Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Waking up with a knot of fear in her stomach was the worst.
Jerking upright, her memories of what had happened to her perfectly intact had panic clawing at her, and in a desperate bid to let it out, she rubbed at her chest.
But of course, that didn't help.
Because as Ally blinked away the fuzziness from whatever drugs she’d been given, she looked around, and her surroundings were the stuff of nightmares.
The more she looked, the worse it got.
At first, it was just the concrete floor. If that was all it was, then maybe she could pretend it was just the ground out back of her building where she’d been taking out the trash. But there was more, so much more.
As her head spun about like it was on a swivel, she saw a concrete wall behind her, reaching up to meet a concrete ceiling. Straight in front of her was a line of metal bars, the kind you might find in a police cell. Those metal bars ran along on her right and on her left as well.
She was in a cell. A cage made of concrete and metal.
Why was she in a cell?
Who even put people in cages?
The pounding in her head worsened, and she rubbed at her temples, but it wasn't just the drugs that were causing the headache, it was the utter terror stabbing at her insides like a swarm of angry wasps.
Was there any oxygen left in the room?
Didn't feel like it.
The deeper breaths she tried to take, the more she tried to inflate her lungs, the less air there seemed to be available.
Was this how she was going to die?
Suffocating to death on the hard concrete floor of a cell?
The sound of her own harsh breathing filled the air as she continued to look about, and things continued to get worse. Because she wasn't alone down here. Beside her in the next cage was a woman curled up on the floor. She had a blanket tucked around her, and she appeared to be asleep.
How could she be sleeping here?
Ally was pretty sure she would never sleep again.
This couldn’t really be a cell like a police cell. Police didn't arrest people and lock them up in cells like this. They gave you a bed, a chair, and a toilet. This cell had nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only thing inside it was her. There wasn't even a bucket for her to do her business in.
Besides, what would she have done to be arrested?
She was the kind of person who followed every rule, long since learning the art of fading into the background so nobody noticed her.
Even as a teen, she’d never gone through a rebellious phase, never shoplifted or experimented with drugs.
Never done any underage drinking, she didn't even drink now as an adult.
When she was driving, she obeyed all road laws, no speeding or running red lights for her.
She paid her taxes on time, and she tried to be a responsible citizen in everything she did.
For goodness sake, she didn't even litter.
The thought of her getting arrested was preposterous, but the only other reason she would be in a cage was … not something she wanted to consider.
Like if she just refused to think it, then it couldn’t possibly be true.
There was no way she’d been abducted. And the fact that other women were here meant that she had probably been taken by human traffickers.
No.
That had to be a stretch.
She was reading too much into it.
Probably was the cops. She’d been arrested, it had been a mistake, and she’d get it straightened out, then she could go back home.
For the last five months, she’d dreaded being home, so close to her ex’s apartment, forced to accept what she’d believed all along; that he was way out of her league and sooner or later he was going to realize it and dump her.
Only she’d start to let herself believe that wasn't true. They’d been together for almost a year before he dumped her.
He was good for her. She started going out a little more rather than hiding away at home.
He helped her step outside her comfort zone and become more adventurous.
Some of the things they did in bed were ones she’d been sure she’d hate until he convinced her to try.
And she’d gotten on the back of his motorcycle even though at first the thought had terrified her.
But it had all been a lie.
In the end, he realized she was beneath him and he’d dumped her.
For the last five months, she’d been both anxious to get a glimpse of Mateo and let him assure her it was all some big misunderstanding, and of course, he still wanted to be with her, and terrified to see him because then he could officially end things between them.
Trapped in limbo.
Limbo she’d much rather return to. She’d much rather stand before Mateo’s six-foot-three frame and hear him tear her to shreds, tell her she was an embarrassment, that she was weak and weird, that she deserved to be lonely because she didn't possess a single interpersonal skill needed to make true bonds with people.
