Chapter Two
It was a dream. She was dreaming of course. She’d done it so many times before. Terrible dreams of being captured—the way she had been in real life. Tortured. Harmed. But they always ended with her escape. And if not her escape, then death. Which she was starting to see as a type of escape.
A dream. A nightmare. That was all.
She just had to get through this one, like all the others, and when she woke up, she’d be on her way. She needed to get farther. Hopefully out of Memphis. Possibly to the other side of the country.
Despair licked her. Was there a place far enough away from her captor?
Former captor, she reminded herself.
The man from the shed handled her gruffly as they moved in the shadows of the parking lot. Maybe she could make her escape now. This dream was different than her others. She’d never had this chance before. But they were nearing a door. Once inside, her chance would be over, she knew.
She squeezed her eyes closed, reciting the words that had become her lifeline over the years.
Your name is Marlee Benson.
You are twenty-eight years old.
You had a dog named Jem.
You were last free on your eighteenth birthday.
You were in the news. Someone will find you.
Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.
Opening her eyes, she found the door. It was closer than she expected. Now. She had to try now.
Using her bony elbow as her best weapon, she rammed it into the man’s ribs while jerking forward at the same time, kicking to get loose. But he barely grunted in response, and tightened his hold to death grip status. She let out a desperate shriek through his fingers where they clamped onto her mouth, and he pulled her into a cove between a wall and a dumpster.
“Stop it, ya hear?” he growled into her ear. His stern voice sent a warning down her spine. “I promise, I will keep you safe. I won’t hurt you and I won’t let anyone else hurt you either. But you have to be quiet. If he finds you, we’re both fucked.”
He. The monster was here? But of course he was. This was her nightmare. The one she fought through every night.
Despair made her go limp against the strange man. She was defeated now, by her subconscious. But when she woke, she would run again. Run until she was lost. Until she was strong again.
She hoped she could be strong again.
“Now, let’s get inside. We see anyone, you keep your head down. Got it? Don’t look anyone in the eye. Nod if you understand.”
She moved her head and hope it was something like a nod.
It must have been enough, because he angled her out of the cove and toward the door. When they slipped through, he pulled his hand from her mouth, but not before pulling her chin up so her eyes met his warning glare. He was a beautiful man with a rough looking snarl to his lips. Eyes that were deceptively blue like a summer sky, but didn’t contain a hint of any of that happiness. Blond hair that dipped to his shoulders and hung in his face in straggled pieces.
But his message was clear. If she made a sound, she’d be in trouble.
He turned his head, looking left then right. They were in some sort of warehouse. Boxes and crates were piled along one wall and several sectioned office spaces took up another. Steel beams above her head supported a second floor, and she could hear angry music and snarled voices coming from there.
The man grabbed her arm, pulling her toward a rickety looking industrial staircase. She followed him up, tripping over the last step. He righted her before pulling her in close. She went rigid.
Too close. Don’t want to be this close.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Just need to get past the lounge. Then we’re home free.”
They went down a dark corridor, the music and voices growing louder with each step, and she kept her head down just like he’d instructed. Even though they stuck to the wall of the lounge, it felt like they were right in the middle of a pit of vipers. She heard men and women. Cursing and grunting. Laughing and snarling. Bottles clanking. Chairs squeaking. She didn’t even want to know what happened in the lounge.
She felt the exit nearing when a slurring voice stopped them. “Who-ya got there, Ratchet?” Luckily it didn’t stop all the others. The room still vibrated with noise.
The man’s grip on her tightened before it relaxed and he wound both arms around her like they were familiar. He pressed her into his chest and she narrowly resisted the urge to struggle. Bile rose in her throat.
He was strong like her captor. Tall like her captor. Never ending like her captor.
She managed to draw in a ragged breath and somehow it was exactly what she needed to keep from screaming.
He didn’t smell like her captor. Like sweat and expensive cologne and stale cigars.
No. This man smelled natural. Like grass and the air beside a creek. Something fresh. New.
“None of your business,” he rumbled to answer the slurred question.
The stranger grunted. “Fine. You gonna fuck ‘er? Wanna share?”
