Chapter 36 #2
Every so often, she rocked herself from side to side, fighting a cramp in her legs and pins and needles in her arms. She knew when the minivan finally stopped, she had to be ready. For whatever that was waiting for her at their final destination.
Eventually, the minivan slowed, its tires crunching over gravel, then came to a stop. She heard her captor open the driver’s door, slam it shut. More crunching, this time his boots on the loose rocks.
She peered up through the window, but there was still nothing to see, except that the sky had burned off its blue. It had to be late in the afternoon. Which meant it would be dark in a matter of hours. And the night brought with it a whole host of new fears.
Voices now, Milo’s and another man’s. Too low to make out the content of the conversation. Other than it sounded ominous.
The back hatch of the minivan opened. Bright white light filled the cargo area. Jessica squeezed her eyes shut, then blinked quickly.
The dark shapes of two men stood there, surveying her. One was the diminutive form of Milo. The other shape was taller, although equally skinny. His hands seemed overly large for his thin arms.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, they became more than just silhouettes.
The new guy was young, maybe only in his early twenties. He was pale, with stringy blond hair tied at the nape of his neck. Wire-rimmed glasses and a scruffy goatee. He smiled at her.
She struggled against her bindings again, out of reflex. Her earlier attempts to free herself had rubbed the skin around her wrists and ankles raw.
Both men climbed into the cargo area, making the whole minivan dip with their weight.
Using her feet, she pushed herself as far away from them as she could, until she hit the back of the driver’s seat. “Don’t you touch me.”
Ponytail, still grinning, ducked down to grab her legs. She kicked them out of his reach.
Milo went to shove the dog bed away, then stopped. He bent down. Picked up her cheap, faux-leather shoulder bag with the gold clasp.
Her shoulder bag.
He twisted the clasp and opened it. She squirmed again, her heart dropped through her ribcage. He’d find the gun. He’d find it and take it for himself or toss it away, and with it, her only viable means of defending herself.
Ponytail was staring down at her skirt. “You think she’s wearing any underwear?”
Milo’s head jerked up, the bag in his hands instantly forgotten. His smile turned slimy. “Only one way to find out.”
She thrashed about, an automatic fear response. Milo bent down and grabbed hold of her knees, dragging her out of her corner and towards the open door. She flailed at them with her bound hands, attempting to push them away.
The little creep was stronger than he looked.
She also noticed that he seemed twitchier than he had earlier.
His eyes were bloodshot and opened wide, like he was trying to see in the dark.
There was a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Her gaze went to the needle marks on his arms. She suspected his last hit had been a while ago.
He crawled his hands up her legs to the hem of her skirt, still wearing that evil grin.
She went motionless. She’d been on the receiving end of shit like this from men more times than she could count.
When she’d worked at Femme Fatale, it had been daily.
She remembered something Jade had told her on her first night at that place: “Not all men are dogs, honey. But some are real mongrels.”
The only good thing about having suffered through years of this kind of crap was that it didn’t terrify her like it might have once.
She didn’t panic or struggle. She waited, biding her time, collecting her strength.
Until the moment his attention became fully focused on what he was hoping to find under her skirt.
Engaging all her muscles, she reared up, angling the point of her elbow into the center of his forehead. There was an audible thud. The impact hurt her arm, but from the way Milo lurched back, she knew it hurt his head more.
“Fuck’s sake.” He pressed his palm to his forehead, his face contorted with rage. “Little bitch.”
He looked down at his hand as if he expected to find blood there. There wasn’t any, but she could already see a white and red raised lump forming.
Milo looked back down at her, his smile now a snarl. She had a sudden fear that he’d come at her twice as forcefully, but he seemed to realize the moment had passed. He gestured at Ponytail. “Get her legs.”
He grabbed her hair, yanking it so hard it brought tears to her eyes.
Together, they hauled her out of the back of the minivan like she was a roll of old carpet. Milo slammed her shoulder against the side and raked her back on the tow bar as he swung her down. Tears prickled in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Outside, she tried to snatch a glance at her surroundings. But from the way they were carrying her, all she saw was the sky, a grass verge, and a glimpse of a road. An empty road. Then she saw a pale gold sedan, parked only a few feet from the rear of the minivan. With its trunk open.
