22. Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-two
Larken
He's dead.
He isn't moving.
Is he breathing?
I can't tell and I can't stop screaming.
And this awful man is just standing there smiling at me while Shaun lays so still at his feet. It isn't fair. After what just happened between Shaun and I, it isn't fair.
“Hello, little wife,” he laughs. “Looks like you've been a bad girl. What's your husband going to think when he finds out you've had your legs spread for some common criminal?”
Adrian. He's here because of Adrian.
Oh god.
What about Wyatt?
“Are you going to stand there and cry?” he mocks, cocking his head and still smiling his disgusting smile. “Most people would run.”
“Where is Wyatt?”
He laughs again. “You don't need to worry about Wyatt. Or this little shit.” He looks down at Shaun's body crumpled at his feet and kicks him hard in the side where blood is beginning to pool darkly underneath him. Shaun doesn't wake up. He doesn't even move.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.
He's really dead. Wyatt is probably dead, too. And this monster is going to take me back to Adrian.
No.
I bolt for the door, running through splinters and broken glass with bare feet. I make it off the porch and down the stairs before a hand grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me back. I lose my footing and fall backward, my arms flailing in wild circles as I try not to hit the ground. I switch gears and let myself hit the ground, trying to use the force of my weight going down to dislodge his hand. He doesn't let go and I reach back to dig my nails into his arm and whatever else I can reach. I am not going back to Adrian. I was only just beginning to feel safe again.
To feel like me again.
I'd rather die than go back to Adrian.
I spin, ignoring the pain of my hair being violently ripped from my scalp and kick at his knees with both feet. I hit one leg and he grunts as he staggers, but he doesn't fall. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear my father's voice yelling at me to go with the flow and I react on instinct. He tried his best to teach me self-defense tactics from the time I was a little girl, and one of the biggest things he tried to make stick was to go with the flow of the attack. If your attacker is pulling you toward them, go with it and turn it around and become the attacker yourself. I can't get his hand out of my hair, so I lean into his grip. His hold on my hair loosens but I don't take time to feel the small relief that it provides. I immediately bring up my knee, trying to make contact with his crotch.
He blocks it at the last second and yanks me upward, returning me to a standing position. “Fight all you want, little wife. It won't change anything. You'll be home sweet home in a few days. Just where you belong.”
“No!” I scream. “I'm not going back!”
He laughs at me and jerks hard on my hair, bringing me hard against his body and wraps his other hand around my arm in a bruising grip. “Come on, sweetheart. It's time to go.”
He half carries, half drags me across the grass and gravel that make up the driveway and further onto the road. My feet scrape across the rough pavement as I desperately fight against him. “Help!” I scream. “Please help me!” There are neighbors. They're not close, but they aren't far, either. “Help!” I scream again, then I remember something else my Dad told me and change my plea. “Fire! There's a fire!”
The man dragging me stops suddenly and pulls me into his chest facing away from him. His hand is huge and smells like stale, sour cigarettes when he covers the bottom half of my face with it. “If a single person comes outside, I will kill them and it will be your fault. I don't give a shit if it's a mommy, a granny, or somebody's baby sister. Do you understand me? Keep your fucking mouth shut.”
My fault.
It's my fault that Shaun and Wyatt are gone.
My fault.
I slowly and silently nod as tears fill my eyes. I can't be the reason anybody else dies tonight, or ever again. I close my eyes against the flood of tears and allow myself to be dragged the rest of the way to the car. I don't make another sound until he tries to put me into the trunk. The idea of being closed in again, trapped again, in the dark, blind to what's happening, and cold, triggers my sense of survival again and I thrash against him. I fight and scream. Scratching, clawing, kicking, shoving, anything to get away. I can't go into the trunk. I can't.
Even in my terrified and frantic state he's stronger than I am and he hauls me around by my shoulders to face him, then he shakes me, hard, forcing my teeth to snap shut with the force of it.
I keep screaming and pushing against him. I'm not going back. I can't.
Then he draws back one fist and hits me and everything goes black before I can fight anymore.
~
When I wake up, everything hurts. Everything. Every single sensation of pain is competing for attention all at once and I groan in overwhelming misery. My tongue wins out. The faint coppery taste and the swollen state of it lets me know that I'm lucky I didn't bite it off when he was shaking me. My eye is swollen, too. Not shut, but swollen enough that it hurts to try to open it. The next big pain that registers is my head, specifically the back of my head and the top where he was pulling it.
I can't take stock of any more injuries. There are too many to sort and the effort is making me even more nauseous than I already am. I have to get it under control because I might actually die if I throw up.
