“Mmm,”Sunjiya groans as her eyes blink slowly. Her mouth feels devoid of any moisture and a slight pain seems to be moving up her neck into her head. “Ugh,” she mumbles. Her heavy lids prevent her from fully opening her eyes.
What the hell is going on?
After several unsuccessful attempts to fully lift her lids, Sunjiya is successful but her view is as foggy as her head. Not only does it feel like a bag of boulders, the ache in her head spreads to her temples.
What happened to me?
Her thoughts travel to her mouth and she mumbles the same sentiment. “What’s happening?”
Something is severely off but her hazy mind can’t quite seem to piece it all together. After closing her eyes and slowly swiveling her heavy head, she opens her eyes and through the haze she sees a tall figure leaning into the door frame in a room she doesn’t recognize. A million terrifying thoughts flood her soul and a horrific scream originates in her core and spews out of her mouth, fills the room, and bounces off the wall. The figure doesn’t flinch. When all the oxygen is drained from herexhausted lungs, Sunjiya screams again. This time the banshee sound is accompanied by words.
“Help! Help! Help!” she yells and the lurking figure doesn’t move a damn inch.
Because she’s still feeling the effects of something she hasn’t identified yet, her screaming becomes exhausting and she loses her breath again. Taking a brief moment to recover, she lowers her hazy head. When she lifts again, the figure is walking, stepping toward her.
Instinctively, she prepares to fight, but when she tries to move, something stops her, everything stops her. She becomes keenly aware that she can’t move. The fog clears and she realizes her wrists and ankles are bound.
Oh shit!
The air returns to her lungs in a gust and she screams louder this time, trying to alert somebody, anybody. Her heart pounds out of chest and when the tall man lurks over her, she gasps. It feels like her heart stops but her screams don’t.
“Help! Help!” she yells at the top of her exhausted lungs.
“Ay,” he says calmly,too calm.“You can scream all you want, nobody can hear you.”
Sunjiya doesn’t believe him. Why should she? He has her tied up on a chair in a room she doesn’t know. The last thing she remembers is walking into the apartment. Now, she’s here with this killer, kidnapper, or rapist.
“Help! Somebody, please help!” she screams.
He eases into a deep squat then rests his right elbow on his knee. As Sunjiya frantically yells for help, he merely rubs his chin, caressing his trimmed beard. He has no worries or concerns.
While Sunjiya was deep in slumber from the sedative injected into her neck, Akeem drove an hour and a half outside of Crescent Falls to a ranching town, Miller’s Pointe. The landis vast and ranches and homes are acres apart. The small ranch home he rented under a fictitious name doesn’t have neighbors for three miles on either side. It’s just him and her, no one else.
Although her wrists are tied together behind her and bound to the legs of the chair, Sunjiya tries to move as she screams. Her body jerks and twitches to no avail. Her screaming doesn’t accomplish anything.
No one is coming.
Nobody is going to save me from him.
Her frightened thoughts run rampant in her mind while reality sinks in. She’s really on her own. Slowly, her words stop and her screams fade to nothing. Her fate seems sealed and that realization causes tears to well in her eyes. One blink and tears will pour, but she won’t allow that to happen.
Never.
There have been plenty of moments in her life that warranted tears. She’s shed them more times than she wants to remember. Life has been less than kind to Sunjiya. In fact, it was cruel but she survived. She prevailed. She made it out and somehow gained strength and self-worth, even when others didn’t think she deserved it. She is the woman she is in spite of her past and she’s not going to let this calm man kneeling in front of her change that.
Don’t cry,she thinks but her verbalized words convey something else, an attempt to solicit empathy. After all, he is a man and she’s a beautiful woman.
“Please,” she pleads.
The crack and fear in her voice combined with the tears forming but not falling from those eyes that haunted him since seeing her picture works. It all affects him much more than he would like to admit. For Akeem, his jobs are strictly business and money opportunities; nothing personal about them.
Nothing.
So why do her tears bother me?he wonders as he raises from the floor.
He’s moving to find a cloth or napkin, something to wipe her pending tears. Pleased that he took the bait, she closes her eyes, recenters her emotions, turns off her fear, and activates her will to fight and hopefully take flight. The moment her lids reopen, she rocks her body aggressively in hopes of loosening the ties on her wrists and ankles.
However, neither the chair nor the zip ties cooperate. In fact, they work against her. The zip ties tighten as she shakes and the chair betrays her. During her last powerful rock, the chair tips over, landing on its side and slamming her to the hardwood floor. Pain shoots through her left arm, absorbing the weight of the fall, causing her to alert him.
