The panic of the police being involved overwhelms me as locks click back in place. Tears threaten to fall.
This cannot be my life.
This is not how it ends.
Not when it has barely started.
No one will report me missing for days. My relationship with my parents is patchy. I’m a freelance graphic designer who works from home. I recently moved to New York and don’t have friends here yet.
I’ve walked this room a hundred times and not found anything useful. Nothing I could use to pick the binding on my wrists. Nothing I can use as a weapon. The thought that it’s all futile flickers through me, but I refuse to believe that yet.
There is a rattle outside the door. In a Pavlovian reaction, my heart rate escalates, fight-or-flight kicking into overdrive. I’m not ready to fight again. Not yet. Not when the wounds haven’t healed. Not when my wrists are still bleeding from the handcuffs fastened tightly around them.
One of the men who kidnapped me opens the door. “Time to go,” the man says gruffly. He has overly greased dark hair and is wearing fatigues and black boots.
“I’m leaving?”
He nods.
“What time is it?”
“Let’s go.” He pulls a gun from a holster beneath his arm and waves it in the direction of the door. I realize the handle of that gun has been slammed into the side of my skull once already. I was unconscious for a while after I was brought here.
I try to compartmentalize my thoughts. Surviving the next hour is all I can think about. Focusing on what happened in this room is not going to get me out of it.
“Where am I going?”
I should know better than to ask questions. The answers rarely come.
Instead, he points the gun at my head.
My joints crack as I scramble awkwardly to my bare feet, and my head spins as I follow him into the hallway. He blindfolds me, but not before I notice that it’s dark outside and the moon is high. Surprisingly, the metal cuffs are removed and replaced with rope that burns against my sores.
“Easy there, Joe,” someone says as I’m scooped up into the man’s arms. Now I know his name, not that it helps.
I hated the concrete room, but at least I knew where I was. We’re no more than an hour outside New York, where I was taken. If they move me again, I’ll lose all concept of where I am.
Shit, they might even put me on a private jet to somewhere.
I start to shake uncontrollably again. It’s been happening more often. Violent shudders that wrack my body.
Cool night air tickles my nose. They must have carried me outside. I’m shoved into what feels like the back seat of a car. Someone tugs a seat belt across me and straps me in, a strange act since they have done no other thing to keep me safe.
“Sit still if you don’t want to be shot and dumped in the Hudson,” Joe says.
The car jiggles as people climb in. Two doors slam. The car starts, and I sway with the motion as we move down an uneven road.
The blindfold moves enough so I can see a thin sliver of what is going on beyond it. Joe in the driver’s seat, and another man I don’t know sits in the front passenger seat. He sits facing Joe, his arm over the back of the seat, a gun pointed in my direction.
The car’s windows must be tinted. They’d be foolish to move me like this if they weren’t.
I try to move the blindfold higher by rubbing the back of my ear against my shoulder in an attempt to move the tie. It works in a fashion and enables me to look down and see my hands.
Grating country music suddenly blasts through the vehicle.
“You still jonesing for the Knicks this year?” the passenger asks.
Joe’s laughter fills the car, as if he doesn’t have a woman tied up in the back seat. “You better believe it.”
