Chapter 23
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Charlie tried openingher heavy eyes, but couldn’t. There was a throbbing in her head and her jaw was sore and achy. But even more prevalent was the pain she felt in her right shoulder.
Her thoughts were muted as though she were floating through a dense fog. She struggled to understand why.
A memory flashed beneath her closed lids. She and Derek were making love. The next image that came to her was of him in the kitchen and a table full of food. Everything after that was a blur.
When Charlie was finally able to get her eyes to cooperate, her surroundings slowly came into focus.
She was lying on a bed, but it wasn’t hers. She turned her head sluggishly to the other side, the slight movement causing her to become dizzy. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited until she felt a little steadier before opening them again.
A bedroom.Charlie blinked. She was in a bedroom, but whose? Nothing she saw looked familiar.
The walls were covered in dark, wood-like paneling, and she could see what appeared to be a small bathroom through a door to her right.
Working her way through the dissipating fog, Charlie saw a wooden dresser against the wall facing the foot of the bed. As the minutes passed by, she became more alert and began to remember.
Oh, God!Panic set in, but as she tried to sit up, her shoulder protested fiercely. More memories began to assault her as everything came back all at once.
Derek had been arrested for murder. ForCaleb’smurder. Only, Caleb wasn’t dead. He’d taken her and brought her here, to wherever this place was.
Charlie remembered feeling desperate and jumping from the car while it was still moving. She’d tried to get away, but he’d caught up to her.
She sat up too quickly and barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting in the toilet. When the heaving stopped, she flushed the toilet and rinsed her mouth out in the sink.
Legs wobbling, Charlie slowly shuffled back to the bed. The woozy feeling was lingering. It reminded her of the time she’d been given pain medication by their private doctor after one of Caleb’s ‘incidents’.
That bastard.
She wasn’t just injured. She’d been drugged.
Another horrifying realization hit.
The clothes she’d been wearing were gone. She recognized the short, white dress as one of Caleb’s favorites, and when she realized she wasn’t wearing a bra or her panties underneath it, she nearly hyperventilated.
A million thoughts ran through her mind, and before she knew it, she’d stumbled back into the bathroom. Her empty stomach lurched with another series of painful convulsions.
Through the renewed pounding in her head, Charlie struggled for a memory.Anythingto tell her what he’d done to her while she was out cold.
With sudden urgency, she quickly took note of her overall physical state.
The entire left side of her face ached and felt swollen. Her shoulder hurt like a bitch, and the palms of her hands and her knees stung from the scrapes she’d gotten from the gravel.
What she focused on most was that she didn’t feel sore between her legs. It was a comforting discovery; however, she still felt utterly violated.
