I balled my hands into fists. “Take me. I’ll show you a good time.”
He finally secured Fran's wrists with a zip tie then dragged her out of the cage. “You’ll get your chance but not with me. Come on, sweetness,” he cooed to Fran, sniffing her hair. “We need to pretty you up even more.”
Those big green eyes of hers sliced through me, and guilt overpowered my rage. Brian would blame me for his daughter’s plight. I would never be able to face the man I loved—who made me feel like I mattered, who treated me with the utmost care and made me feel whole again.
“Fran, I promise we’ll see your dad.” I didn’t have a way out yet.
Harris sneered. “Shut the fuck up, bitch. Your turn will come soon enough. And from what I gather, you’ll get to watch everything in action.”
He yanked on Fran’s arm as the two of them left the barn.
I paced the cage in a circle, opening and closing my fists, then whipped off my bra.
“What are you doing?” Eve asked.
“Getting us out of here.”
32
GRACE
My arms barely fit through the bars of the cage as I held the underwire of my bra as tightly as I could in one hand while holding the lock in my other.
“All of us should try,” Eve urged the other girls.
“I’m not wearing an underwire bra,” Laura said, nervously playing with the long sleeves of her shirt.
Several other girls parroted Laura.
I swallowed thickly. “It’s best if you don’t try this. I’m afraid, if you get caught, the punishment would be severe.” I couldn’t care about my own demise.
The underwire of my bra bent at an awkward angle between my fingers. As much as I’d prepared for this day, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I forced a slow breath, steadying myself until the tremors stilled.
Silence dropped over the barn like a heavy blanket. The only sounds I heard were my heartbeats competing with the howling of the wind and rustling of trees outside.
Time wasn’t on my side, and neither were my nerves. My arms were beginning to swell between the bars as I workedthe wire against the lock, feeling for that sweet spot where the mechanism would give.
Duke’s voice echoed in my head—“slow and steady.”He was the one who’d taught me how to pick a lock. Dillon and Denim knew how as well, but Duke was the master at it.
As I drove the wire deeper into the lock, I felt the girls watching me, their hope and desperation urging me on but at the same time rattling my nerves even more. They were counting on me. Fran was counting on me. She was living my worst nightmare, and it was all my fault.
I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to break down. But the thought of Brian’s green eyes filled with disappointment made my chest ache. I couldn’t afford to think about him and how he made me feel—protected, special, a queen.
Daylight was waning, and the barn was growing darker.
“Feel the process,” Duke had said.
Closing my eyes, I tuned out all the noises and steadied my hands. My arms were throbbing, almost numb. One slight turn of the wire…
I held my breath, andclick.
The sound was barely audible, but in the heavy silence, it might as well have been a gunshot—at least that was how I heard it.
That was only the first pin. The padlocks usually had at least five pins. The way I was going, this would take me all day.
“Grace?” Eve whispered. “I think I heard the door open.”
My heart stuttered, but I kept working.
