Chapter Fifteen
ANA
I didn’t really mind the basement room that Nate’s boss had given me. That wasn’t what was on my mind. What I didn’t like was being made to feel like I was helpless in taking care of myself or that I needed to hide. I didn’t want to give up my life and hide from Stephano. I wasn’t going to give him that kind of power.
Whether Nate liked it or not, I couldn’t stay in that house and just sit there and wait for him to get back from his job. Something inside me had been building over the last few weeks and I felt more powerful than I had ever felt in my life. I felt like I could take on the world.
Instead of fear filling my mind, I was constantly thinking about how I could make myself stronger. My thoughts were becoming more and more about what was best for me to be more productive and stronger and less and less about feeling like a victim, and I loved it. I loved the changes that I had gone through and I wasn’t going to go back to being a victim.
There was still a long way for me to go and I didn’t trust my own thoughts half of the time. But I was moving in the right direction and never again would I be made to feel like I couldn’t do something that I wanted to do.
Nate made good on his promises the next day. Before he left, I had a television hooked up in my room, a set of weights, and a treadmill for running on. We went upstairs and I met Mrs. Blankenship and their three children over lunch and heard Nate say how I didn’t have family in the country and couldn’t drive, so it was so nice that I could stay with them while Nate was on assignment. It was a good cover story and his boss seemed happy with it.
My mind raced with the plan I was making. Something had changed for me. I wanted more from my life than to sit in a basement and worry about my safety all the time. But I went about the rest of the day the best I could as I followed Nate’s lead and continued to pretend like I was perfectly fine with him leaving and staying there in that basement room.
“You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. In a couple of weeks, this will all be over and I’ll be back and we can figure things out,” Nate said to me as he pulled me close for a hug.
He wasn’t nearly the asshole that he thought he was. Nate had this opinion of himself that he was a jerk and could only be nice on occasion. But I saw through all of that and knew who he was underneath that hard exterior. Nate and I had a connection. Maybe it was because we both had a hard exterior and tried to put on a face of perfection for the world. But I knew Nate cared. I felt it in that hug.
“I’ll be all right,” I said to reassure him.
There was no time to argue with him and I knew that. He didn’t need to know my plans and I wasn’t going to offer them up to him. In Nate’s eyes, he just saw a helpless girl who couldn’t take care of herself and needed him to do it. But I wasn’t helpless. I felt it inside of me. I felt a power that I wanted to use. I felt a drive to be more than just that girl who the guys had to protect and keep safe.
When Nate had been teaching me self-defense and other techniques to hurt people, I loved every moment of it. When I had been on top of him with my hands around his throat, I felt his pulse and how easy it would have been to stop him from breathing. It was a rush like I had never felt in my life. Even in my darkest days I hadn’t actually felt like I had the power to do anything to my attacker. But with Nate’s help, I felt powerful and that was better than anything I could have imagined.
Even when I ran away from the cabin and back toward Nate’s house, I felt more alive than I had felt in years. My adrenaline was pumping as I ran and I felt strong and powerful. It was like a drug and I wanted to feel it again.
I finally understood why guys like Nate went back to war zones over and over again. There was such a power in the fear your body felt and in overcoming it. I had felt that only on a small scale, but I wanted more of it. If I was successful in accomplishing my plan, I would be able to prove to Nate and to myself that I really was capable of anything.
We gave each other a quick kiss goodbye before Nate left with his boss to the airport. I didn’t go upstairs and I didn’t interact with the family. Instead, I put my running shoes on and cranked the treadmill up as high as it would go. I sprinted for at least five minutes before slowing the treadmill to a jog as I worked through my plan in my head.
Treadmill running wasn’t something I was very familiar with, but I actually liked it a lot. It made it much easier to know the speed you were running at as well as how far you ran. It was a great training tool, especially if you wanted to increase your speed or distance. But as much as I wanted to keep training on the treadmill, I had plans to leave the house later that night. I had a lot of plans, and none of them were going to make anyone happy.
Of course, it was going to be extremely difficult to get out of the house. Mr. Blankenship had a dog that really didn’t like me at all and he had a security system that only he and his wife could turn off. I was going to have to figure out a way to get out of the house, without being detected, and that was all I could think about at the moment.
By the time Mr. Blankenship had returned, I had my plan ready to go. He was a nice man and I really hoped that Nate didn’t take anything out on him after I followed through with my plan. The truth was that Mr. Blankenship didn’t stand a chance against me once I set my mind to something.
