- Chapter Five -

Georgia Mary King

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I woke up thinking about horses.

Coughing, I rocked sideways, trying to remember what I'd been doing before I passed out. Had Chelsea coaxed me into too many shots? Any shot was too many, but I'd agreed to have fun on her terms.

White noise throbbed in my skull. It rolled behind my eye sockets when I opened them. My body was shifting even though I wasn't moving. I really DID drink too much, ugh.

Overhead was a dirty ivory ceiling. Blinking, I carefully turned to keep my headache from assaulting me. I was lying on my side on a smooth floor that matched the walls. The only light came from two laptop-sized, tinted windows at the end of the room.

No. This isn't a room. The walls rumbled—the ground under me jolted, and I cried out as my brain flexed in sympathy. I went to rub my dry eyes; that was when I noticed my hands were bound together in front of me by a strip of plastic.

I remembered everything.

Conway! He'd knocked me out. He'd taken me. This wasn't a house, it sounded and felt like a car. A van. I'm in a fucking van. Oh god. What was going on? Rolling back and forth, I saw that my ankles were bound the same as my wrists.

“Hello?” I croaked—my voice was weak. I needed water. Ignoring how much it hurt, I swallowed and tried again. “Hello! Help! Can anyone hear me? I need help!”

The van squeaked to a halt.

For a while, nothing moved. I strained to hear every sound, picking out what I could. The right-handle wriggled; even though I expected it to be Conway who opened the van doors, I wasn't ready for him to appear.

Half of his face peered inside. He took me in carefully, like I was a wild lion he'd locked up. Then he entered, shutting the door quietly behind him and making me remember all those times he'd done the exact same thing.

Too late, I knew I'd missed my opportunity to scream. The sound could have escaped through the crack. Scooting my knees under me, I sat up, readying myself for his approach.

“It's been awhile.” His voice was a rich vein of silver running through the earth's crust. There was more of a pleasant timber than he'd had as a teenager.

“I wondered what happened to you,” I said, shaking my head. “When the police investigated, they found no trace of anyone. I hoped you were okay. I searched for you online, off and on until...” Until my therapist convinced me to stop. She'd said it wasn't healthy.

He hadn't moved from the rear of the van. He was wearing the same jeans, but the brown jacket was gone. A thin, gray ribbed t-shirt put his muscular body on display. His arms were exposed; both were covered in elegant, shiny black ink.

And scars.

So many scars.

Conway saw where I was looking. The edge of his cruel smile belonged to someone else. It reminded me of his father, and the comparison made me ill. “You searched for me? Funny that I found you first.”

“Conway, what's going on?” I lifted my bound hands in front of me. “You were on the news. They said you'd abducted a bunch of women, I didn't believe it—”

“But now you do,” he cut me off. One scuffed boot came my way, then another. He was nearly on top of me. “You were always smart, Georgia.” Him speaking my name caused a ripple inside of me. “Put the pieces together. The police are looking for me because I'm a bad fucking person.”

“You're not,” I said quickly. “I know you, Conway. You risked everything to help me. You saved me! And you did it again last night!” I was trying to appeal to the part of his humanity I knew was there. “Whatever is going on, we can talk this through. Just... just untie me. And we'll talk.”

His left hand swept upwards; a chunk of his pinky finger was missing. Ruffling his hair, he knelt in front of me. His nearness brought his scent to my nose—smoke and sage. “I didn't save you last night. I just got rid of someone who was in my way.”

A hairline of doubt cracked my confidence. “No. He was hurting me, and you stopped him.”

“If I'd arrived a half hour later, and he'd already fucked you...” He said it so coldly that my heart began to crust with ice. “You'd still be right here, tied up in this van. Don't mistake timing with heroism.”

That was when I really, truly saw him. The tattoos, the scars, the muscles... the fierceness in his black eyes, how he held himself with a natural dominance. Even if there was more going on here, I had to stop doubting that Conway was capable of hurting me.

He'd wound plastic around my limbs.

He'd thrown me in a van.

The boy who'd smiled shyly at me in the dark was gone. It was time for facts, and the biggest fucking fact was this:

Conway had kidnapped me.

Shifting on the floor, I stared just past his ear. “People will look for me. There were witnesses all over that party.”

“They saw you. Not me.”

He was right, but I was just talking at this point. “My friend Chelsea will know I'm missing, she'll report it.” Five, six feet at most. If I move fast enough...

