Her head was pounding when she woke up in the darkness and tried to roll over. She reached up to touch her head, but her hands wouldn’t move, and her wrists screamed in agony as the fog cleared and her memory returned.
Kidnapped! Hannah thought suddenly, the fear slamming into her full force. The Sheriff had picked her up and brought her here. But why? What was she doing here, in the middle of nowhere on the floor of some old barn?
She moved her hands again, slowly this time. She could feel the ropes that bound her, their rough, frayed strands cutting into her delicate skin and making her itch. The knots were crude, and as Hannah moved around, she could feel them slacken depending on where she held her hands.
A door opened on the other end of the barn, and the click of boot heels on the bare cement floor echoed in the rafters. Quietly but as quickly as she could, Hannah rolled back onto her stomach and buried her face into the sweet stench of the fresh straw beneath her. Her nose twitched, but she looked up and found that the silly trick her daddy had taught her to avoid sneezing actually worked.
Struggling with terror as the man got closer to her, she forced herself to go limp and ignore the muscles in her arms that protested at having her weight on them again as they tingled painfully.
“I see you there,” a voice called out into the horse stall that Hannah was locked in.
There was a loud rap on the metal bars that made up the top half of the door, but Hannah somehow managed not to jump at the sudden sound. Still forcing herself to relax, she focused on her breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
There was a laugh behind her, and Hannah was certain that the man on the other side of the doorway was the Sheriff. She bit back the anger and held her ground, refusing to let him bait her into moving and revealing that she was indeed awake.
“You’re such a little thing; I think they gave you too much juice. That’s going to make your video spot impossible to make right now, but maybe that’s a good thing. The customers go into a frenzy when they have to wait for new product.”
There was a flash and a click as the Sheriff took a picture with his cell phone, then silence as he stood, watching her for a few minutes. Her skin crawled at the feel of his gaze on her bare shoulders, but she wasn’t going to move. She wouldn’t be making a video, and she wasn’t about to be sold to anyone. She wasn’t going to go down easy, and she would rather die fighting than let them make her into someone’s maid or worse.
News stories and cautionary tales flooded through her mind, but she pushed them away. She wasn’t going to panic, wasn’t going to call this what it was. She knew she was a victim of human trafficking, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. She had to keep the fear under control or she would react instead of acting logically, and she would end up right back where she was. If she was going to get away, she had to be smart.
She was starting to think that the Sheriff had already tiptoed away when she finally heard the first steps of him leaving. She heard a second set of footfalls, and when the two men spoke, they were several yards away.
“She’s still out,” the Sheriff said. “Your men gave her too much, and now, I can’t video her until morning. Hopefully, you didn’t kill her.”
“Was she breathing?” a nervous man asked.
“Shallow, but yes. I’m sure she’s fine, but your guys have to get a handle on their dosage. They killed the last girl, and I can’t afford to lose another one.”
“To be fair, Boss, the other one was almost ten years older than this one and fought like a hell cat. We didn’t mean-”
“I don’t care what you meant to do. The fact is, you killed my catch, and next time, I won’t be so forgiving about that. This one better live or I’m going to have to answer for your stupidity. It’s almost midnight. She should be wide awake by now and futilely yelling for help. Instead, she’s dead to the world and laying there like a ragdoll. She’d better be awake in a couple hours. I have to post her by four in the morning so the early morning sickos can get first dibs on her. That will drive the price way up. So, please. Do your damn job and get your men under control.”
The man muttered something unintelligible, but Hannah could hear the regret in his voice. Hannah wondered who they’d killed, but between her schooling and her job, she hadn’t had much time to read the news.
The men were still talking, and then their voices faded and the heavy barn doors slammed shut with a deafening boom that echoed off the rafters. The room was plunged into darkness, and only the light from the small, square window cut out in the back of the stall illuminated the small space.
Midnight? How could it be midnight already? She’d slept forever, and now, she only had four hours until the Sheriff was going to come back. Scratch that; it would be under four hours because he was going to upload the video in four hours.
That didn’t leave her much time.
