She noticed.
The problem was that he was one of a handful of men treating her that way.
Every waitress had a group of guys who mistook professional courtesy for a personal relationship. She’d never liked it, but she’d thought she understood it. As far as she could tell, men didn’t have close friendships, not like women did, but they still had that human need for connection. Every movie and TV show and magazine article told them it was their job to go out and grab what they wanted at the same time it told them that women were theirs for the taking. It made sense that a few of the duller knives in the drawer would get their wires crossed, confuse lurking for courtship, and who could blame them?
That’s what she used to think.
Now she knew better.
They weren’t misguided, these men who couldn’t take a hint, who kept at a woman who was clearly uninterested. They were broken. Few of them would go so far as kidnapping, sure, but every one of them was after someone they could make feel less than, someone they imagined was beneath them, and they believed every woman was beneath them.
He’d forced her into his game before she knew the rules, but her blinders were off now.
She was close to freeing the spike, maybe another couple hours of digging, but if he came into the room before she got it out, she wasn’t going to lie down for him again. Didn’t matter if she didn’t have the railroad spike loose. She’d eat his face. Twist his balls. Draw far enough back that she could drive her fist into his throat, just like he’d done to her, and laugh like a banshee the entire time.
She realized she was gulping air.
He’d dropped by the Northside Diner the day before he’d abducted her. It was the beginning of dinner rush, so he’d had to wait fifteen minutes for her section. She had spotted him as she bustled around, staring at her but trying to look like he wasn’t. It was so obvious. Didn’t he know how obvious he was? Then he was seated. He didn’t bother opening his menu because he always ordered the Pantown special—Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, side of creamed corn—but this time, for the first time, he’d asked her about her day.
“It’s good,” she’d said, pushing her hair from her face, leaning back to glance into the kitchen. Table seven’s fish fry was up. “The usual?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my day?” he’d asked. His voice was sharp.
She slapped on her best grin. “How was your day?”
“Poor, until now.”
She nodded. He ordered. See? It was so normal.
He’d even asked her about college later, after the rush slowed. Feeling generous, her apron pocket fat with tips, she’d told him she was heading to Berkeley in three short weeks. He’d seemed delighted at that.
Nice, even.
He’d been hiding. Were they all hiding in plain sight, the monsters? She thought of her dad, and it about split her heart in two. He was a gentle man, an accountant who loved to garden. He’d married her mom during their sophomore year of college, twenty-four years earlier. Their faces still went blurry with love when they looked at each other, and to this day, they shored each other up even when they were annoyed. They held hands when they watched television, for chrissakes. It was their love that had made her realize Mark wasn’t her forever guy, even though he was a kind man, truly kind.
The voices stopped outside the dungeon door. She held her breath.
Her dad and Mark had grown up with the same messages as this guy and whoever he had with him, and they’d managed to become decent human beings, to not treat women like they were subhuman, to not lurk or peep or overstay welcomes or force themselves on anyone.
You know why? Because her dad and Mark weren’t broken bastards.
Blood pumped like power into her arms, down to her fists, filling her legs, which were strong from running and waitressing even though she’d lived in the dark on a poor diet for a week. She was going to kill whatever walked through that door or she was going to die trying. Either way, she was done with this misery.
The doorknob rattled. Was it him? She didn’t hear the familiar jingle of keys. The dumbass kept a big ring on his belt like he was some sort of janitor. Like somehow those keys signified anything other than the fact that he owned a lot of keys.
It must be him.
It didn’t matter. She was an animal ready to attack, crouched, every hair on alert.
The voices started again. Raised into what sounded like an argument.
Then they receded until her dank cave was grave-quiet again. She panted into the silence. Then she pounced on the spot where the spike was half-buried and moved dirt with the energy of the Furies.