Interlude
Seven Years Ago
The air was crisper than usual for an April evening in Maryland.
Alex ended up putting on a hoodie as she walked from her last class of the day to the parking lot, where she paid a premium to use.
Bethesda College was a small school, but it was close to home.
They had also given her a full-ride scholarship to pursue a business administration degree, so it was her only option, as everything else would require her to take out student loans.
She was trying to avoid that, if possible, and had worked her butt off in high school, joining every club she could, taking every AP class, volunteering, taking an internship at the company her father worked for—anything to get ahead.
It had worked, and now she was already in the second semester of her freshman year.
She couldn’t believe how the year had flown by.
Alex glanced from side to side as she crossed a street.
It was dark. She had an evening class on Tuesdays and Thursdays that didn’t get out until eight, but it always ran over.
Grumbling, she walked faster, making up for the lost time.
She had to study for an exam. Plus, she had a paper due at the end of the week.
The lot was one more block, and she looked around uneasily. The street was quiet for a city of sixty-eight thousand. She walked faster, rounding a building and sighing as she spotted the lot.
Home free.
Unfortunately, she was very wrong.
Alex barely made a few steps past the building when hands grabbed at her torso and mouth, pulling her off the sidewalk. She tried to scream, but one of the hands clamped down hard over her mouth. The arm around her body squeezed roughly, making it hard to breathe.
“Shh,” a man’s low voice said. “Don’t make a sound. Be a good little girl.”
Alex squirmed anyhow. The arm grew tighter around her, and the man’s hand slid to her throat, squeezing it until she couldn’t breathe.
“I said behave,” he growled.
She whimpered and went slack, but his hand was firm on her throat. However, the lack of oxygen soon made her panic, and she began flailing around, fighting for air.
“I can see you’re going to be trouble,” the man said. “Might as well get this done quick.”
Alex thrashed more before her vision began to black out.
All that work to get ahead in life just to be murdered in an alleyway, she thought bitterly, tears falling down her cheeks, as the world faded away into nothing.
? ? ?
The problem was that Alex hadn’t been strangled to death.
She would have preferred that as she slowly woke up, choking and sputtering, her throat and neck throbbing.
When she opened her eyes, fear took hold as she realized she was in an unfamiliar place: an empty, dingy garage with a blaring fluorescent light shining overhead.
She winced and shut her eyes again, her head pounding.
A cold chill ran over her body, and cool air hit bare skin.
Something was wrong. She was in an odd position on her stomach, and she should have been wearing more clothes than this.
Snapping her eyes open, she craned her neck to see that she was completely naked, lying on a dirty mattress.
Her hands were tied together with rope. The rope was attached to a hook on the ceiling of the garage.
It was pulled tight enough that her arms could barely relax on the mattress.
Panicking, Alex tugged at it, but her binding held firm.
Crying out, she tugged harder, trying to flip herself onto her back, but it was then that she realized one of her legs was tied as well to another hanging hook. She was immobilized. Dread filled her. She had been kidnapped, and she had a horrible feeling that she was going to be hurt. Badly.
“You can’t leave,” said a man’s voice behind her. It was the same voice as before. “We haven’t started yet.”
Alex whimpered as she craned her head to see a man in all black. He had a black ski mask on, so she couldn’t see his face. He looked terrifying, and with her vulnerable position, she knew this would break her.
“Please,” she pleaded, not knowing what she was asking him. Let her go? Stop what he was planning? Be a decent human being?
Yes.
All the above.
“Oh, save the begging for when I get my cock in that sweet pussy of yours,” he said, a sinister smile forming.
Tears began to fall down Alex’s face. She knew this was what would happen. She hadn’t wanted to use the word.
Rape. I’m going to be raped, she thought, terrified and shaking. And no one knows where I am.
She watched as the man unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis.
It was erect and an angry red. More tears flowed.
He fisted it and pumped his hand up and down a few times before walking toward her.
She felt rough hands grip her hips, and she began to squirm and struggle.
Alex had to fight him. She couldn’t let this happen.
