Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Don’t fight, blondie, it will make it easier if you just give in. Just do as they tell you, don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be.
Those words whispered through her mind, although Emma had no idea what they meant.
No idea who had spoken them.
Not even an idea of why her head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool.
There was one other time in her life she could remember feeling this way.
When she was twelve, her appendix had burst. She’d woken up in a hospital room with her mom and dad at her bedside, her head all stuffy, her memories fuzzy.
It was the first and only time she’d been in the hospital, and she remembered being lectured afterward.
Not because her parents didn't love her, or because they weren't worried sick about her, but because she’d made a silly mistake.
Raised to be strong and independent, not to complain about things but to make the best of bad situations, she’d ignored a stomachache, thinking that meant toughing it out.
Being only twelve, she hadn't realized the potential seriousness of the situation, had no idea you could die from a burst appendix, or even that the pulsing pain in her stomach could be appendicitis.
Once she was well enough, her parents explained to her that being strong and independent, not complaining about things she couldn’t change but making the best of them, didn't mean ignoring when she might be in trouble.
They told her true strength meant recognizing you didn't know everything and seeking help when you needed it.
It was being smart, not stubborn, and that no person was good at every single thing.
That day she’d learned a valuable lesson, and even though she could still be stubborn and overly independent at times, she always tried to be smart, to know when she needed to reach out for help, and to never let her pride get in the way.
Now her head felt that same stuffy, fuzzy feeling, and hazily Emma wondered if she’d been in some sort of accident.
“Mom?” she asked. Croaked was probably a better word to describe the sound of her own voice.
It hurt to speak that one word, and when she swallowed, it felt like her throat was filled with sandpaper. Her lips were dry, and she would kill for a glass of water to ease the pain in both.
There was no response from her mom, but Emma wasn't sure whether it was because she wasn't there, or because she hadn't spoken loud enough for her mom to hear. If she were in the hospital, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her parents would be there.
“Dad?” Emma tried. Her throat still hurt, but a tingling in the back of her mind told her something was wrong.
Really wrong.
Again, there was no answer, and her anxiety began to increase.
Her heart thudded in her chest, and her stomach churned.
She felt like she’d been drugged, but her parents weren't by her side, no nurse had come when she’d spoken, and she was sure that the second word at least had been loud enough for someone to hear.
Maybe she hadn't been drugged?
Maybe she …
Emma couldn’t come up with another way to end that sentence. Because she absolutely felt like drugs were filling her system, being absorbed way too slowly, since she still couldn’t figure out the cause of her heavy head.
With a groan, she tried to roll over and open her eyes, but her entire body was uncooperative. What the hell was wrong with her?
Don’t fight, blondie, it will make it easier if you just give in. Just do as they tell you, don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be.
Those words swept through her head again, louder this time, more insistent. Somehow, she knew they held the key to understanding where she was and what had happened to her, but they didn't make any sense.
Nobody she knew called her blondie, although she did have naturally blonde locks that hung halfway down her back. Was it a coincidence that someone had mentioned her hair color to her?
You have pretty eyes.
They’re blue, aren't they?
Someone had mentioned her eyes to her as well.
It had seemed important that they were blue, but she had no idea why.
People sometimes had preferences for eye color, but it didn't really make any practical difference to anyone’s life.
Brown, green, gray, or blue eyes were just eyes, you used them to see.
Was it the same person who had mentioned her eyes who had also called her blondie? And what did it mean that she shouldn’t fight? Give in? Give in to who? Who was going to tell her what to do? And why would not doing it make things harder on her?
None of it made sense.
This time, she didn't let the fact that every one of her limbs felt like it had been encased in concrete, she forced herself to push up onto her hands and knees. For a second, she wobbled, feeling weaker than a newborn foal.
But she wasn't giving up.
Something was wrong, and she couldn’t fix it if she didn't know what it was.
