My heart started pounding. “Is someone coming?” I just about shouted.
My stomach did a sudden, funny, little thing.
But I knew what it meant—nothing fucking good.
I threw myself on top of The Defender a second before the door flew open.
His body went stiff.
My heart was pounding too quickly, and I squeezed my eyes closed and tried my best to pretend to be asleep. Would they not take me if I was unconscious? Did he know something I didn’t? Why had it taken him so long to hear them coming? Should I have laid down beside him? I’d just wanted to protect him…
Shit, shit, shit.
“Remember, Boss said not to hurt her,” a voice spoke up from the direction of the door.
If anything, The Defender’s body went even harder under me. I was literally sprawled on top of him. Covering him like a pitiful blanket.
I squeezed my eyes closed and tried not to pant from how nauseous I suddenly felt. My poor fucking stomach did a barrel roll, trying to warn me again. Too late though. Way too late. Why hadn’t it acted up before?
Footsteps squeaked across the floor. “If you know what’s good for you, stay right where you are,” the same voice said. I was pretty sure they were talking to The Defender. I hoped he kept his eyes shut. I hoped he didn’t do anything to bring attention to himself until he could get out of here. “Shoot him if he moves. Take her.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh—
Please don’t move, buddy. Stay where you are.
Hands clamped down on my wrists and ankles.
I wanted to move; I really did. I was ready to claw some eyeballs out, maybe bite a few fingers off. But I wouldn’t, and I knew that instantly too. Because maybe if I didn’t do anything, they would leave him alone.
That was enough to keep me immobile.
For him.
So that they wouldn’t try and hurt him, then figure out who he was.
Oh God.
Terror like I didn’t know gripped my entire body as I was lifted. He’d said to pretend to be asleep. He’d said to be quiet, but the second I was up, my weight focusing on the joints of my wrists and ankles, which was pretty fucking painful, totally fucking vulnerable…
I opened my eyes and locked onto the long body belly-down on the floor.
Fear wrapped its brittle, too-hot wings around me right then.
Not the kind of fear like when I’d watch a scary movie or when I heard a strange sound in the middle of the night. It was pure, genuine terror. Like what I’d felt immediately after my grandma had passed away and I’d thought there was a good chance I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.
Some people say that the opposite of love is fear. But the truth was, without fear, there can’t be love. If you can’t worry about losing something you find precious, it probably isn’t all that valuable to you in the first place.
And I had already lost the two people in the world who meant everything to me. Now everything else was gone too. I was going to lose my job after this shit too, but that was at the bottom of my list of concerns at the moment.
But to lose my life? Maybe it wasn’t perfect, and I had roadblocks set up at every corner preventing me from living it the way I dreamed or at least would have settled for, but it was something. It was mine.
I didn’t want to lose it. Not my life. Not my future.
I was scared.
I was scared they were taking me. I was scared my life was really going to be over before it had even really begun. I was just… plain terrified.
And reason didn’t exist when terror was present. I suddenly understood why people did such stupid fucking things in horror movies that got them killed. I would have been one of those dumbasses, and I wasn’t fucking proud of it.
But I still did it.
I tilted my head just enough so I could spot him still flat on his stomach, his eyes closed. I was pretty sure his features might have been strained, but I didn’t know for sure. My vision was too blurry.
“I’m sorry!” I cried out, just in case…
I hoped he knew. I hoped he understood I hadn’t meant for this to happen. That if I could have chosen, he wouldn’t have been involved.
I was going to hold on to my word if that was the last thing I did.
If I was going to die—and that thought made me whimper—I had to make this right. I had to try. He didn’t deserve this.
“Please leave him alone! We barely know each other! He was a one-night stand!” I wailed, sounding like a fucking crazy person, but… but… I was.
What if this was the end?
“I’m sorry!” I shrieked, my voice breaking as I tried to move my arm, tried to reach for him, for something… but nothing budged.
Oh my god, I was so scared.
But he had to get out of here. He had to survive. “I’m sorry! Live a long life!” My voice just… broke, and I gasped for a breath that hurt so bad my eyes watered even as my ribs, back, and all my joints cried out in protest from how roughly I was being carried. “Be safe!”
I was on my own.
Like I’d always known I would be.
I screamed.
I screamed for help. For my future. Like my grandma had told me to if a stranger ever tried to abduct me.
I screamed for them to please let me go.
Please and please and please.
I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t say I was sorry. And I didn’t say I would do anything to keep on living, because that wasn’t true either. I wouldn’t betray him. I had nothing left but my honor.
I screamed, hoping for mercy maybe. For my life.
I wished I could have done the sign of the cross. I tried to remember the prayers I’d said thousands of times. Our father, who art in heaven…
Big, fat tears pooled in my eyes and onto the floor. No one listened as they carried me down a hall with more concrete floors and through another heavy door. I was pretty sure I heard someone laugh, maybe more than just a single someone.
My shoulders and hips hurt as blood rushed to my face and into my nose, making it hard to breathe. Eventually, they stopped in front of another door. Then, just like that, these fuckers let me go, dropping me onto the hard floor. For some reason, my eyes instantly went to the sink in the corner, to a hose attached to it and dangling to the floor.
A moment later, my arms were grabbed again and tucked behind my back, and something sharp bit into my wrists.
I cried out as they tugged them up, forcing me to sit up, jerking even more at my shoulders.
I dipped my head back to find the faces of two men looking at me with hard, solemn expressions before a voice said, “That was a lot more dramatic than I’d expected.”
It was a woman. She had dark brown hair and was dressed in gray slacks and a black button-down shirt. She looked just like a person who worked in an office. And she was short. She could have been anywhere between her thirties and fifties. Pretty.
She looked fucking bored. This bad energy came from her as well. My stomach didn’t like it.
I pressed my lips together to keep from making another peep.
“Don’t waste my time. You know what we want. Make this easier on both of us and just tell me where it is,” the woman straight-up said as I sat there, sniffling because my nose was burning from all the blood that had rushed to my head. “Don’t make me ask you again.”