I was focused more than I had been in months. The cloud that had been hovering over my head for so long seemed to be lifting and I felt powerful and light. There was a light at the end of my dark tunnel and I couldn’t wait to get to the other side.
“Hey, Mr. Blankenship, did Nate get off on his trip all right?” I asked as I walked into the living room.
“Yes, he did great. Shouldn’t take them too long. How are you doing?”
“I’m starving. Do you have any sandwich meat or anything like that? I think I’ll make myself a sandwich.”
“Sure,” he said as I followed him into the kitchen.
I made myself a couple of sandwiches with an enormous amount of meat on them. I’m sure he couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched me load up the sandwiches and thought how on earth I could fit that much meat into my tiny stomach. But the meat wasn’t just for me; I had to win over their pit bull with it later on. I also needed to take some with me.
I stayed upstairs for an obligatory conversation before I made my way back to my room and gathered my things. Since Mr. Blankenship hadn’t turned on the alarm yet, it was the perfect time for me to escape, but the problem was that it was the middle of the day and I would be way too exposed. I needed to wait until it was dark for my plan to work.
I packed everything I wanted to take with me into one backpack that I found in the closet. I had a couple changes of clothing, my passport, some granola bars, and all the cash from Nate’s cash box. I hated to steal the money from Nate, but I hoped he would forgive me when everything was over. I threw the backpack out the window and then waited for just the right time to leave.
“Here, puppy,” I whispered as I walked out of my room and handed the dog a huge stack of meat to make him like me.
He followed me up the stairs. The window in my room was too small for me to climb out of. The backpack had to be pushed with all my strength just to squeeze through the window. Mr. Blankenship had set the alarm since the afternoon and I needed to use the dog as my way to get outside.
“Would you mind if I took the dog for a little walk? I’m dying to get out of the house,” I said to Mrs. Blankenship when her husband went to the restroom.
The timing couldn’t have worked out any better. She was more than happy to let me walk the dog and she checked to make sure the alarm was off before she let me go outside. She didn’t have any safety concerns for me, because she had no idea why I was really there. I was sure that Mr. Blankenship wouldn’t have let me out of the house at all if I had asked him.
I did take the dog for a walk around the block, and when we came back, I grabbed my backpack from behind the house before I opened the front door and let him in. I closed it behind him though and took off running. It would probably be a minute or two before Mr. Blankenship realized I hadn’t walked in the house with the dog, but I didn’t know if he would really go and look for me. He might be happy that I had left his house and reduced the danger him and his family were in.
In my bedroom, I had left a note for the family so they wouldn’t worry too much about me. I didn’t tell them where I was going, but I told them I appreciated their kindness for letting me stay there. It would probably be scary as hell for them when they realized I was gone and I didn’t want them to worry or think that someone had taken me.
I knew I shouldn’t have been running, but I had to get to the airport. I had a flight to catch. Running down the street with a backpack would be a sure giveaway that something was up, and if a police officer had driven by I likely would have been asked some questions.
There had been so many ideas that rushed through my head about where I would be safe. One of them was to return home to Liechtenstein; it had been a very safe place for me and I doubted that Stephano would chase after me there. The problem with returning home was that I really didn’t want to go back to my boring life.
Sure, my life had been a little more exciting than I had hoped for over the last few months, but as I was coming out of the cloud, I realized how important it was to live life to the fullest. I couldn’t be that kind of girl who just sat at home and cried about her life. That just wasn’t me. I was someone who took risks.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wouldn’t be safe anywhere if Stephano wanted to kill me badly enough. He had more money than I could even imagine and finding me and any of the other women who escaped would just be a fun sport to him. I couldn’t run off to hide somewhere else. I wouldn’t spend my life hiding from him.
No, instead, I was going to do something great. I was going to go to Syria and help rescue those families with Nate. I knew the area, I knew the people, and I could help whether he believed I could or not. I had a passport and plenty of cash to buy a plane ticket. I was going to show up at the office building and show Nate that I could work with him and I would be helpful. Maybe he would even decide to hire me to work for his new company. Or maybe it would all go horribly and he would send me home right away, but either way, I was definitely going to Syria.
Sure, I had a lot to learn still, but I was eager to learn whatever it was that I needed to know. I felt a drive and it made me forget all about everything else that had happened over the past few months. My focus was changed and it took up all my energy so I didn’t have to think about the other horrible things of my past.
I was pretty sure I had gone crazy. What sane woman would think that going to Syria was a good idea? I knew it wasn’t probably a sane idea, but I still wanted to prove something to Nate. But I wasn’t going just to prove something to him; I was going to prove something to myself as well. For months I had felt like a totally weak and helpless person. I had felt like I would never be safe again and would always have to have a man around to take care of me. But what if that wasn’t the truth? What if I could prove to myself that I was capable of so much more?
