I scream and try to grab onto the back of the driver’s seat, but I’m out of the car, falling to the ground. Pavement scrapes the skin of my knees open. Tires screech as a car speeds away. It’s the old vehicle with the couple inside. They’re hauling ass out of here, the gas tank still open, the hose ripping away, the scent of gasoline all I can smell.
The trunk pops open on the car that slammed into ours as the man in the suit drags me toward it. I’m fighting, one of my shoes is off my foot as I try to get a hold of something, anything, to stop him from taking me. The last thing I see before he hauls me up and drops me into the trunk is my driver finally stepping out, drawing a gun. But the others, they’re ready for him, and one of them raises his weapon. He takes aim. Fires.
I scream again, watch as my driver hits the ground.
The man in the suit shoves me back down when I sit up and when I try to fight him off, he slaps me so hard, my head hits the edge of the trunk. I’m dazed, something warm slides over my temple, down my cheek. It takes a minute for him to come back into focus and when he does, he’s grinning, and raising his fist and this time when he hits me, I don’t open my eyes. I don’t feel anything after the crushing pain on the side of my head. And all I smell is gasoline as he slams the trunk closed and I feel the car begin to move before I lose consciousness.
21
NATALIE
My head is throbbing and my eyes feel like they’re glued shut. I can’t move right away and I’m not sure where I am. I’m lying on my side, I know that because I feel a rough fabric on my cheek. It stinks and I want to vomit, I feel like I might. And maybe I already have. Maybe that’s one of the scents I’m smelling. That and unclean bodies. Sex. The stench of it, of cigarettes and sweat and sex.
I turn my head, moan with the pain over my eye. Try to reach to touch it, but I can’t. Something cold circles my wrists and they’re bound up over my head. I force my eyes open and for a moment, the room spins. The threadbare blanket I’m lying on is a 1970’s orange/brown combination. The walls are yellow but I think they used to be white. On top of a beat-up desk is an old-fashioned box TV and there’s a jacket hanging over the back of the chair. It’s the only nice thing in here. There’s a can of Coke beside the TV and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. I roll onto my back and look up at the blobs of stains on the ceiling, then toward the large window with its curtains drawn shut. They match the blanket I’m lying on.
Footsteps outside, heavy ones, have me turning toward the door. My head throbs with the effort. It opens and a man I don’t recognize comes inside. He’s talking into a cell phone.
“Yeah. Got it.” He gives me a grin and sits on the edge of the bed. “I’m not fucking stupid,” he says and disconnects the phone, sets it on the nightstand. He never stops looking at me.
He’s not the one in the suit. The one who grabbed me. Punched me. He’s wearing a yellow T-shirt stretched too tight over his beer belly. It’s got a stain on it. Tomato sauce I think. Or blood. Mine, maybe.
When he leans in toward me, I press my back into the mattress.
“You up, pretty girl?” he asks.
I don’t react and try to pull away when he reaches out a hand and presses a fat finger into my temple. I suck in a breath and he smiles, digging deeper. Warm blood slides over my ear. He’s opened a cut. I guess it happened when the suited man punched me.
“That’s for puking on me,” he says.
He rubs his finger on his shirt and my first guess was right. The stain I saw was tomato sauce because blood is much darker.
I look up at my hands, tug at my arms to test the handcuffs that are linked through the headboard.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the man says, standing. He’s tall. Really tall. And the way he looks, the way his eyes travel over my chest, my belly, my legs, it scares me.
“What do you want with me?” I croak. My voice isn’t working, my throat is dry and I know I did vomit on him. I taste it.
He shrugs a shoulder, turns his attention to the TV and switches it on.
“Nothin’ much,” he mutters. “You ain’t my type.” He sits back down on the bed and is wholly engrossed in the channels he’sflipping through. A pistol is tucked into the back of his jeans. “I like tits,” he adds on, picking up his coke and slurping loudly.
I try to pull myself up to a seat, but my head throbs with the effort and when he turns and grabs hold of my ankle, I freeze.
“Where you goin’? Ain’t nowhere you need to be.”
I guess he’s not as inattentive as I assumed.
“Where am I?”
He releases my leg, returns to flipping TV channels. Settles on a black and white cartoon. I feel like I’m caught in some time warp. Like this place is stuck in the past. A glance at the window tells me it must be nighttime, or I’d see sunshine coming around the curtains, I think. I listen, but either the room is soundproof, which I doubt, or there’s absolutely no traffic outside.
“Where am I?” I ask again, a little louder this time as I manage to sit up a little, drawing my bound hands in front of me.
“Quiet.”
“Can’t follow the cartoon?” I ask.
He mutes the TV and turns to me and I realize how stupid that was.