Cautiously, Hannah moved her legs, noting the rope tied around them as well and closing her eyes in despair. She was tied up so tight, and even though the ropes around her wrists gave a little, they were far from falling off.
She rolled onto her side, her movements gentle and deliberate. When the rope had the most slack on her wrists, she stopped, holding her awkward position with her foot and breathing through the pain. She was sore, and her body was trembling from the after effects of the Taser and whatever drugs they’d injected her with. She was fighting to hold the position she was in, but she pushed the pain away and focused on her wrists in the pale moonlight.
There was just a bit of give in the outer ring of the rope that was wound around her wrists several times. Carefully, she used one finger to pull at it, trying to pull it up and over her fingers so she could pull her hands further apart.
She pulled the rope up a few inches, then hooked the rope with her index finger and almost cried out in triumph. Taking her time, she pulled it up an inch at a time, curling her other fingers into a fist so it would go over her hands more easily. She was focused and sweating from the exertion in the stuffy barn.
She almost had the rope over her knuckles when she lost her grip and the rope fell back down around her wrist. She groaned, then caught herself, silencing the involuntary protest and taking a deep breath before she went for it again.
Working at the rope again, she wriggled her finger until she was able to get it high enough to hook again. This time, she turned her hand slightly so that her finger crooked up and away from her body instead of curling into her other hand. She lost slack doing it that way, but it ensured that she wouldn’t lose her grip this time. She pressed her wrists together as hard as she could to create more slack and tried again. Wriggling inches at a time, she bit her lip when the rope became tight just a few inches below the tops of her knuckles. She was going to have to pull harder, and it was going to hurt.
Steeling herself for the pain she was about to endure, she took a deep breath and yanked really hard, curling her finger around the rope as tight as she could and pulling with every ounce of strength she had.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound. The rope got impossibly tight and still, she pulled. When it was almost too much to bear, the rope slipped. All at once, the rope went over the knuckles, and her hands flew apart a few more inches. She let her breath out in a loud whoosh, smiling broadly and repeating the process again.
This time, it was much easier, and before she knew it, her hands were free.
She worked her fingers, clenching and unclenching her fists so that the pooled blood in her joints would start flowing again. Her body screamed in pain, but Hannah was on a mission, and she wasn’t about to celebrate before she was free.
Going to work on her ankles, she fumbled with the huge knot a few times before her fingers finally cooperated, then she pulled and plucked at the knot until it gave way, and she was free.
The relief was palpable, but she was far from free. She rubbed her ankles and legs, then stood up hesitantly and held onto the wall as the world spun around her. She almost fell over, but she managed to wade her way through the fog in her head until she was at the stall door. She tried to reach out through the bars to unlock the latch on the other side, but they were too close together, and even if her hands weren’t swollen from being tied for hours on end, they wouldn’t have fit.
Frustrated, she turned away and looked around the horse stall.
The window was small and square, and even if she could have reached high enough to pull herself up, she couldn’t fit through the tiny hole. So, the door and the window were out, which left only one more option.
Her eyes went to the heavy-duty hay rack that hung below a larger square cutout in the ceiling. Fastened to the wall with bolts the width of her fingers, it looked sturdy enough to hold her.
The only problem was getting up to the feed rack, which was five feet off the ground.
Hannah looked around the stall and considered her options. There weren’t many. She finally settled on using the space between the bars as a toehold when her eyes landed on a large, square feeder built into the wall on the floor of the stall opposite of the hay rack. It looked like it had once been used for grain, forcing the animal to walk back and forth between the two feeders to keep it moving in the small space.
Kneeling down, Hannah peered into the three feet by one-and-a-half-foot wooden box and reached in. She felt along the wall until she found the little door that opened up near the top of the feeder for the grain to be dumped into. Designed to hold a five gallon, flat sided bucket in a wire frame, the door was just slightly bigger than the window at the back of the stall. But it was big enough.