The idea of pushing myself farther and farther had all started when Nate and I went on our first run. I didn’t think I would be able to run at all. It had been so long since I had felt that power that I got from running when I was younger. It was like a drug though, not the running, but the power.
As Nate taught me how to fight off an attacker and how to attack someone myself, I started to get a small glimpse into what it would be like to feel so confident in your body and your skills. That must have been how Nate felt. I thought that it was probably the same feeling that Stephano and other horrible people felt too. I wasn’t sure I would be able to tell the difference between good power and bad, but I had to give it a chance.
His body was a well-tuned machine and he clearly knew how to manage it to perfection. He pushed himself hard and always did more and more with each task that he took on. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to feel so confident in myself that I could do anything I wanted to do. It seemed like Nate didn’t think there was anything he wasn’t capable of doing. I couldn’t wait to have a feeling like that someday.
Sure, going to Syria was a bad idea, but I didn’t care. It was my choice to go and I wanted to do it, so I was doing it. I wanted to make my own bad decisions again, if only to make myself feel normal again.
I stood at the airline counter and worked with the clerk to find the best flight to Syria. I could tell she didn’t think a young girl like me should go there, but she was polite and took my money anyways. I booked an overnight flight to London and then I would have to switch airlines to take the last flight to Damascus, Syria.
Paying cash for a plane ticket at the airport was bound to cause some red flags to be raised, but paying cash to go to Syria was absolutely insane. I was pretty sure the only reason security guards or TSA officials didn’t pull me off to the side was because I was a blonde haired woman. Any man, of any nationality, would have been questioned on their intentions for going to Syria.
As I boarded the first flight to London, I cuddled into the middle seat of the middle section on the 777 that was going to London. It was probably the worst seat on the entire plane as I had to go past two people to get to my spot and there were two people on the other side of me as well. But I didn’t care at all. I felt weirdly safe in my seat in the middle. Both couples on either side of me were paying attention to each other, and I sat quietly in my little world. I didn’t have to worry about Stephano, or anyone else. On that plane, at that moment, no one knew me or what I had been through.
It would take me almost a full day to make it all the way to Syria, but I was excited to be taking on the adventure. Then our plane hit some turbulence, and it jolted the plane up and down quickly. I had never experienced turbulence of that magnitude before in my life. It was enough to stop anyone’s heart.
Everyone reacted with a little scream or quick breath as they waited for the pilot to inform us of what was going on. I started to shake. My hands shook uncontrollably, and I felt myself sweating and my vision becoming blurry. I tried to take in some deep breaths but felt like I couldn’t take a good breath at all. Suddenly, all my intentions of being independent seemed to fly right out the window of that plane as I shook and felt totally out of control.
My body was betraying me and my idea to go to a war zone and prove myself seemed like a very idiotic choice. I flashed back to a conversation I had had with my counselor and our group therapy one afternoon.
After trauma, you may find yourself drawn to risky behaviors. You might drive your cars too fast, sleep with strangers, or take other unreasonable risks that you normally wouldn’t. This is normal, but it’s a sign that you need to see your counselor and try and regroup. It’s a coping mechanism to keep you from dealing with the reality that you are trying to work through.
His words played over in my head and all my confidence drained from my body. Who was I to go to Syria and do anything? I couldn’t even take care of myself, what was I thinking?
“You’ll be all right,” the sweet old lady next to me said as she grabbed my hand.
I didn’t respond to her, but I did hold onto her hand. It was the only thing I had to hold onto. My mind spun out of control with the decision I had made to get on that plane. It was reckless and I knew it. Yet, deep down I knew when we landed in London I was going to get on the next plane to Syria. My fear had me consumed for the moment, but I felt a twinge deep down inside of me that kept driving me forward. I wanted control over my thoughts, my body, my future, and in order to make that happen, I was going to Syria.
I might not be able to help with the rescue mission at all. I might even end up getting myself killed in the stupid search for freedom that I was on. But I wasn’t stopping. I needed to feel powerful over myself and my life, and if that meant throwing myself into a war zone, then that was what I was going to do.
The truth was, as soon as Nate saw me there, he would probably force me to get back on a plane and go home. I doubted he would let me have any chance to prove myself. But at least I would have fought my fears and made it all the way there. At least I wouldn’t have let myself become too afraid to live. No matter what happened when I got to Syria, I was ready for it.