MINUTES, HOURS, DAYS. I didn’t know how much time had passed.
Every second was torture.
My heart raced, making the heat unbearable as precious moisture sweat from my body. Thirstier than I’d ever been, panic making me tremble, I prayed to God Phoebe was looking for me. Or Callan.
Oh God, I missed him.
Why did I let him leave my apartment? Why didn’t I tell Phoebe to leave?
I bit back a sob.
The breaths of I don’t know how many women sounded like a symphony of doom. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew what this was. Women were taken all the time. That asshole in the club had drugged me. He must have. The last thing I remembered was ordering a Coke, and him. Brown eyes, a too-smooth voice, his blue shirt. Rage seeped in, and I tried to embrace it, because the fear was killing me.
Fuck what that woman had told me. I wanted to talk. “Hello? Who’s here?”
No one answered.
I heard multiple breaths. Four at least. One was quietly trying not to cry. I’d heard the telltale sniffle a dozen times already.
Leaning against the metal wall that was no longer cold, I tried again. “They can’t force us not to talk when we’re alone.”
Silence.
“I’m Emily.” I waited a beat. “Who else is in here?”
Sniffle stifled another quiet cry.
“Hey, the one crying.” I held my bottle of water in a death grip. “You have water? You want a sip of mine?”
“Shut up,” the female voice from before hissed. “She doesn’t want your water.”
Fuck her. “Why don’t you let her answer that?” I challenged, feeling like I had nothing more to lose at this point.
“Stupid bitch,” the voice muttered. “Why don’t you rattle the door again and get us all killed.”
I cut her some slack and didn’t tell her off for calling me a bitch, because she was probably as terrified as me. At least she was talking. “What’s your name?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, Shut-Up it is. You, the one crying, what’s your name?”
“Don’t answer her,” Shut-Up hissed. “She’ll get you in trouble.”
“What trouble?” She’d never said. And I wasn’t sure I cared. Anxiety making me feel like I was having a heart attack, I needed to talk.
“They said not to talk.” A quiet, young voice drifted across the darkness.
“Why?” I prodded. “They can’t hear us now.”
“You don’t know that,” Shut-Up snapped.
I ignored her. “You, the one who just spoke, what’s your name?”
No answer.
Shut-up snorted.
“Fine.” My hands behind me on the wall for equilibrium in the dark, I pushed up. “I’ll do a head count.” Slow, my hands as my eyes, I inched across the ridged wall and shuffled my feet a few inches at a time.
Going in the opposite direction as before, my feet touched something much sooner than I was expecting, and I sucked in a shocked breath.
Crawling my hands down the wall, I encountered a head just below waist height. “Hi.” I gently patted hair that felt matted and dirty. “I’m Emily.”
“Serena,” the quiet voice from before barely whispered.
“Hi, Serena.” Grabbing her shoulder, I squatted. “I’m scared too,” I whispered. “But we can help each other out, okay?”
Her shoulder relaxed a fraction under my grip. “Okay,” she whispered back.
Pushing back up, I moved around her and kept going. My hands hit a corner, and the quiet crying came closer as I reached out with my toe. “I can hear you.” I touched the softness of flesh and reached down. “It’s okay, I want to cry too.”
A hand hit my leg.
“Hi.” I reached down and grabbed it. “I’m Emily.”
The small hand squeezed mine, and a tiny childlike voice spoke. “I’m not supposed to cry.”
At the sound of her young voice, my heart dropped to my stomach. “How old are you, sweetheart?”
“Twelve.”
Oh my God, no. NO. I pulled her into a hug but another arm came with us. “Oh!” Blindly reaching out, I found the little girl’s hand entwined with another. “There’s two of you right here. What are your names?”
“Three,” the twelve-year-old corrected.
Oh dear God. “Are you—” My voice cracked. Horrified, appalled, enraged, I couldn’t finish the question. I just grabbed the arm of the girl next to us and pulled her into the hug.
“We’re sisters.” The twelve-year-old clung to me. “Me, Rachel and Renata.”
“Renee, shush!” a third voice scolded. “No talking.”
“She’s right.” Renee’s tone turned blissfully from fear to petulance. “He can’t hear us. No one can.”
“It’s not going to do any harm to know each other’s names. In fact, it may help,” I added. Then keeping my tone as neutral as possible, I asked what I didn’t want to. “How old are all of you?” Please, please let them be older than Renee.
“Renata is fifteen,” Renee answered. “But Rachel, she’s the oldest. She’s seventeen.”
“Renee,” Rachel whisper barked. “You heard what the man said. No talking.”
I reached past Renee and Renata to where Rachel’s voice was coming from, and prayed I wasn’t lying. “It’s okay. No one is here right now. I banged on that door and no one came. They can’t hear us right now.”
As the last word left my mouth, fate mocked me.
A loud metal clank, followed by a screech, split the relative silence in the container and the door creaked opened.
Moonlight silhouetted a man a split second before a flashlight blinded me. “I heard every fucking word, bitch.” His voice much more gravelly than the smooth voice of the man who had taken me in the club, his heavy boots sounded on the metal floor as he stomped toward me. “Get up.”
I dropped Renee’s hand faster than I could blink against the blinding light and stood. “We’re allowed to talk.” Brave, stupid, I stepped in front of Renee and her sisters. “You can’t silence us.”
Before the last word left my mouth, pain shot across my cheek and my head whipped to the side as he backhanded me.
“How about I fucking gag you, and then we’ll see how much you talk?”
The smell of his acrid sweat filled my nostrils as blood pooled in my mouth. I spit on the floor because it was better than crying. “Go ahead and try, asshole.”
The flashlight still in my eyes, he gripped a handful of my hair and forced me to my knees. “I got a better use for your mouth, bitch.”
His voice angry, rough, I barely registered this wasn’t the man from the club before my knees hit the floor and red-hot anger burst through my veins faster than the pain from impact. Maybe it was a little twelve-year-old girl, maybe it was the thought of my own sister, or maybe it was the memory of Callan’s lips on mine, but I wasn’t afraid.
I was enraged.
And singularly focused.
If he forced his dick in my mouth, I was going to fucking bite it off.
“Whatsa matter?” His hand left my hair, and his huge palm slapped my other cheek. Grabbing my breast, he squeezed my nipple mind-crushingly hard. “Don’t got nothing to say now?”
Tears of pain stung my eyes, and all the air left my lungs.
“What’s that?” He twisted my nipple even harder, then let go to cup his ear. “I can’t hear you.”
I forced my bloody mouth into a grin. “Eat shit, asshole.”
The cold barrel of a gun landed on my forehead.