The muffled sound of the country music that’s been playing switches off as the car comes to a halt. I hear two doors open and shut and the shuffle of shoes making their way toward the back of the car. The trunk is about to be opened, and my fate is unknown. The phone is hidden, and I need to appear unconscious and a dead weight.
I can’t afford to tremble in fear or pain.
My tie in my hair must have broken in the scuffle back at the house, so I make use of this and turn my head away, making sure my hair is covering some of my face, affording me valuable seconds to hide my vulnerability until they make the next move.
The trunk pops and fresh air rushes me. I want to gulp it down, but I can’t.
I can feel myself being assessed.
“Is she dead?” one of them wonders aloud.
I feel a rough hand at my neck and my pulse is felt.
“She’s still kicking,” the other announces.
Unwelcome arms slide under my knees and armpits as I’m roughly lifted out of the trunk, the man huffing his breath in my face from the sheer exertion of scooping me out of my metal coffin as I try not to whimper in pain while I’m juggled about.
My hair hides the pain etched into my face as I almost pass out from the agony I’m in from the wound in my shoulder. I can feel it bleeding again, the metallic stench of fresh blood dueling with my captor’s strong stink of cigar.
“We’ll put her in the backseat, Benny.” The other voice is close. “She’s out cold, so she won’t be any trouble. She looks like she would barely be able to swat a fly in the condition she’s in.”
Oh no, I want to be trouble. I need to be where I can make contact with Miss Catherine without being caught. I’m desperate to hear her calming voice again.
I make the snap decision to open my right eye because the left is so swollen I can’t see out of it.
I use my bound hands to thrust upward into Cigar Man’s face, screeching from the pain that shoots through my left shoulder as I grit my teeth from the spark that’s ignited into an inferno.
Even though I took both men by surprise, this isn’t Cigar Man’s first rodeo. He is ready for anything as he throws his head back out of my reach, cursing me out.
I slow my breathing, working my way through the deep pain, keeping myself calm and alert, my eyes trained on Cigar Man, waiting for the repercussions of my actions. I am a prisoner in his arms, and at their mercy.
I gasp as I receive a hard smack to my head from the other assailant, who puts his ugly face in real close to mine. Instinct has me wanting to pull back, but I can’t.
“Look at that, Benny. We’ve got a livewire. There’s still a spark left in her after all.” Through the sting, I notice to my great satisfaction I had previously done a number on this one’s nose, busting it up real good back at the house.
“A little payback, sweetheart,” he sneers, and then his hand clamps down roughly over my mouth, stifling the undesirable reply he knows I was about to give him. “Shut the fuck up, woman. I’m not in the mood for your shit. We have our orders, but if you keep on with this behavior, then I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your head, just like I put a bullet in lover boy back at the house.” He gives me a wink.
Edge has been shot?
Why call him lover boy?
How much do they know about me?
He decides to make his point by giving me a 3D demonstration by unclicking the safety and placing his handgun against the center of my forehead, pressing down hard enough to no doubt make an imprint. “You aren’t worth anything to us, only to the man at the top. There’s been a change of plans. We’re now getting paid to hand-deliver you to the next stop, and we’re gonna uphold that end of the contract, so don’t fuck with us again as we always keep our end of an agreement.”
Change of plans?
He shrugs. “Although, in your case, I’m willing to make an exception, and I am sure Benny Boy can be convinced if you decide to be too much trouble. We can always make up some story about you getting yourself killed.”
What contract?
I’ve been treated badly my whole life; these two were nothing new to me. Instead of feeling fear, my emotions have gone the opposite way and turned to pure outrage that this could be happening to me again.
I was safe.
I was free.
I have friends.
I have a home.
Boxer promised to keep me safe, and now I’m being held captive by low-lives who get paid to abduct people, and I have a gun to my head.
These are just paid thugs.
Henchmen.
Bullies.
I know this is nothing compared to what’s coming, but my anger is boiling.
“And you can stop giving me that one-eyed death stare.” He taps me on the head with the gun, which makes me wince and blink my one good eye. “Be smart, and you will live another day.” Then he pushes the gun back into my forehead as a reminder of his capabilities.
I’m not dead, and that means something to me, and I need to wise up and survive this ordeal and escape.
Their orders have to be to keep me alive, and I’ll bet he really won’t kill me. He’s all talk, to get me to fear him. He obviously knows nothing about my past.
My real nightmare is waiting for me at the end of the line. I keep my anger on low boil and my eye cast down.
He removes the gun and lowers it once he sees I’m now acting the dutiful prisoner then slowly removes his hand from my mouth. I want to spit the filth of his hand from my lips and wash my mouth out. I doubt a cold bottle of water will be offered if requested.
I move my head slightly, enough to see we are in the vacant lot of a warehouse, and I’m being carried towards another car, the light overhead showing my abductors the way.