“Let her. The police don't treat missing women the way they do little girls. Even if they take her report seriously, it doesn't matter. No one will find us.”

My attention bounced back to his face. His intensity burned. “And why's that?”

“You'll have to wait and see.”

I leaned towards him. He flared his nostrils, like he was angry—or like he'd gotten a whiff of me and wanted more. “The old you would have told me where we're going. You didn't like seeing me lost and scared.”

He hadn't blinked during our entire talk. “I'm not the boy you knew nine years ago, Georgia.”

“That's alright,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “I'm not that same girl.” My forehead rocked into his, sparks exploding between my eyes and along my temples. But I didn't care because I'd stunned him, giving myself a chance to run.

For the first six months that I was home after escaping Facile, my mother didn't push me into anything. Not going outside, not seeing friends, not attending school... she just let me be. But when I turned fifteen and was still sleeping with the lights on—and triple checking the house locks—she insisted I do something about my fears. Something practical.

I humored her and endured three years of self defense classes. My instructor encouraged me to run, so I began running each day. When I returned to school I joined the track team. To this day, I kept up with the routine. All that exercise hadn't healed me.

But it had made me strong.

Gasping, I shoved forward, stumbling on my tied feet. I was half-hopping to the van doors, my bare knees scraping painfully on the floor. Go, go, go! I screamed at myself, fumbling with the handles.

Behind me, Conway approached like a speeding train.

The handle went down under my clawing fingers. In a great heave I threw myself outside, eating sand, some of it getting in my eyes. I didn't care—I screeched. “Help me! Someone help me!”

Hands yanked me up, tossing me back into the van. Even though my eyes were watering to get rid of all the grit in them, I still saw the landscape outside. It was just one long strip of road, pine trees going orange under a bold October sun.

There was no one around to hear me.

“Not a bad attempt,” he said. He didn't shut the door.  He hovered next to it, the open sky taunting me. Conway touched the bridge of his nose gingerly. “Thought you'd broken something for a second.”

Rolling onto my knees, I spit out phlegm mixed with sand; my mouth tasted terrible. “I wish I had!” A nuclear bomb went off inside, my words flying carelessly. “What's wrong with you? You hated your father, remember? Now you're doing the exact kind of shit he used to! Why? Tell me why?”

All emotion slid from his features. “Why, or why you?”

My pulse quickened. “Why me.”

Surveying me long and hard, he said, “You need water. I'll be right back.”

“What? No, tell me why you kidnapped me!”

But he was gone, stepping out and shutting the door. I didn't have to wait more than a minute; Conway returned with a bottle in his hands. What else did he have with him at the front of the van? Crouching, he tipped it towards me. “Drink.”

Eyeing it, I curled my fingers together in one big fist. “Did you drug it?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” I said, though I took the bottle anyway. Sipping from it, I shut my swollen eyes and sighed. I'd been parched, but the situation had made it easy to ignore my body's needs. I drank until Conway took the water away.

“Look up at the ceiling,” he commanded.

“I'm not doing anything you say. I'm not a willing captive, asshole.”

His hand was like iron when he gripped my chin. With ease, he tipped my head back, splashing water into my face. “You've got sand in your eyes. If we don't wash it out, it could do permanent damage.”

Coughing, I turned away when he let me go. Blinking furiously, I silently admitted that my eyes felt much better now. One act of kindness didn't make up for what he'd done to me, though.

My vision was blurry as I looked back at him. Conway was crouched with his forearms resting on his knees. Then I noticed he was looking downwards. Following his gaze, I saw that the water had turned my white dress transparent. Chelsea had convinced me not to wear a bra because it was backless, and bra straps were “tacky” according to her.

I'd used the adhesive skin-colored pasties she'd given me. At some point they'd slid off, sticking to the inside of the dress but not at all hiding my obviously visible nipples.

Conway leveled his stare—we were eye to eye, silently studying each other in this new moment. It reminded me of years ago, sitting with him on a bed as we shared an erotic story.

I glimpsed his lust. He saw me glimpse it.

Suddenly he broke away, standing stiffly; a wooden soldier come to life. “Get comfortable. This will be a long drive.”

Flushing, I jerked my head to the side, taking my body with it. My arms and knees bunched together; I was a tight ball of humiliated fury. “You honestly can't believe you'll get away with this. Your dad didn't.”

Squeezing the edge of the van door, he hunched his shoulders. “I'm not my dad.”

Then I was alone.