One time we were walking to the drug store. We needed female stuff and they wanted a female to figure out what to buy. I saw a cop on our way to the store. He was about fifty, sixty feet away from us. I was thinking about breaking away from Buggy, screaming to the cop to help me when I felt something sharp poke me in the side. I might have been invisible, but that knife pressing against my back was as real as anything.
They don’t let me out much anymore. That’s fine. It’s hard being outside. I see people on the street and they look so happy, couples and whatever, just people living their lives. One time I saw a girl about my age walking with her parents. She looked at me and I swear it was the first time I felt noticed out there. Our eyes locked for a long time. What was a girl like me doing with those two creepy men? I could tell she was trying to figure it out. Make sense of us. Good luck with that! If I can’t make sense of us, what chance did she have?
Girls Like Me by Nadine Jessup
There were girls like me chained inside a home somewhere in Cleveland.
Held against their will by a sick man.
I saw them on the news before I became one of them.
I judged them. I admit it now. I judged them.
I said, Why didn’t you break a window?
Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you scream?
Because my voice was gone, I know the girls would say.
Because my strength was gone.
Because my courage was gone.
Because my soul was gone.
Almost everything about me was gone.
Almost.
One thing remained.
One thing.
It was hope.
My hope wasn’t gone.
It never left me.
It was the blanket covering me at night as I slept.
Hope is what keeps me breathing.
CHAPTER 26
Angie slipped on a dark frontrunner jacket, a wind-and water-resistant piece of athletic wear she favored, and made sure she had three things with her before leaving the relative safety of her car—her car keys (right jacket pocket), her pepper spray (left jacket pocket), and her TASER C2 (in a side holster hidden by the jacket). She loaded it with one live cartridge that had a range of fifteen feet. The law didn’t require a special license, but she’d made sure she had proper training on how to use the weapon. She’d bought it three years ago for self-defense purposes only, and thankfully had never made a discharge.
Tonight she hoped to continue that streak.
Angie stretched her stiff, aching legs, scanned the area, and saw nothing troublesome. She turned and gave Mike a big thumbs-up, then gestured toward the alley. No way to see if Mike could see her, so she called him. “I’m going down that alley.”
“Yeah, I figured that’s what pointing to the alley meant,” Mike said. “Keep that phone on. If there’s trouble, call the cops.”
“If there’s trouble, I’m going to need my hands free to defend myself,” Angie said. “I’ll be fine. Back in a minute.”
The alley between the brick apartment building and auto repair place was barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Bits of litter spotted the dirt-covered ground. Unlike the front, there weren’t any windows at ground level. She came around back and gave the area a quick once-over. The two sets of buildings were nestled closely together and formed a second alleyway, too narrow for cars to pass, running perpendicular to the alley she had just left.
It was dark, but nearby street lamps provided enough light for Angie to make her way. The windows on the back of the building started at the second story. A steel fire escape stretched to the top, though it wouldn’t do much good with the bars on all the windows.
She noticed concrete steps descending a few feet below ground level to a metal door. It had to be a basement entrance, and she fought the temptation to give the handle a turn. Any living quarters below ground didn’t have natural light.
Angie couldn’t be certain this was the building Fedora and Markovich had entered. Other buildings back there had other concrete stairs leading to other metal doors. She took another look around. The street sounds so audible on the front side of the building were absent, and the quiet unnerved her.
She hesitated, then settled on a plan and descended the concrete steps to the door that was painted some shade of green. A trickle of fear passed through her, but she pushed it aside. Her gut instinct told her leave. Her curiosity told her to try the handle. Angie grasped the silver knob in her right hand and gave it a turn. Locked. She put her ear to the door and gave a listen. No sound. She went back up the stairs and looked left and right. Nothing. No sign of anyone.
The perfect stillness broke when she heard the creak of a hinge directly behind her. Soon a triangle of light cut through the darkness and lit the ground at her feet. The triangle widened as the green door opened all the way. Angie spun on her heels, her eyes growing wide. The shadow of a hulking man loomed in the doorway. The sight of him momentarily stopped her breathing. Shadows and a flat-rim baseball cap hid the large man’s face. He lumbered out from the entranceway, followed closely by the man in the fedora.