She was a freak, pathetic, cried too much, with her nose always buried in a book, not good enough for a man who looked like Mateo Adler.
Now she pushed to her feet, determined to prove him wrong. Determined to prove that she could be strong and tough, that she could hold it together in the most heinous of circumstances.
Because that’s what this was.
It wasn't a police station, there was no misunderstanding, she’d been abducted, possibly by human traffickers, or possibly by some sadistic psychopath who delighted in imprisoning women and … doing things she wasn't going to consider yet.
A wave of dizziness assaulted her the second she was upright, but she did her best to ignore it and stormed over to the front of her cell.
Well, she staggered over, but she wasn't going to worry about technicalities, she was going to be a version of herself that would shock every person who’d ever known her.
She was going to yell at whoever had taken her that they needed to let her go, that they weren't going to get away with this, that she was going to fight them every step of the way.
Only when her fingers curled around the metal bars at the front of her cell, and she looked down the hallway, she saw nineteen cages like the one she was trapped in.
They weren't all occupied, but enough of them were, from what she could see, and that doused a little bit of her uncharacteristic fire.
If the person who had taken her wasn't going to get away with what they were doing, then wouldn't these women already be rescued?
Why hadn't they been found?
From what she could see, another dozen women at least were in these cells. How had they all gone missing, snatched from their lives, torn away from everything they knew and loved, and yet nobody had found them, nobody had come for them?
Ally gulped as she looked around, tears blurring her eyes, as the realization sank in that nobody would notice that she was missing.
Eventually her clients would wonder why she never responded, but they’d likely just write her a bad review and find a new accountant, they weren't going to worry that something had happened to her.
She had zero family and no friends. The closest she had were the servers at the coffee shop, and they weren't likely to send the cops to check on her when she didn't show up again.
No one would know she was gone.
No one would care.
Never before had Ally felt as pathetic as she did in this moment.
Movement down one end of the corridor caught her attention, and she watched as a big man stepped out of a doorway down by what looked like an elevator.
It wasn't dark in here, although the lighting was dull, and she could see the expression on his face.
He had dark eyes that appeared almost black, jet-black hair, and pale skin.
His black T-shirt stretched over a torso that looked like it had been chiseled from stone, and his black jean-clad legs were like tree trunks.
He looked like some kind of handsome demon.
There was no doubt he was looking right at her, and when he arched a dark brow and smirked at her, Ally immediately shrunk in on herself. All that fight she’d been pretending to have just fizzled out, gone like a puff of smoke.
Backing away from the front of her cage, she stopped when her back hit the concrete, then she slid down it until her backside thumped into the floor. Curling her legs up to her chest, she buried her face in her knees, trying to will her surroundings to disappear.
Just like when she was a kid in high school and had been the perfect target for bullies, she was the perfect victim for these people. She was weak and pathetic, would be easily broken and molded into what they wanted her to be.
August 14th
7:55 A.M.
Following in Nathan’s footsteps was a mistake.
Before catching on to the fact that Nathan was obsessed with one of Azure’s victims, Mateo never would have guessed that the man was one of the four Prey undercover operatives currently working this assignment.
Nathan had always been so calm, so confident, so unaffected by everything happening around them.
The horrors, the screams, the tears, the broken pleas for mercy, none of them seemed to ruffle the man’s feathers.
Until one pretty blonde changed everything.
As Mateo pulled his SUV into the large parking garage, he realized that he appeared to the outside world to be the same. It looked like he didn't care one way or the other about these women or what happened to them, but that wasn't true.
He cared, he just didn't allow himself to emotionally engage. It was important to always keep your priorities straight.
The last thing he wanted was to turn into Nathan. So utterly terrified for the life of another person that you couldn’t think straight, that you couldn’t breathe, that it felt like you were being slowly crushed to death.
Not for him.
Breaking up with Ally was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but he could take comfort from the fact that it was the right thing and he’d never have to witness her turning up in a place like this.