“Fuck off, Fang,” her new captor snapped. “I don’t share, and you know it.”
“Well, shit. Fine. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Something that sounded like a hiss hit her ears and then they were moving again. The floor was concrete, dirty and cold. But when they reached a new room, there was a large brown rug. Strangely fluffy for a place like the warehouse. It somehow put her more at ease, if only for a moment.
The hands were gone from her and a door slamming made her jump. The sound of a lock engaging made her stomach go queasy. A lock meant she was trapped.
Carefully, she eased her gaze upward. She found his feet first. A pair of black construction boots that had seen better days. Then his legs. Jean clad. Muscular and long. She skipped over his waist and moved to his chest. He was broad. Big arms. He could overpower her easily. Already had. But the realization settled in, that he could do whatever he wanted to her, and there’d be no stopping him.
It was sheer terror in her veins.
Her panicked breaths came sharp and fast, a gasping staccato she couldn’t stop. Tears beat at her eyelids as her gaze finally landed on his cruel one.
He was going to hurt her.
Nausea doubled her over as she wrapped her arms around her middle.
After so many years, she was surprised she could still cry at all. Was it the combination of being free, but always locked in these torturous dreams? Like she’d taken a piece of her captivity with her.
I’ll never let you go. You can never escape, my doll, because I’m already right here, her captor had said, tapping one gnarly finger against her temple. Maybe he was right. Maybe what she’d been through could never be cleansed from her mind.
“You going to hurl?” the stranger asked.
Did he have a name? The man in the lounge called him something… Racket? Should she remember it? Or just forget. Fade out now, before she started feeling pain. Go to that place inside her that she escaped to when it got bad.
Her stomach heaved, but there wasn’t anything in it to toss.
“Shit,” he muttered, stepping around her and then returning with a wastebasket.
He shoved it under her face just as her middle clenched again. To her surprise something did come up. Bile and stomach acid and the little bit of water she’d been given just before escaping.
“What are you on?” he asked.
She spit into the trash can, coughing and sputtering out, “on?”
“You an addict? Or did someone slip you something?”
She frowned, hugging the can close, just in case. She shook so bad she wondered if she would be able to keep her feet under her.
“Not…” she breathed deep, trying to make her voice work. “Not an addict. Clean now.”
“Bullshit.” The words left his lips simply. Not angry. Not frustrated.
“C-clean as I could be. I only took what I was given.”
“What was it?”
“Don’t know. Something in my water. But I…” Should she tell him this part? “I built up a tolerance. Started faking the effects so he wouldn’t up my dose.”
The stranger frowned so hard his forehead rippled like a stone in water. “How long?”
“H-how long what?”
“Since your last dose.”
“I don’t know… I… don’t know.”
The stranger came closer, invading her space like he could get the answers from just being near. Like they’d jump from her skin to his and crawl into his brain.
“Was it yesterday? Morning, afternoon? You must remember something. Lunch or dinner?”
Something ominous swept over her. This was all wrong. No one in her nightmares asked questions. They just took. Stole. Hurt. Crippled.
Blinking, she tried to understand the warning boulder that settled in the pit of her stomach. Her instincts, once pristine and honed, were trying to tell her something.
“What day is it?”
“Monday.”
Her dreams never had time. They just were. No day, no hour. No AM or PM.
Fear was clawing her to shreds inside, because… this was starting to feel real. The stranger, the warehouse, the way he talked to her. None of it had that fuzzy quality she’d learned to rely on.
And… if this wasn’t a dream, it meant… she was a captive. Again. It meant she had only escaped, to be really and truly captured again by someone else.
“No,” she whispered, letting despair rip her apart.
There was no dream to wake from. There was no getting farther away from Memphis. Getting away from her captor. They’d only changed faces.
“No.” She shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed and praying when she opened them, she’d be somewhere else. Anywhere else but in a locked room she couldn’t escape from.
But when she chanced it, the cruel blond stranger was even closer. Nearly touching her.
Too close, too close.
It was too much. Something inside snapped, broke in a way she desperately needed.
And her world went black.