“So I guess you kinda love me, or something, huh?” I whispered against his lips, and pulled against his hold.
A gorgeous smile tugged at Kyle’s mouth as he let me back away. Grabbing my hand in his, he ran his thumb over my engagement ring, and vowed, “Until we’re old and gray, and then long after.”
My eyes slowly cracked open to pitch black again, but this seemed different. The movement of my eyelids seemed sluggish when I blinked. It took me a few seconds to realize there was a blindfold around my eyes, and I immediately tried to remove it, but my hands were still tightly bound. I rubbed my face against the cold floor, trying to get the blindfold to move, but had no luck.
Something wasn’t right—something had changed. I lay still, listening for long moments until I realized I was hearing something. A loud whirring I couldn’t place. It sounded like obscenely loud white noise, but it was familiar. And there was no smell. For the first time since waking up in the dark room, there was no smell of vomit or other waste.
I took a deeper breath, but wished I hadn’t when my stomach rolled. Whatever was in that syringe made my stomach uneasy.
I wondered if the other women were with me. Fear slowly crawled through me when I realized I couldn’t hear them above the loud whirring.
If they’re gone, what happened to them? What’s going to happen to me? Where am I?
Tears burned my eyes and my throat tightened.
How long has it been since I was taken? Hours . . . days? Does Kyle know? What is he thinking? What is he doing to find—I choked back a sob and curled in on myself against the cool floor.
That movement also felt odd and caught me off guard. I straightened then curled into a ball again once . . . twice before I realized why it felt wrong.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
No dress. No underwear. Nothing but the blindfold and zip ties.
My jaw trembled violently and a jumbled prayer flew from my lips.
I repeated that prayer over and over, and eventually began mouthing the words to songs until I was singing to myself.
Relief flooded me when the first “Hush!” came.
“You’re still here?” I asked quickly.
“Hush!”
But again, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was terrified. The loud whirring was probably drowning me out for the most part anyway. It didn’t matter that there were others around me or that they could hear me. I sang when I was afraid, always had, and it was nearly impossible to stop.
“Stop. They’re going to come again.”
I didn’t stop, and the men with the needles never came.
“I’m waiting on one last check, then I’m taking my lunch,” I called out to the manager halfway through the shift.
I eyed the two full bags of trash sitting near the kitchen door that led outside and hurried over to them. It wasn’t part of my job, but I had nothing else to do while I waited, and Jenna usually threw them out on her smoke breaks.
In the hours I’d been at work, I’d worried Jenna’s dad would show—not that I would know who he was even if he had—but no one had come in asking for her. No one had given a vibe that he’d been beating his daughter for who knew how long, and had chased her out of town. But I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that at any second, I would turn around and Jenna’s dad would be standing there, demanding to know where she had gone. I’d felt anxious and uncomfortable in my skin throughout the shift, and was actually contemplating calling Kyle to see if he would come sit in my section for the next handful of hours.
I had finished throwing the bags into the dumpster and was walking back toward the building when I noticed the odd, almost ominous quiet around me. I was telling my feet to move faster, but fear was slowing them down.
No birds were singing, no bugs could be heard, and the air around me felt suffocating.
A song kissed my lips as my body began trembling, my soft voice sounding too loud in the quiet outdoors, and I focused on nothing but the words flowing from me and the door to the kitchen just twelve feet away.
Eleven.
Ten.
A cloth-covered hand clamped over my mouth and an arm wrapped around my waist. I screamed against it, panic and raw terror flooding me. The large person behind me lifted me off the ground and hurried backward.
I kicked at the air and clawed at the arm near my face, but my movements were already subdued, my screams dying out.
The person holding me fell back, landed with a thud, then began yelling in a deep voice, “Go, go, go!”
The light of day disappeared with the sound of a door sliding shut. I kicked uselessly at it when the vehicle took off, tried to breathe as little as possible, and thrashed my head back and forth to get away from the cloth. I attempted one more scream and felt a sharp pinch in my neck. Seconds passed before I realized my legs were no longer moving and I was no longer scratching the man holding me. The ceiling of the van blurred and the edges of my vision darkened as multiple men spoke quickly over each other, their words jumbled together and slowly faded to nothing.
Time dragged on as I sang, and eventually the other girls stopped telling me to be quiet. Occasionally some of them joined in. Others sang and murmured in different languages, the sounds all mixing together. My voice became hoarse, but I continued on when muffled cries could be heard throughout the room—knowing at least some of them needed this as much as I did—until our room suddenly dipped.
Gasps filled the room as we tried to figure out what was happening. Frantic screams and demands filled the space.
The jolt when we landed seemed to send an unspoken message through the room as we all fell silent and waited.
Oh God, oh God . . .
Where have they taken us?
The whirring eventually died down, but none of us moved or spoke as seconds turned into minutes. And minutes turned into hours.
Chapter 2
Room of Mirrors
Briar
Hours passed before a charge suddenly filled the room—or airplane—and fear flooded me. Unable to stop myself, a near-silent song left my lips.
“No, don’t,” someone hissed.
I wished I was smart enough to know how to listen to her. Fear suffocated me, pulling each breath and each word from my lungs, and I was helpless to stop it.
I was suddenly yanked off the ground by my elbows and hauled away.
A scream tore from my lungs, and I thrashed uselessly against whoever was holding me. “Help! Help—someone, help!”
“Quiet, bitch,” the man holding me commanded; the words were muffled, as if something was covering his mouth.
I was dragged for a little while longer before I heard a door slide shut behind us, then I was forced to stand.
“Please, let me go. My fiancé has to be looking for me. His parents—please.”
Someone in front of me scoffed, and the person gripping my elbows released me when another person grasped my shoulders roughly. I felt a cool, thin material slide over my body from behind, and recoiled from it until I remembered I was naked.
“Fiancé,” the man in front of me said with a sneer, and the man behind me laughed.