Nine

SOLONIK

HE DID THAT four or five more times before he left for the first time.

I didn’t exactly count.

A few of those times blurred together... all I know is, by the end of the last time I begged him to stop and he finally listened. He’d taken the gag off by then. He claimed no one could hear me if I screamed––no matter how loud I screamed or for how long––and by then I was so lost between his mind and my own, it didn’t occur to me to question him. I was exhausted, in more pain than I think I’d ever been in my life, even that time I’d been shot in Afghanistan, which had been the last time I’d been pretty certain I was going to die.

He said his name was Solonik.

He didn’t tell me much about himself. 

I asked a few things, to distract him if nothing else. Maybe some part of me held out a faint hope that I might be able to influence him, even just a little, if I could get inside his head. But even with how much he ripped apart my own mind to get inside me, I didn’t get much insight into his. Maybe some of that was the race stuff, the differences Black alluded to but still hadn’t fully explained. Maybe some of it was that there wasn’t much there to understand.

Maybe he was more animal than person.

Some of it might have been a reluctance on my part to get any closer to him or his mind than I was already. Maybe I was also afraid of pissing him off, given that so far he hadn’t specifically tried to hurt me...not in his own mind, at least.

For the hour or so he was gone, I worked frantically, trying to get free of the ropes tying my wrists to the wall. I tried my teeth. I tried to move the bed closer to the table, where I thought I might break the lamp with a kick to the table and use the glass shards on the rope.

I never got closer than a laughable five yards or so away.

Apart from making my wrists bleed an alarming amount, splattering red droplets all over the sheets on the cot-like bed, I didn’t get anywhere. There wasn’t enough play in the ropes to use the blood to slide my way out of my binds, either.

I tried to reach Black that whole time, but I had about as much luck with that as I did with everything else––in that I had no luck at all.

Solonik gagged me again before he left, so I also spent some time trying to get the gag off, even trying to chew through it with my teeth. I couldn’t get my jaw closed enough to get very far, and the sounds I made as a result weren’t loud enough to test his claim about no one being able to hear me.

This obviously wasn’t this guy’s first rodeo with holding hostages and rape.

When he came back through the door at the end of all that and saw the blood all over the sheets, he tsk’d tsk’d a few times then examined my wrists. I felt him decide they were okay. I felt everything he thought actually, at least everything he let me feel––I couldn’t escape his mind at all once he sat so close to me on the bed.

Then he told me he wanted to rape me again and I started crying.

Like before, he didn’t care.

After that, he brought over one of the bags he’d brought in with him and put down food in front of me. Dinner, I assumed. It smelled and looked like Phad Thai.

He took the gag off me, kissing me on the cheek as he worked the knot. 

That time, I didn’t wait. I ignored what he’d said to me about no one being able to hear me and screamed my bloody head off.

I did that until he either hit me or knocked me out in some other way.

When I woke up next, I was still naked, but he was curled up next to me.

I looked down at him, wondered if I could kill him by ripping out his throat with my teeth. I’d scarcely had the thought when he opened his eyes. Looking up at me, he chuckled, which infuriated me past reason, to the point where I honestly don’t think I’d ever wanted to kill anyone as badly as I did him in those few seconds.

I didn’t say anything though. I just watched him sit up. He blinked a little in the candlelight, rubbing his face with one hand. I saw a detailed tattoo of a dragon-like fish undulate over the muscles of his arm. The room’s only lighting now came from a half-dozen white candles he’d lit on the altar’s bench. 

He put the gag back on me despite my struggling then curled back around me and went back to sleep, his arms wrapped around me, his presence suffocating mine.

He felt utterly content.

The next time I woke up, it was to the smell of coffee.

He stood over me when I opened my eyes, smiling faintly, wearing a white dress shirt and blue jeans. He held out a cup of what looked like real coffee, studying my face.

“I’ll take it off,” he said, his voice warning as he motioned at the gag. “But no screaming. Yes?”

Hesitating only a beat, I nodded, fighting back my fury.

He smiled though, and I could tell from his expression that he felt it.

Worse, I could feel that he found it cute.

Sitting next to me on the cot, he clicked his fingers for me to turn my head, then began untying the knot with his fingers once I had.

Spitting out the last of the gag as he removed it, I glared at him.

“I thought you said no one can hear me if I scream?” I said.

“I can hear,” he said, lifting an eyebrow as he emphasized the first word. “It is too early for that kind of bullshit, ilya. You can’t get away. It’s a fucking turn-on that you keep trying, but trust me when I tell you I will not be careless with such a prize. My cock thinks you are chocolate now...” He smiled at me when I grimaced, looking away. 

I felt him studying my face. He watched me take a sip of the coffee. “You will come with me, ilya. When I finish my work here.”

I let out a low snort, biting my tongue until I tasted blood.

“Plan on throwing me in baggage claim?” I said coldly.

He didn’t even blink. “Private charter. I would rather if Mr. Lucky did not know you are still alive, not dead like I tell him, so I will use my own people.” He continued to watch me drink the coffee, although I refused to return his gaze. Heat plumed off him again. “Gaos, you make me want to fuck just by how angry you are at me.”