His hand gripped her hips tighter, and he growled, “Stop fighting me, bitch. You can’t go anywhere.” She started sobbing uncontrollably as he smoothed one hand over her hip. “Shh,” he said in an eerily soft voice. “It’s okay. It’ll be good. I promise.”
Alex squeezed her eyes shut and completely shut down, going to a place in her head far away. It was the only way that she was going to survive this horror—if she survived.
? ? ?
One Year Later
“Do you have anything to add, Alexandria?”
Alex blinked several times, focusing on the present. Therapy. She was in group therapy. Safe.
She had another flashback again, though at least she had been quiet with this one.
Other times, she would come out of one on the floor, crying and shaking.
They happened often, and it made living life difficult.
That happened when you were raped and kidnapped for two days.
Forty-eight hours. Sadly, she was lucky that he let her go.
If he had kept her, she would have ended up dead.
The police assumed the guy wanted her gone before the heat came down on him.
There had been a large search for her, though her parents had been adamant that her name and picture be kept out of the news.
They didn’t want “her reputation to be damaged.” Those were their exact words.
Alex wondered if she would have gotten help sooner if the public had looked for her, but she couldn’t play those “what if” games. It was too painful.
She had woken up behind a trash dumpster next to an old restaurant in Bethesda, naked and hurting.
The police and an ambulance had been called.
Then, her new life began. They never found the perpetrator, and she was in constant fear.
She refused to return to Bethesda College campus, so even though the administration allowed her an extension for that semester due to “extenuating circumstances,” she never completed it since she couldn’t come in to take her tests.
They refused to do them online or at a different location.
Meanwhile, her parents had ripped into her that she couldn’t “suck it up and go.” She began to hate them more as time passed, and their true colors began to show.
Her father was a businessman in the D.C.
area, and her mother was the quintessential trophy wife.
Although they weren’t rich, keeping up with appearances was the most important thing for them, and Alex was failing miserably.
She either needed to get herself together or she would be kicked out of the house, which was why she was currently sitting in therapy.
She had one more week, or she would be homeless.
“Alexandria?” the woman running the group therapy questioned again.
“Uh, what?” she asked, feeling like an idiot.
“I asked if you have anything to share.”
“Um, not today.”
The therapist frowned.
“You’ve been here for a while and haven’t said much to the group. I know these things take time. Don’t feel any pressure, but we’re here when you’re ready.”
Alex nodded and swallowed hard.
The group was for people with trauma. It wasn’t necessarily for sexual assault survivors.
Alex had tried one of those groups and had panic attacks.
This one was more general and had everything from bad childhoods to car accidents to the tragic deaths of loved ones.
She liked being able to listen to other people without having her exact problems shoved in her face.
Sure, she had individual therapy, too, but she preferred being here, even if she didn’t talk.
It took fifteen minutes before the session ended.
Alex fumbled out of the room with a stream of other people.
She went off to the side in a small waiting area.
Her mother was picking her up, but it wouldn’t be for another hour.
She was “too busy” to pick Alex up right now.
Alex didn’t drive if it involved parking in lots that were too far away from the building.
She felt like a chicken, but she couldn’t cope.
Sitting down on a faux leather couch, Alex pulled out her phone and began pretending to be busy on it. She was actually watching the others milling about in the area, slowly leaving, one by one. She was hyper-aware of everything and felt she couldn’t let her guard down.
“Excuse me. Is this seat taken?” said a man’s voice beside her.
Alex practically jumped out of her seat.
She had been so busy watching people leave that she hadn’t noticed the man coming up beside her.
She turned to look at a handsome man in his mid-forties with glossy, dark brown hair.
The guy had been sporadically coming to the therapy group, though he never talked, and the therapist never called on him.
He always wore an expensive-looking suit, had a mysterious feel, and was the group’s outsider.
Alex knew he was legitimately here, though.
She could see the pained look in his eyes—like his whole world had come tumbling down.
“I…uh…no?” She sounded like an idiot, fumbling over her words.