My vision in my one good eye is fuzzy at a distance, and I can’t focus on the license plate numbers clearly. I think I catch the first two letters, NQ, as I blink, trying to focus my sight.
I was used to being locked away by William for anything I did wrong. I want these thugs to lock me back inside the trunk, affording me the privacy I yearn for to speak to Miss Catherine. Will I have done enough to get my wish?
“Lady, you just scored yourself another bed in the trunk.” The dark-skinned, cigar-smelling one sounds very pleased with himself, to the point of smug.
Bingo!
But then my stomach takes that moment to roll on me like a small boat in an ocean storm. I think I’m going to be sick, and preservation of my clothes has me trying to lurch to the side.
“Fuck, bitch, stop your wriggling.” I’m shaken hard, which only makes me want to vomit more. It comes up before I can stop it, and I hurl all over myself and Cigar Man’s suit. “Fucks sake, bitch!” he roars at me.
Through my misery, I can hear the other guy cackling like a hyena at Cigar Man as I’m dumped roughly inside the trunk, eliciting a deep groan of pain from me as I battle to stay conscious, and then that nausea wakes me right back up and keeps on tormenting me.
I roll, pushing my head over the edge of the sedan, and hurl all over the ground, splashing the laughing hyena’s shoes, and he abruptly stops his cackling.
“Not so funny now, hey, Deano?”
I watch them both, unsure of what they will do to me.
Cigar Man is amused at his accomplice’s bad fortune. He starts brushing the contents of my stomach off his suit with the handkerchief he swiped from his top pocket, and it rapidly changes to a disgusted look on his face.
All my mind can think at this moment is, The guy is wearing a three-piece suit? as I hang my head over, hoping I can keep what little is left in my stomach at bay.
I’m in bad shape, the worst I’ve been in a long time. I’d been granted a reprieve from the bad life I had led. Now I am back to square one.
I’m feeling clammy and exhausted, but my stomach is feeling better, and I lay back as gently as I can inside the trunk, trying not to draw any more attention to myself, panting from the efforts of puking and that horrible acid that comes up.
“She needs a muzzle.” Deano is not happy with me. “But we can’t afford to gag her in case she chokes on her own fucking spew.”
Deano is pacing back and forth, throwing his hands in the air. “Fuck! I knew this contract was going to be a pain in the ass. The nomads normally take care of this shit.” He points to me. “It’s a fucking disgrace the way this kidnapping has gone down. We’re behaving like amateurs on opening night.”
“Stop your yapping, Deano. When we explain to the next team she’s a feisty one, they will keep her under surveillance, and we can go have a few drinks and get laid.” Cigar Man is watching me, waiting for me to react to this information as a smirk appears on his face. “Although, after what I have seen of this one, I wouldn’t mind fucking her now.” He licks his lips in front of me, but I don’t give him the satisfaction.
Truth be told, I’m feeling really bad. I need to get them to close the trunk and start driving so I can contact Miss Catherine. I can’t even care that I smell putrid. Miss C is my comfort in this storm I have raging around me.
“Don’t even think about it. Shut the fucking trunk and let’s get moving, Benny.”
“It will be my pleasure.” Cigar Man smiles and slams the trunk down. I am again cocooned in darkness. He thumps the trunk hard a few times, making me jerk, which does my wound no favors. “Enjoy the ride, bitch. It might very well be a bumpy one.”
I lay in the darkness, waiting for the car to start up. When it starts moving again, the country music is turned up. I grope inside my boot for the phone. I had made my mind up that I was not talking to Edge anymore. I could not trust him. Miss C called him Dallas. I hadn’t had time to process this information. The only Dallas I knew of was William’s son, because his name was Dallas Dupré. It was written on the document from that creepy lawyer.
They couldn’t be the same person?
Could they?
It might explain why I think he shot me.
Like father, like son.
The man I had incredible sex with was quite possibly a murderer like his father, out to make my life hell. I can’t afford to think about all this at the moment. I need to think about myself.
This all needs to be boxed up for now.
Miss Catherine is my rock, and until Boxer or Lincoln, the only other people I trusted in my small world, can help me, then Edge wasn’t gonna be my contact. This way, I also knew Miss C was well and unharmed if she was spokesperson.
In my head, I have this all worked out. Boxer is going to move Heaven and Earth to find me soon, and I’m going to be taken to safety because I’m being tracked. I’m not lost to them. Miss C is going to get through to Boxer or Lincoln and give them the information. It’s the only good thing Edge has done for me. I can’t even think about the sex we had together.
I close my eyes and go to one of my places in my head I haven’t visited in a long time, and try to block out Edge and the mixture of blood and the vomit stench that is filling the trunk, and find my courage because I know I am going to need it.
Boxer will save me.
He has to.