He grabbed her by the hair, taking a handful and jerking her around. In the same motion, his opposite fist struck her at the temple.
Pain splintered through her head and blackness closed in at the edges of her sight.
She fought for consciousness, barely aware he was throwing her to the ground.
Yet somehow her wide, unblinking eyes took it all in on a shocked reel that recorded in slow motion.
“Do it.” The man in charge shouted his command at the other two who stood gaping at her where she had crumpled in a ball.
A voice so familiar.
“Do it!” he shouted again.
The two moved into action, tearing the covers from the bed she hated and ripping the drapes from the windows, yanking open dresser drawers and strewing clothes across the floor.
The ringleader landed another punch to her eye, and she gasped out at the agony of it.
But it was the kick to her stomach that nearly killed her.
Physically.
Emotionally.
She was sure the pain went deep enough to touch her soul.
Shea wailed.
Darkness tried to suck her under, and she wanted to succumb, to give up, but she knew she couldn’t give in.
Fight.
And she did.
She struggled to bring up her knees, to guard herself with her arms and hands, all the while praying harder than she had in all her life.
“No,” she whimpered. “Please.”
She dug deep to find the strength to curl herself into a tight ball.
And the man…he kicked and kicked and kicked.
Battering until she could feel the cuts and wounds he inflicted on her arms and legs weeping blood, trails streaking to the floor and flooding from her mouth and nose.
And still she fought until she’d gone numb.
Senses dulled by the unbearable pain.
Weak.
Because she was losing this fight.
Her arms slipped and her stomach lurched when it was struck with another direct blow.
“No,” she cried. Her body recoiled with the force, and she heaved, rolling onto her side in a silent wail, cheek pressed into the carpet, her insides curled, and she vomited on the floor.
“That’s enough,” he said, as if maybe he needed to convince himself.
The room continued to spin with her fear, with her hatred—with the glaring shock that seemed to have taken her whole.
She watched with the same unblinking eyes as the man who’d beaten her stepped over her as if she were a piece of trash discarded in the middle of the floor. Leaning down in front of the dresser, he took a few pieces of jewelry that had been littered across the floor, then he snagged her grandmother’s ring and necklace and stuffed them into his pocket.
She wanted to cry out, to beg him not to take something else so precious to her, but her tongue was swollen and thick, the words stuck on a muted cry bottled in her throat.
The three of them hustled out, and the back door slammed.
An eerie silence stole over the house.
It echoed back her surrender. Drowsiness pulled at her consciousness, the pain too great. She had the greatest urge to close her eyes and never wake.
No.
Somehow she found the strength to roll to her stomach. An agonizing pain tore through every inch of her body as she fought to climb onto her feet, but they wouldn’t hold, and she fell back to the ground.
Whimpered cries wept from her as she dragged herself on her elbows across the room, the flashing light of her cell phone like a beacon where it had been knocked from her hold and skidded across the floor.
Her bloodied fingers stretched toward it, inches away. They were shaking…shaking. Eyesight blurred. Yet somehow she managed to place the call.
“911…what’s your emergency?”
She could do nothing more than weep.
I POUNDED DOWNSTAIRS WITH the address Austin had given me clutched in my hand. A frenzy had lit in my heart, a desperation seated so deeply I could feel myself moving without giving thought to any consequence.