Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
She’d been really insistent. And, well, she even offered me some money to help her with her hair since she couldn’t get into a salon, and she had some client who was paying her a shitton of money to have a different hair color.
I knew Mom had some strong feelings about Tammy and her job. But listening to Tammy talk about her clients kind of turned me off of guys in general.
There was one who talked about wanting her to pee in her panties and send them to him.
Gross.
Like, seriously.
The guys in Allie’s books were a lot better, in my opinion, than these real-life guys that Tammy had flocking to her.
The thing was, I wanted the money.
The holidays were coming up again, and with my arm, I wasn’t going to be able to work a job again like I had the year before to get my mom something nice.
She’d always gone above and beyond for me. Even when money was tight, she always made sure it didn’t feel that way, that there were pretty wrapped presents under the tree.
I wanted to give back a little.
And helping Tammy was the only way for me to do that.
It was just a couple hours, I figured as I hooked my bad arm around the rungs, so I didn’t actually try to use it to lower down.
I could have just removed the alarm from the door and gone out that way. I had two hang-ups about that. One, it left Mom a little less protected. Even if she had some big, armed biker guy in her bed. But also, two, if I went out that way, there was a chance they might review the camera feed and see me. Going down the ladder meant that, if I was quiet enough on the way back in, they would probably never even know I’d snuck out.
It was a win-win.
But Tammy had dropped me off nearer to the front of the building than the back, leaving me to stumble around in the dark because I worried the neighbors might call the cops if they saw me using my phone’s flashlight outside of their apartments.
I did have my phone clutched in my hand as I rounded the balcony of the neighbors below ours. And, thank God, the ladder was still hanging down. Which meant they hadn’t found me out yet.
I was reaching back to tuck my phone into my pocket when it happened.
A hand slapped down over my mouth as another crushed around my stomach hard enough to make me cry out against my muffle.
My phone fell from my grip as I was carried backward.
I remembered to flail, to scratch and slap and punch.
But he was so much bigger.
And a car was waiting not far away.
Then I was shoved down into a trunk with one man holding me down as the other grabbed a roll of duct tape and wrapped it around my mouth. Then, as the man who grabbed me yanked my arms back behind my back far enough to make my shoulders scream, the other guy wrapped the duct tape around my wrist and cast.
“What about her legs?” the one with the tape asked.
“We gotta get moving,” the other one said as he shoved me deeper into the trunk.
The duct tape dropped in inches from my face.
Then the trunk was closing.
And it was all over.
I’d been taken.
And it might be hours before my mom and Callow realize that. Or maybe they never would, since all the signs of me sneaking out were around.
They would probably waste hours trying to track me down instead of trying to focus on these guys again.
Tears stung my eyes and I had to focus to blink them back, knowing they weren’t going to help anything, that I really just needed to focus and try to find my own way out of this.
I knew all about kicking out a taillight and trying to stick a hand out.
The problem was, I couldn’t use my hands. And even if I could, I’d just been on the streets with Tammy. They were abandoned. The chances of someone seeing were slim.
I didn’t want to waste time and energy on something that just wasn’t going to work.
The trunk was full of junk.
I rolled myself over, wincing as my weight came over my cast, but figuring that would be a problem to deal with when I got myself out of this.
With my back to most of the junk, I tried to wiggle around, feeling with my limited range of motion, trying to see if there was anything sharp I could grab to get this tape off of my wrists.
My fingers met with several pieces of clothing, a shoe, what felt like a bat that would be super useful if I got my hands free to swing it
Grumbling, I felt a bunch of random things that I couldn’t place, but none were sharp enough to cut anything.