Get up. Have to get up.
But her body wouldn't cooperate. Each attempt to breathe felt like knives scraping against bone. Her legs wouldn't hold her. She was on her knees again, the gravel biting deeper into already torn skin.
"Get up."
She couldn't. Couldn't make her legs work, couldn't coordinate movement when everything hurt and she couldn't see and couldn't breathe properly and—
Fingers twisted into her hair and yanked.
Rachel's head snapped back. Her neck cracked audibly. Pain shot from the base of her skull down her spine. Her scalp burned where he was pulling, forcing her to her feet through sheer agony. Strands of hair tore free.
She stumbled, trying to find her footing, but the ground beneath her feet changed without warning. Dirt became concrete. The temperature dropped several degrees, enough that she felt it immediately on her bare arms and legs.
They were inside now.
The acoustics shifted. Her ragged breathing echoed off walls instead of dissipating into open air. Footsteps multiplied, became harder to track. A low mechanical hum pulsed somewhere ahead, steady and industrial. The smell changed too. Rust and old oil and something metallic and sharp that reminded her of blood.
Warehouse. High ceilings. Concrete floors. No insulation. Somewhere no one would hear her scream.
They shoved her down and her tailbone hit metal. The chair didn't give at all, bolted to the floor. The impact sent shockwaves up her spine, made her teeth click together.
Rachel twisted instinctively, testing the zip ties at her wrists, searching for any slack she could exploit. Nothing. The plastic held firm, the edges sharp and unyielding where they'd already cut into her skin.
Rough hands grabbed her legs and forced them apart. More plastic zip ties bit into her ankles as someone secured them to the chair's front legs, pulled tight enough that the plastic edges dug into bone immediately. She'd have marks within minutes. Probably bleeding within an hour.
Rope followed. Thick and coarse, scratching against her bare arms as they looped it across her chest and around the chair's back. They pulled it tight, pinning her arms to her sides, compressing her ribs until every breath became a conscious effort. Her chest couldn't expand fully. Each inhale was shallow, incomplete.
Rachel forced her mind to slow down, forced herself to take breaths that didn't require her chest to move much. Panic would kill her faster than her captors would. She'd seen people die from positional asphyxiation in conflict zones, watched their lips turn blue, watched them struggle and fail to get enough oxygen. Knew what happened when the body couldn't breathe.
Don't think about that. Focus.
She tested the restraints methodically. Shifted her wrists to check for give, the zip ties just cut deeper. Flexed her ankles against the ties there, they bit into bone but didn't budge. Tried to determine if the rope around her torso had any slack at all, no. They'd done this before. Known exactly how to secure someone so they couldn't move without causing themselves more pain.
New footsteps entered the space. Different from the others, measured, controlled, confident. Authority in the rhythm. Dress shoes on concrete, not boots.
"Easy, gentlemen." The voice matched the footsteps. Male, educated, calm. The calm of someone completely in control. "No need to break her. Not yet."
The hands on her shoulders fell away. Boots scraped backward, giving him space.
"Let's keep this civil."
Civil. The word was almost funny. Rachel's ribs screamed with every breath, her wrists were bleeding where the zip ties had cut through skin, blood ran down both legs from her knees, and they'd beaten her like a training dummy in the back of that van.
But she didn't laugh. Didn't react at all.
The blindfold came off in a single rough pull that caught strands of her hair and yanked them free.
46
The fluorescent lights overhead burned into Rachel's vision even through her eyelids. She blinked hard, trying to force her eyes to adjust, but the brightness felt like needles driving into her skull. Eventually the white glare separated into individual tubes, industrial fixtures mounted to exposed beams that disappeared into shadows above.
Sound echoed off distant walls, bouncing back with that particular hollow quality that came from high ceilings and empty space. A warehouse. Big enough that her breathing, ragged and too loud, got swallowed by the darkness beyond the lights.
Cold crawled up Rachel's back.
Her body cataloged injuries automatically, the way it had learned to do in conflict zones. Ribs, bruised at minimum, possibly cracked from the beating in the van. Left shoulder throbbing where she'd hit the wall during those turns. Knees still bleeding,the wetness seeping through her shorts where gravel had torn skin. Wrists burning where zip ties cut into flesh with every unconscious attempt to move her hands.
The chair beneath her was industrial steel, cold enough that she could feel it through her shorts. Bolted to the concrete floor, she'd tested it the moment they'd finished tying her down, shifting her weight to see if there was any give. Nothing. The angle forced her thighs to bear most of her weight, and already the muscles were starting to cramp. Her calves had gone numb below the zip ties around her ankles.