When she had her balance, she lifted a hand to her face and physically pried open her eyelid. No one had come, which led her to believe she wasn't in a hospital. There wasn't a mattress beneath her either. She wasn't in a bed. She was on the floor.
A concrete floor, she realized when she finally managed to open her eyes. Beneath her was cold, hard, unforgiving concrete.
What the hell?
Her heart rate kicked up, and it was suddenly very difficult to draw a full breath. The fog in her head was clearing, and she wasn't liking what the picture looked like as she started putting it together.
Lifting her head, she saw that there was a concrete wall to her right, and in front of her was a row of metal bars. The kind of metal bars you saw in movies when the hero or heroine was trapped in a cage, helpless at the hands of the villain.
Only she wasn't a heroine in a story.
And she had no idea who the villain was supposed to be.
Nearly hyperventilating, Emma turned her head to the left.
Another row of metal bars met her horrified gaze.
Scrambling around to look behind her, she once again found metal bars. Three walls of bars and one of concrete. She was in a cell of some sort, but she knew she hadn't done anything to get her arrested.
Had she?
Staggering to her feet, she cried out as her head protested the movement, but she didn't have time to worry about a headache.
Something wasn't just wrong, it was horrifically disastrous.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she cried as she spun in a circle, the metal bars taunting her.
When she looked down her body, she found that at least she had her clothing on. No one had touched her, so there was that.
Yet.
The word was horribly loud inside her head, but it was true. Someone had brought her here. The man with the tire. He’d been the one who asked about her eyes. He must have drugged her, kidnapped her.
A serial killer?
Wouldn't he have killed her already if that was what he wanted? Unless he was one of those sadists who liked to play with their prey first.
“Who are you?” she called out as she stumbled toward the front wall of her cell.
No one answered, but as she looked around, her breath began to saw in and out of her chest with a loud wheezing sound.
Oh no.
There were other cells, not just hers. And some of them had people in them. Women, curled up in balls on the floor or on mattresses. Some had blankets and pillows, but others didn't.
As she spun in a circle, Emma saw that her cell was completely empty. There wasn't a toilet, not even a bucket or something to go in. There was no water to drink or food to eat. There was nothing. Just a cold, hard space. The stuff of nightmares.
Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Some of those women were naked. Others were partially dressed. Maybe she still had her clothes, but for how long?
A horrific thought occurred to her, but she refused to address it. She wasn't being trafficked. She wasn't. That was too terrifying to even consider.
Grabbing onto the metal bars, mostly to keep herself upright as her knees threatened to buckle, she ignored the tears trickling down her cheeks.
She could be scared, but she couldn’t let her fear overwhelm her.
She had to find a different emotion to focus on, one to cling to, one that might give her a chance at surviving this.
Don’t fight, blondie, it will make it easier if you just give in. Just do as they tell you, don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be.
No way in hell was she going to do any of that. Emma didn't care what they did to her, she was going to fight with everything she had. She’d never submit, never give in. How dare anyone think they could snatch her off the streets and then break her and turn her into whatever they wanted.
Anger.
Good.
Yes. She could work with that.
“I won't do it,” she screamed into the otherwise quiet room. “I won't give in, I don’t care what you do to me. I will fight you. I’ll never stop. Someone will come for me. Someone will find me. Then you’ll be the one trapped in a cage.
I’ll fight you to my dying breath, and there's nothing you can do to me that will stop me.”
July 31st
7:50 A.M.
“I’ll take breakfast down this morning, Ernie,” Nathan said as he strolled into the kitchen just as the meals were being loaded onto a trolley.
Normally, he didn't bother transferring meals from the kitchen to the basement cells, unless a new woman had been delivered. Then he liked to make an assessment of them. Those assessments were used to design training plans tailored to each individual’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses.
It was one of the things that made Azure so successful.
Their clientele could purchase confidently, knowing they were getting a top-quality product.
There were other reasons for his assessments, but he kept those to himself.
“Didn't you do the pickup last night?” Ernie asked, arching a dark brow. “Would have thought you would be sleeping in this morning.”