repeat until the tape tangles into the sounds of my nightmares. Locked away again where I have no control.
I scramble to the corner of the van and empty my stomach. It’s mostly wine from celebrating Christmas Eve with Bo. The ribbon still tied at my neck is now slick with cold sweat, and Bo’s is surely heavy with his own drying blood.
A few minutes later, the sounds outside the van start to shift slightly. Straight roads begin curling, winding upward. Are we in the hills? The change sets me back on edge. Through the rattling metal, I hear the sound of passing cars and the van seems to idle at what could be a stop light.
My head snaps up. Scooting to my knees, I shuffle to the side of the van and start pounding with all the force I have in my body, knowing I only have a few seconds until the men intervene. I ball my bound hands and bang on the metal.
“Help! Please, somebody help us! HELP!”
The van screeches to a stop and my heart shoots into my throat.
I pound louder. “Somebody please!” I scream, tears starting to fall again because I can hear their doors opening and footsteps along the side of the van.
“Please,” I sob. “Help us.”
There's laughter outside and I pause, the noise crawling across me. They’re obviously not worried about anyone hearing my screams.
The doors are flung open, the overhead lighting blasting in and making me blink rapidly. The van shakes as two large men step into the back, and I fall backward trying to scoot away.
“Fuck, she threw up in here. Someone's gonna have to clean this up.”
My eyes dart between the now larger group of men standing outside the van. I’m immediately sure that I do not want to leave this space. Their eyes are hungry on Bo’s skin, on mine.
Hatred, disgust, terror. My jaw clenches because I don’t want to scream and let them know how scared they make me.
The closest man grabs my zip-tied feet and pulls me toward the back, toward the group of them.
My hands try to clasp onto Bo as I’m dragged away from him again. The distance sets me into a panic.
They keep laughing at my scrambling and the sound is somehow the scariest I’ve heard. The snickers and chortles of sick men is terrifying. In my thirty years, I’ve never been more afraid of anything than having their attention on me. On Bo.