“No,” she said. “Please—”
They dumped her into the trunk. The last thing she saw before he slammed the lid was Milo’s furious face, with a bright red welt in the middle of his forehead.
But seconds before the trunk came down, he tossed her bag in after her. It bounced off her hip bone with a dull clunk.
She knew what that clunk was.
With trembling fingers, she undid the clasp. Every movement made the plastic zip ties around her wrists bite into her raw skin. She got her hands inside and felt about until her fingers grasped the cold metal barrel of the gun.
Her little gun, the one that couldn’t shoot worth a damn. She knew her odds of successfully using it against these guys were low.
But low was better than zero.
And as she lay there in the pitch blackness, hugging her bag against her lap, she felt for the first time like she might just survive this.
* * *
Darkness, she realized, was like pain. Once she got over the initial shock and panic it induced, once you yielded to it and quit trying to fight it, it became bearable. Almost soothing. It blocked everything else out and whittled her world down to one very basic fact.
She was still alive. Even if she wished she wasn’t.
The space in the trunk was so cramped she couldn’t move her legs or arms. She tensed them from time to time, to keep her circulation moving, but she knew they’d be useless to fight or to run with if she got the chance.
And because she was in the very rear of the vehicle, she was thrown around every turn like a rag doll.
She’d long ago lost any sense of direction.
She could smell gasoline, rubber, and hot metal. For a while, she’d worried about carbon monoxide poisoning. She’d heard of teenagers dying of that while joyriding in the trunks of cars.
But after the fourth hour in there and no relief in sight, she started to think that a painless death in her sleep might be quite nice.
She was so thirsty her stomach burned for want of water. Her bladder was uncomfortably full. Every turn the car took was agony.
Just when she thought she was going to be forced to wet herself, she felt the vehicle slow and veer to the right. Then it stopped altogether.
Doors opened and slammed shut. Feet crunched over gravel. The trunk lid was raised.
She closed her eyes instinctively, but no light burned into her eyeballs. It was dark outside. Ponytail was leaning over her.
“She’s still alive,” he called.
Milo’s response came from too far away to hear.
“I need water,” she rasped.
He ignored her. Just yanked her upright by her forearms. He produced a switchblade and, before she could flinch, sliced through the zip ties around her ankles.
She scissored her legs out of the trunk. He was keeping a painfully firm grip on her upper arm to keep her from running. She knew she wouldn’t be able to, even if he wasn’t keeping hold of her. Her legs felt like jelly.
He jerked her to a standing position. It was too dark to detect anything about her surroundings beyond the fact that they were parked in some kind of rest area. Traffic zipped by a hundred yards away. She saw headlights winking at her between a line of trees.
So close, yet so far.
Milo was approaching them, zipping up the fly of his jeans. She tried to pull away, but Ponytail yanked her forward.
He marched her to a grassy bank that dropped down toward a boggy paddock. He let go of her arm and said, “Do whatever you gotta do.”
She turned her head around, gaging her options. She could run, but there was nowhere to escape to. Except down a steep drop to a darkened swamp. She still had bound hands, and her legs were shaking under her own weight.
“There’s no one watching,” he said, watching her with a nasty smirk.
He went to grab at her skirt, but she stepped away. She’d shoved the gun down her waistband, and she couldn’t let him see it. Not yet. Not until she had free hands and a clear shot, and then she planned on letting both these fuckers see it.
So, she squatted in the grass and went. And forced herself not to be embarrassed. If he got off on watching kidnapped women urinate, then he was the only one who should be ashamed.
When she was done, he hauled her back to the car. Milo was waiting by the trunk. She felt a swoop of fear at having to return to the tiny, dark space. But any attempt to break free of her captors would be impossible. She was dehydrated, starving, and her whole body ached.
Milo was holding a water bottle in one hand. He uncapped it and held it above her mouth. She drank greedily, not stopping until the bottle was empty.
Then they shoved her back in the trunk.
She lay there in the darkness again, curled in the fetal position. Maybe she was only halfway to wherever to they were taking her. Maybe only a quarter.
Maybe when she got there, she’d wish she was back in here.
Her eyelids felt heavy. Soon, they were so heavy she couldn’t keep them open. An overwhelming desire to sleep came over her. And it occurred to her then that there must have been something in the water.
It was her last coherent thought. That there’d been…something…in…the…