Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Shit.” I curse when I try to sit up, forgetting for a moment that I’m bound to the bed. Sizzling pain drags along my muscles like a serrated knife. When it finally subsides enough for me to concentrate, I take a deep breath. A memory begins to wiggle free of the fog. A flash of red and blue. A man with dark hair and eyes. The principal’s office at school.
Was it a dream? No. A nightmare.
Only, I’m not even sleeping. The pain is real. The restraints are real.
Everything is real.
It all comes back to me the second I see the blue policeman’s uniform draped over a chair in the corner. School. The walk to the principal’s office. The policeman. The man from the service station. Duke screaming my name.
Jumping from the car on the highway.
“Business is business, asshole,” I hear the man say.
I can make out his large shadow pacing back and forth in front of the window.
“Save that shit for your own people.” he grinds out. “I work alone. If you send someone out to check up on me, I’ll make it so he won’t be coming back.”
He ends the call, and his heavy footsteps stop right in front of the door.
I pull on my cuffs again, ignoring the pain it brings. I glance around the small room for another exit, another means of escape, but even if I could free myself there isn’t anywhere to go. I look again as if I can will another way to appear, but there’s nothing but a small windowless bathroom and the ugly wallpapered walls.
The door creaks open, and heavy footsteps approach the bed. I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep although my heart is hammering in my chest like I’m darting for the finish line in a race I’m not winning. I try not to react as his large hand wraps around my forearm, but I’m panicking inside. He releases my wrists from the cuffs and lets them drop to the bed. I hear him walking about the room. I steal a glance through a slit in my eye. He’s crouched over a black tote bag on the floor to my right.
The door is to my left.
There’s no time to think.
I sit up slowly but the mattress creaks with my movement. The man’s head swings in my direction, and I close my eyes again, hoping he’ll think I’m just moving in my sleep. After a few moments, I dare another glance. His back is to me again. Slow isn’t going to work this time.
I don’t give the thought time to process because time is a luxury I don’t have.
I spring from the bed and bolt across the room. My legs are screaming because something is clawing at them from the inside, raking down my every muscle like jagged knives being dragged across my skin. I run as fast as I can, but I know it’s not fast enough because I’m limping like my feet are anchors I’m struggling to drag behind me.
I’m lifted off my feet and tossed through the air with ease, like a newspaper flippantly tossed onto a porch on Sunday morning. I hit the mattress with such force I bounce off, landing on my stomach onto the dirty carpet on the other side of the bed. The wind is sucked from my lungs on impact. My cheek stings as if I hit concrete instead of wiry shag carpeting.
My captor thuds over to where I’m gasping for breath. He growls, and it’s like I can feel his anger sailing toward me with the dust in the air. I hear it in the way he cracks his knuckles. I see it in the way he cocks his head from one side to the other and his nostrils flare. I can smell it permeating off him like a new Calvin Klein fragrance. Hatred, for men.
He’s dressed like he was when I first saw him at the service station. Tight black t-shirt revealing the vast number of interconnecting colorful tattoos running the length of his muscular arms. Plain black leather vest. Dark low-slung jeans. Black scuffed boots. He’s got two thick silver bracelets adorning both wrists, a chain connecting each pair.
He moves closer. They aren’t bracelets.
They’re handcuffs.
A pair for each wrist.
Revulsion and loathing cross over his tanned face, twisting his thick lips.
How did I ever think this man was beautiful?
“Please. Don’t hurt me. I’ll give you whatever you want.” I beg, hating the way I don’t recognize my own voice.
“Yes, you will,” he says, crouching closer, his breath on my cheek. He isn’t touching me, but I can feel him everywhere. Around me. Against my skin, in the pit growing in the bottom of my stomach. In the spike of adrenaline surging through my heart. “Where the fuck is your old man?”