He didn’t look back. But he felt her watching him until he reached his truck.
Chapter 7
Concrete pressed against her cheek and shoulder, hard and unforgiving. Cold dampness seeped into her bones, numbing her until she couldn’t tell where her body ended and the floor began. The air held the metallic tang of iron, and, under it, a sour note lingered.
Grit scraped under her eyelids. Salt from her tears? Dust? Maybe both. Every blink was raw, like the drag of sandpaper.
Darkness pressed inward. Not black but a murky gray, hazy overhead as if moonlight fought to penetrate a dingy window. Maybe her mind was inventing light where it didn’t exist.
Fear had been her constant companion. How many days? Three? Five? A week? Time didn’t behave here. It stretched, folded in on itself, and dissolved.
She inhaled, ragged and loud. The sound echoed through the cavernous space. She couldn’t see it, only feel it.
A sudden bang shattered the stillness. She heard the scrape of wood against concrete like a chair being dragged.
Voices followed, clipped, fast, and foreign.
One word repeated. “Kedrov.”
Heavy boots scuffed closer. Too close.
“Time to go,malenkaya.”
Pain exploded across her scalp when he twisted a hand in her hair and yanked. Then he tied a cloth over her eyes, and the murky light vanished. Her bound feet scraped the floor withoutwarning. She was moving now, dragged like the chair, her body jarring and bumping.
Helpless to do anything else, a scream tore loose.
It sounded too thin and too young as it bounced off the walls.
Her wrists burned as plastic ties cut deeper with every jerk. Her ankles throbbed, also bound, and her cheek stung where it had scraped the rough floor.
She tried to resist. To fight. To do anything to stop the pain.
A barked command in words she couldn’t comprehend. Then the crack of a slap. White detonated inside her head, blinding and hot. Her cheek ignited. The tang of blood stung her tongue.
Pain layered over pain—wrists, ankles, cheeks, scalp—each screaming for attention until her mind couldn’t separate one from the next. She needed it to end and closed her streaming eyes, exhausted, ready to give in.
A door slammed open, the sound ricocheting through what seemed to be a cavernous space.
The hand released, and she fell hard onto the floor. The impact jarred her bones. Every violent inch of it.
More voices erupted, faster now, arguing, agitated.
She picked out a few words: shipment… Saturday… docks.
Needing to get her bearings, she forced herself to look. His vicious slap had shifted the blindfold. A thin slit of light filtered in at the bottom. By angling her head, she caught a sliver of stacked crates, and beyond them, near what had to be a loading bay, the side of a van.
Bold dark-green block letters:Lone Starsomething. A crate blocked the rest. Below it, half of a five-point star with wheat stalks bending in the wind. She ground her cheek against the concrete, trying to shift the cloth a fraction more, but the blindfold held, and the rest remained a mystery.
A forklift whined somewhere distant. Engines idled. The air smelled of diesel and bread. Somewhere close, a man sneezed three times in rapid succession.
Another voice cut through, controlled and deadly calm. “The boss doesn’t like delinquent accounts.”
A man pleaded, his voice thin and desperate. “I’ll get the money, but I need more time—”
His cries were met with merciless laughter. “You’ve had more than enough. Tick tock. Time’s up, Daddy.”
Comprehension, along with dread, slammed through her. “No… Don’t!” she screamed, hoarse and strained.
