Scarlett said something in Spanish, and Pablo reached for a rope.
Then Scarlett looked at my blue dress with the white flowers and said simply:strip her first.
What followed was quick and brutal and designed to humiliate. Pablo tied up my hands with the rope, and put duct tape on my mouth. I tried to yank out of his grip, all the while keeping my eyes focused on Scarlett. She had a wicked, twisted smile on her face.
“Strip her, Pablo.” She shouted again.
He grabbed the neckline of my dress, and tore the entire dress apart in one swift motion. I stood just in my black bra and panties, and I was shaking, but gathered enough strength to try one last time to escape.
As I wriggled and tried to escape Pablo’s grip, Scarlett came closer to me, and yanked down one cup of my black bra. She smiled as one of my breasts came exposed. I felt humiliated, scared and completely helpless.
She ordered something more to Pablo in Spanish. He bound my ankles with the rope and threw me into the van’s cargo space.
The doors slammed.
The engine started.
Through a narrow gap in the panel, I watched the shelter disappear, and then the town, and then there was only forest.
CHAPTER 30
JASON
I couldn’t find her.
I had been putting Sparkles back in her enclosure, the last of the animals to be settled after the show, and I turned around and Camila was simply not there. Not at the entrance, not with Jess, not with Audrey who was breaking down the trestle tables on the far side of the space.
I asked Audrey. She hadn’t seen her in twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes.
The cold moved through me fast and complete.
I was moving toward the building when Luna appeared.
She was at the edge of the parking lot, barking — not the casual territorial bark of dogs, but something with urgency in it, high and insistent, her huge body oriented toward the back corner of the lot. She looked at me, barked again, and looked at the corner.
I ran to her.
She took off immediately, moving fast for something so big, cutting through the back of the parking lot and past the delivery area and into the narrow service road behind the shelter. I followed.
There were tire tracks in the soft ground at the edge of the road — fresh, heavy, a large vehicle that had pulled out recently and headed toward the tree line.
I looked back at the shelter. Audrey was standing at the edge of the parking lot watching me.
“Call Briggs,” I shouted. “Tell him they have Camila.”
I didn’t wait to see her reach for her phone.
The motorbike belonged to one of the younger shelter volunteers — I found him at the edge of the lot and told him I needed it, and something in my face communicated the urgency. He handed me the keys.
I followed the tracks.
The service road narrowed into a dirt path, and the dirt path narrowed into a forest track, the canopy closing overhead and the light dropping rapidly as I rode. The tire tracks were visible in my headlight, heading in a straight line away from everything.
Then they turned into the trees and disappeared.
I stopped the bike, left it on the path and went on foot.