When I do work up the nerve to open my eyes, they open to complete darkness. I can feel air moving around me, and I can tell that I'm not inside a trunk, but I don't know where I am. I slow my breathing so I can try to listen for anything that might give me a clue, but there's nothing to hear. The only sounds I can make out are what sounds like a fan or water running somewhere nearby. What I don't hear is anything that would give the impression that the man who took me from Shaun is sitting in the dark waiting for me to wake up so he can bring me to further torment. Maybe I can sneak away. Maybe I can run. I'm not stupid enough to hope, but I'm desperate enough to try.
Slowly, silently, I get to my hands and knees, ignoring the multitude of injuries that all rush forward for my attention. Once I'm able to maintain that position without feeling like I'm spinning, I try to raise up onto my knees so I can get to the next step, which is my feet. But the top of my head clashes painfully with something hard and unforgiving. I reach up to try to feel what's above me and gasp. It's a metal grate. I reach forward and find another metal grate less than a foot in front of me. Putting my hands out to the side confirms my fear.
I'm in a cage.
He put me in a cage.
I think…it's a dog crate.
He put me into a fucking dog crate.
I can break out of a dog crate. The metal spokes aren't that thick and the hinges that keep them together aren't that strong. I can get out of this. I just need to push hard enough. I get my feet underneath me and take a deep breath to bolster my strength and then stand straight up, smashing my upper back and shoulders against the top of the crate.
The crate rattles, shaking around me, but it doesn't come apart. I probably dented the spokes, but that's not enough to free me, and now my heart is racing with the threat of the noise I just made getting that man's attention.
Or Adrian's.
Oh my god. I didn't think of that. What if I'm back home? What if Adrian locked me up in this cage while I was unconscious and now I'm in the cellar. In the dark. In a cage.
I can't breathe.
I stand up again, and again, crashing into the top of the crate. When it doesn't come apart like that, I brace my back against the side of the crate and kick as hard as I can, over and over, against the other side. The crate screeches and rattles violently, but it doesn't come apart. I don't understand. I've seen dog crates. Regan had a dog and that dog had a crate. These things aren't this strong. It should have come apart by now. I keep kicking and kicking, sweating and grunting with the effort it takes. I have to get out.
Suddenly, I'm blinded when the lights come on. The abrupt change from complete darkness to blaring bright overrides my resolve not to vomit and I fall to my elbows and knees, covering my eyes as I retch. My head swims with the pressure and pain of dry heaving and I moan in misery, pressing my forehead into the cold surface underneath me.
“Good morning, sunshine. Glad you've finally decided to join me.” The horrible man's voice is playful, even joyful.
At least it isn't Adrian.
“Let me out,” I croak.
“Not a chance, sweetheart,” he says. “I wouldn't give up this view for the world.”
The view?
It's only now that I remember that I'm only wearing Shaun's tee shirt and a pair of panties. In the larger scheme of things, I can't bring myself to care about how I must look with my barely-clad ass in the air. Shaun is gone. Wyatt is gone. My dad is gone.
I want to be gone.
I don't have any more fight left.
I collapse onto my side and let the tears I've been trying to hold back fall free.
“Aw, don't be like that,” he purrs. “It's not that bad. I'll take good care of you for a few days until your husband is ready for you to come back home. Don't fret, princess.”
I listen to him walk by the crate without opening my eyes. I can't bear to open them yet, I'm still reeling from the light. He comes close enough that his pants brush against the bars of the crate as he goes past and my whole body jerks when he bangs against the metal with something. It makes my head ache even more and I have to breathe slowly to keep from throwing up.
“Let's get you some fresh air,” he says. Then I'm hit with a steady blast of cold air. “It'll do you good.” He laughs and walks away, leaving me shivering on my side in my cage. He leaves the light on, almost as if he knows how much the brightness hurts.
I don't know how much time passes while I lay here in emotionally numb, physical misery. It's a long time. My mind is stuck. I can't move past the constant cold air rushing over me or the hard metal tray underneath me or the dull ache from all my many scrapes and bruises. My face hurts now, not just my eye. I'm not even curious what it looks like, I know it's awful.
I've never been hit before. Not by a man or anyone else. I don't know if that makes me sheltered, lucky, or normal, but I feel so small right now that it's hard to breathe. Everything happening right now makes me feel like I can't take a full breath. I don't think I'm going to survive this.
I've lost so much. Adrian took my Dad. He took my friend. He took my company. He took the two men who saved me from him the first time. And now he's taken my freedom. He might as well take my life, too. I don't want it anymore.