Hannah pushed on the door, but it held fast with just a little bit of wiggle room. Standing up, she climbed onto the sides of the feeder box and looked down into the darkness through the metal bars. She had to angle her head to see the latch, but once she caught sight of it, she was able to make it out in the darkness. She closed her eyes, too afraid to hope that it could really be that easy, then stepped off the feeder box and began feeling around in the darkness until she found something small and narrow to fit in the space between the feed door and the frame. The simple hook and eyelet could be opened easily from her side; she just had to find the right tool for the job.
When her hand found a thin, homemade hoof pick in the dirt beneath the straw bedding, she almost laughed with delight. It was going to take some doing, but she was sure that it would work.
She crawled into the box again, bracing her feet on the door and pushing it until she could wiggle the thinnest part of the all metal hoof pick into the opening. When it was in, she put her feet on the floor, releasing the pressure on the latch and going to work with the pick. It was a tight fit, but within a few moments, she heard the metal click and felt slack as the hook slid out of the eyelet and hung from its fastener on the door. The door swung open in the darkness, the hinges quieter than Hannah could have hoped for.
She half expected the Sheriff to reach out of the darkness and grab her, but when nothing happened, she hurriedly got down and started to squeeze her way through the opening. Her shoulders were the hardest, and she almost got stuck. When she finally put one arm out and the other back, then let out all her air and pushed herself through with her legs, she felt stuck for a moment, then slipped through the opening and out onto the cold, hard cement floor.
When no one rushed to flip on the lights or recapture her, she stood and closed the door, latching it again to hide her escape. Quietly, she walked down the center aisle on her toes, doing her best not to make a sound.
She stood in front of the large, double doors at the front of the barn and stared at their outline in the darkness. These doors were loud, and if she opened them, they could be seen from practically any vantage point, even if she was careful.
She needed another escape route, and she needed it fast.
She felt defeated, but she pushed onward, trying not to let the issue with the double doors get into her head. Worst case scenario, she would wait until someone else opened the doors and sneak out. But there had to be another way out, and she was going to find it.
Walking carefully in the darkness, she kept her hand on the outer wall and felt for a side door or anything that would serve as a secondary exit. Her feet left the concrete walkway that ran between the barn stalls, and she shuffled her feet slowly over the uneven dirt floor on the outer edge of the barn. She bumped into the corner of the barn, turning to follow the wall and starting to panic. She was almost to the stalls, and she’d found nothing.
When she stumbled into a large dip in the floor, she almost fell flat on her face. She got on her hands and knees, feeling around in the darkness and smiling when her hands found soft, freshly dug earth against the wall. Something had been digging into the barn to look for food and it appeared that the disturbed ground had been hastily shoved back into the hole and the vermin run off or killed. Whatever it was had dug a pretty large hole beneath the edge of the wall, and Hannah couldn’t contain her excitement as she began to scoop it out and pile it to the side against the wall. She was tempted to fling it haphazardly, but she wanted to get a head start, and dirt flung everywhere would give her escape route away.
When she’d pulled the dirt out and built a large pile beside herself, she grabbed a rock and dug the hole a little deeper and a little wider. She worked quietly, listening for any sign that she’d been heard and keeping her eye pressed against the space between the wood slats that made up the side of the barn. She couldn’t see too far away, but in the relative darkness, she was certain that no one could see her if she could see them.
She checked the width and depth of the hole, then crawled in and flipped onto her back. She used the wall of the barn to pull herself through, then wriggled and contorted until she was most of the way out. Her ankle got stuck, and she quickly removed her tennis shoe to release herself, then retrieved the shoe and put it back on. Back pressed against the barn, she looked up and down the narrow walkway that went all the way around the barn, then dashed toward the woods in a crouch, keeping as low to the ground as possible.
When no shouts of alarm greeted her as she made it to the tree line, her eyes welled up with tears. She was free, though not safe yet. But she’d gotten out of the barn undetected, and that was monumental.
She continued into the woods, not even entertaining the idea of all the wild animals that might be lurking in the darkness. Hannah was on a mission, and she was bound and determined to escape and survive this ordeal.
The old Hannah was scared of snakes and spider webs in the forest. The new Hannah knew that there were far scarier things in this world, and she wouldn’t stop running until she found her way out of this mess.
She dared anything creepy or crawly to get in between her and freedom.