Wait. Floors didn’t move.
Another bump, but this time I was prepared.
I was beginning to realize I wasn’t in Winder’s room at all, but in a car, a moving car. The memories came back to me all at once. A man, dressed all in black, grabbing me when I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. The way I tried to scream, right before they gagged me, pressing a sweet-smelling rag to my face.
Everything went blurry after that. But now, I was almost able to open my eyes, if I squinted. It was dark, but it wasn’t the pitch black I originally thought it was. I sat in the backseat, next to someone in black jeans. I stretched out my foot, and I could just barely touch the door handle. If I didn’t draw any attention to myself, I might be able to get the door open, and roll out—provided they weren’t driving at an excessive speed.
I was almost there. Another inch.
“Fuck! She’s awake.” The man sitting next to me grabbed me, holding me still.Shit.
My mouth still felt frozen, and I couldn’t make any words come out.
“Already?” a voice from the front seat called.
“Maybe you got your dosage wrong. Pass me the fucking rag again.”
I tried to fight the best I could, but my body didn’t feel quite like itself. He held me down without much trouble, and the rag covered my nose and mouth. “Bedtime, bitch.”
Then, there was blackness.
I must have been dreaming.I was in a house with a man I’d never seen before. He smiled at me, but I didn’t like the way his smile made me feel.
Like my organs were nothing but slime, sloshing around inside my skin.
He said something to me, but I couldn’t make it out. Everything was grainy, filmy, like an old movie.
I turned away from him, and he grabbed me back, too hard.
Looking down at my wrist, and back up at him, the slime in my core hardened to something else. Something solid, and tangible.
Didn’t he know not to touch me like that?
I opened my eyes again,trying to hold onto reality. This was real. It had to be real. When I told my arm to move, it moved.
It didn’t work like that in the dreams. There, I did what I was told.
The only problem was, when my one arm moved, the other moved with it. A rope wrapped around my wrists, binding them together. If I followed it with my eyes, it knotted around a pole, keeping me put.
Not a great situation. Not the worst I’d been in either. I scoped out my surroundings. It seemed like I was in a warehouse of sorts—very similar to the one I’d recounted in my dream journal to Winder. A small square of space surrounded me, built by rows of wooden storage crates.
Winder.
Where was he? He had to be so worried about me. He had to know where I was, right? I described the warehouse to him. He knew the one I meant. As long as it was the same one, that is.
“Lunch time.”
A masked man kicked over a pile of crates that built my tiny wall, carrying a tray of gray-looking food.
He put it down on the floor in front of me, then flipped open a pocketknife, cutting through the bindings on my wrist. “Don’t even think about running away. Those drugs are still pumping through your system, so catching you won’t be a problem.”
I looked at him, then down at the plate, where the unappetizing sandwich sat.
“Eat. That’s an order.”
I glared at him. “Why are you doing this to me? If Conrad wants me dead, tell him to come kill me already. Unless he’s not man enough to do it himself.”
My guard laughed. “Sweetheart, you’ve killed a lot of Conrad’s men. A quick death is not something he’s going to give to you. He’s gonna drag this out, real slow. By the end of it, you’ll be begging for him to kill you.”
