Luna slowly opened her eyes, amazed that she could have drifted off. How long had she been out? It was impossible to tell. The building she was in, some kind of warehouse, had no windows. She didn’t know what time of day it was or if it even was day. How much time had passed since she’d been taken?

The sinister looking man had come through the back door of her house. It had been locked but he must have deftly and silently picked it. She’d started, sat up in bed. Heard the heavy footfalls in the hallway. Her bedroom door had no lock on it and even if it had, she wouldn’t have had time to get there to spring it before the intruder was in her bedroom.

He was calm. So very eerily calm. She didn’t scream. Any sound remained frozen in her throat long after he’d held the knife to her throat, tied her hands behind her back, gagged her and threw her over his shoulder as though she weighed nothing at all. He’d walked out the back way, the way she was sure he’d entered. Traipsed through the back yard like he owned it and had no fear in the world. Threw her in the back seat of the large, old car he’d parked in the alley behind her garage.

He drove with little care to her well-being. She was jostled painfully, thrown around with every bump and corner. The car had an exhaust leak or something. She remembered vividly the gut wrenching smell that seeped into her nose and turned her stomach. She’d been so afraid that she would be sick with the gag in her mouth, choke and die.

Thankfully she’d pushed the bile back until the car stopped. The man had taken her into the abandoned building. It smelled dank and musty with the years of unused. It was cool. Much cooler than any other building she’d ever been in, as though the cold of the earth seeped through the floor and into what remained of the crumbling wood and metal building.

When the man removed her gag she’d only asked him one question. The only question worth voicing. Why. She knew better than to ask about her future. She didn’t want to truly know the answer. If she believed that somehow she’d be found, rescued, safe, she could cling to false illusion.

The man, probably in his forties, dark hair, silver at the temples, thin lips, high cheekbones, ashen skin, pitted and scarred frighteningly with souvenirs from a hard past, wasn’t one for words. Anyone could see that. He’d offered what could only be described as a smile that was completely devoid of any humour or cheer. His eyes were what scared Luna the most. They were dark, soulless. Not quite evil. No, something else entirely. Just… blank. Like he truly had no soul.

Jack did this to you.

That’s all he’d said. He’d left Luna laying on the floor, hands bound behind her back. She couldn’t run anywhere. He’d attached a length of rope to her bound wrists and tied it around a pillar thicker than her entire body. She wasn’t going anywhere.

The words haunted her. Jack did this to you. Jack did this to you. Jack did this to you. They played over and over in her sleep deprived, fear riddled brain like a never ending, wretched litany.

Luna couldn’t make herself believe it. Jack cared about her. He could be someone else. She didn’t truly know enough about him to know if what he had been telling her was false or not. However, he couldn’t lie with his body. The way he held her, caressed her, learned every plane and curve, made her feel like a glorious, beautiful woman after so many years alone… it had to have been real. She couldn’t face the alternative. That it had all been a lie.

Hot tears burned at the edges of Luna’s eyes. Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Her lungs refused to fill with the very air she needed so badly to banish the agony that was taking over, filling her up, leaving little space for anything else. Not trust, not love.

Love. What the hell did she know about love? All her life she’d chosen the wrong men. The kind of men that turned her life inside out and hurt her. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Jarod came close to destroying her. She’d been so broken she doubted she’d ever put herself back together after leaving him and then… then Jack walked into her life and she’d so easily set aside her doubts. He’d broken through the thick walls, the walls of pain and regret and shame.

It couldn’t have all been a lie. It couldn’t. Yet, how well did she even know Jack? That wasn’t even his real name. He could be a very good actor, for all Luna knew.

Before she could spiral into all out despair, a scratching noise at the far end of the decrepit warehouse alerted her to the fact that her captor was likely back.

Luna swallowed hard. Her throat was so dry it made the action difficult. She refused to show any weakness. This man, this nameless, hateful man didn’t deserve to see her fear, no matter how afraid she truly was deep inside. She sensed his kind fed off of it; other’s weakness. She wouldn’t give him that. No matter what he did to her, she wouldn’t surrender.

She waited, on her side, the cold of the dirty, dusty floor seeping into her left arm. The footsteps came closer, closer. She realized, with a start, that the man wasn’t alone. Luna struggled to push to a sitting position. It was harder than she thought, with her hands tied so tightly and awkwardly behind her back. Her shoulders burned as they protested the movement and her wrists chaffed painfully as the coarse rope rubbed the already raw spots.

The footsteps continued, sounding in tandem. Sometimes one step, sometimes two defined ones. She waited, breath held.

She knew even before she saw him who it was walking, fallen into pace, with her captor.

Jack. The one man she would have trusted with her life. So, it really was true then. He really had done this to her.