They buried me! Lucy’s silent scream echoed in her brain. They actually buried me!

Of all the horrific ways she imagined they were going to kill her during the long car ride to the outskirts of the city, this was not on the list. She thought for sure a bullet. Maybe a knife. Possibly drowning by being thrown off a bridge. But not this!

She covered her face with her hands, curled up as much as she was able to in the enclosed space and tried to calm her breathing, knowing she would have to preserve what precious little oxygen she had. She was doing a poor job of keeping her panic in check. She was taking big heaving breaths that escaped her lips in shuddering sobs while tears streamed from swollen eyelids.

“Stop, Lucy!” she chastised herself sharply. “There’s no point to this.”

She forced herself to calm down and think as much as her frantic brain could. It kept flashing back over her traumatizing evening; those horrifying hours in the car as her captors drove around endlessly trying to decide on a way to dispose of Lucy’s body. One of them finally insisting she needed to just “disappear” where the Russians couldn’t find her and that he had an idea. Lucy had fought them tooth and nail as they dragged her from the car. Why not? She had nothing left to lose. Then one of them pointed a gun at her and told her to settle down or her death would become messier than he planned. That’s when the tears and pleading started. She would have liked to say she was braver in that moment, but the truth was, Lucy didn’t want to die.

They’d dumped her on her knees in the dirt next to the car where she’d curled onto her side and wrapped her arms round her bare arms. She looked around through tear-soaked eyes, trying to figure out where they were. She saw junk everywhere; broken appliances, stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers and tons of other twisted metal. She realized she must be in some kind of scrap metal yard filled with so much junk. A body could easily disappear and never be found in such a place.

The men had a lengthy discussion before dragging an old-fashioned looking fridge over to where she lay crouched next to the car. “Get in,” one of them demanded.

“No, please!” Lucy had begged, horrifying images flashing through her mind.

Out of patience, the man grabbed her by the back of the head, dragged her up by the hair and pulled her bodily over to the fridge. Her knees dragged through the rocks and dirt. Terrified, she screamed and fought in blind panic until he slapped her so hard she went spinning into the side of the fridge. Her forehead hit hard enough to split open, and blood splattered across her face and the side of the fridge. She could see the red contrasting with the dirty grey-white of the old fridge. She held the back of her hand up to her face and lifted pleading eyes to her captor.

“Please,” she begged fingers gripping the cold, unyielding edge of the fridge. “My brother… Vladimir Sitnikov, he’ll pay whatever you want if you just give me back. You don’t have to do this.”

He shook his head, lip curling into a sneer. Not a flash of pity or remorse marked his expression. “You think he will let us accept money in exchange for you?” he laughed out loud. “No, sweetheart, not the Russian Boss. He will want severed limbs. He’ll want heads. He won’t fucking stop until every one of us and anyone associated with us is dead. No, chica, you need to go, and you need to go quietly where he will never find you.”

With that he shoved her back so hard she tumbled into the fridge. She didn’t have a chance to catch herself or crawl out before the door crashed down, locking her inside. She screamed and banged on the lid in complete panic for what felt like hours but was likely only minutes when she realized she could hear something muffled, but loud coming from outside the fridge. She froze and listened. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be some kind of heavy machinery.

She lay frozen for several minutes crying quietly and pushing uselessly against the lid, trying to feel around the seal in case there was a weakness, when suddenly the fridge jerked to the side and then rolled over and over. Lucy automatically braced her hands against the interior in an attempt to protect her head as she rolled with the fridge like a rag doll, smacking into the sides.

After the fridge stopped moving, Lucy did a quick assessment of her body, she was bruised and aching, but it didn’t feel like any bones were broken. She suspected the fridge had been pushed into what could only be some kind of large hole. She was now laying sideways against the door, which was still wedged stubbornly shut. She dropped her head into the cradle of her arms and sobbed her heart out as she listened to the muffled sounds of dirt hitting the top of her grave.