“Angry?” I turned, glaring at him. “You think I’m ‘angry’ with you? That we’re just having a little spat while you rape me and tie me to your furniture, Solonik?”

He shrugged, his mouth quirking down in an indifferent kind of frown. “I think you are seer, beautiful one, and you can only pretend to dislike sex for so long...no matter how stubborn you are.” His voice grew shrewd. “As much as I am liking this battle of wills between us, I am anxious to hear that sound from you when my hirik hits you just right. I am thinking if I drug you a little maybe, maybe just enough to make you relax, you will stop complaining a lot faster...you will feel my hirik where you are supposed to feel it and you will want it more...”

I stiffened, staring at him.

Then I looked at the coffee in my hand.

Fury washed over me, so intensely I didn’t think about the consequences. I hurled the coffee at him as hard as I could. I did it fast, but he was fast too. He rose to his feet in a heartbeat so the cup hit him squarely in the chest, not in the face where I’d been aiming. Even so, he let out a pained, “ahhhhh,” sound as the lid exploded off the cup, dousing him in scalding liquid.

“Fuck!” he snarled. He pulled the shirt off in a flash, using the dry part to wipe his chest, where a red mark had already risen from a burn. “Goddamned bitch...”

He tossed the shirt on the floor, and before I could move back, he lunged at me. He had me pinned to the mattress almost before I knew what had happened. I cried out when he sat up, astride me as he reached back, pulling some kind of zippered black kit out of his back pocket, muttering under his breath in Russian.

He switched to English even as he opened the kit, laying it on my stomach. I looked down as he pulled the syringe out from behind the elastic bands holding it in place.

“It wasn’t in the fucking coffee, ilya,” he growled. “The coffee was for you. I felt you missing it...I brought it for you.”

I let out a disbelieving laugh. That time he glared at me, looking angry for the first time.

“Why is it you are such a child about this?”

“A child?” I said, barely controlling my fury. “I’m being a...a child?”

“Yes...a child,” he growled, making a sweeping gesture with the hand holding the syringe. “We all do our time with this. It is part of being a seer.”

“Being raped?”

“Belonging to someone sexually. Being owned,” he said. Using his teeth to uncap the syringe, he continued to hold me down with his other hand, his violet eyes cold. “It is how we learn. It is how we become adults. Ask your precious Black,” he said, his voice a lower taunt. “I hear he practically came into the world sucking off humans. Why do you think he comes down here, trying to free the little children?” Derision colored Solonik’s voice as he met my gaze. “Only a pup would be so naive. It is just the way of the world. It is just business. It is why they send me here. To educate him...”

Gripping my hair in his hand, he yanked my head sideways, exposing my neck. 

I fought him and he yanked my hair harder, making me cry out.

“No,” he snarled. “The needle will cut your throat if you jerk. Do not risk dying over this, ilya...”

“Fuck you!” I snarled back, still struggling. “Fuck you! I want to die! Anything would be better than being here with you...”

Eventually I felt him give up in annoyance, and then his presence swam over me, thick, cloying, smoothing out the fury in my mind, unraveling the part of me that wanted to smash out at him with my fists. I yelled out at first, even more furious when I realized what he was doing, but after a few seconds more, I couldn’t fight him, he was too far inside me. I felt myself starting to go blank, complacent. As soon as I went more or less still, he deftly inserted the needle into my vein, pressing in the syringe’s stopper.

I gasped, wincing from the pressure as he forced the liquid into me.

Immediately, I felt my muscles start to relax.

“Why don’t you just do that to me during sex?” I retorted angrily as he removed the needle. “Why bother with a drug at all?”

He smiled at me cheerfully, ignoring my sarcasm.

“Takes too much concentration,” he said, tracing my cheek with a finger. “I want to think about fucking...about how good my cock feels. Not about why my girlfriend is clenching her muscles when she should be opening herself to me and feeling as good as I do...”

“Girlfriend...” I choked on the word.

Seeing him hanging over me, smiling, that heat coming off him already, I felt despair try to take over my mind. Tears blurred my eyes as I bit my lip.

“You’re a murderer,” I told him. “A child murderer...and a rapist. I’ll never feel anything but contempt for you. Never.”

He looked puzzled at first, his smile fading. Then his voice grew serious.

“That is not me, ilya,” he said. “I am not killing children.”

“Liar...” I said, gasping, still trying to fight the drug. “Liar...”

He clicked softly, caressing the hair off my face as he shook his head.

“Is this what concerns you? My soft-hearted ilya who misses her sister?” He kissed my cheek but I’d tensed, feeling another hard pain in my chest at his mention of Zoe. I knew he read me. I knew he’d taken Zoe from me too––and my parents––reading through my memories of my childhood and my time in the war like those things didn’t even belong to me.

If he saw my distress, he ignored it, clicking again, softer.

“Do not worry yourself about this, little one. I am not killing children. I do not do this...not ever. Not even the children of worms. I have been putting their souls to rest, that is all. I am not the butcher you think I am.”

“Liar,” I gasped, fighting tears again. “Liar...fucking piece of shit liar...I’d never believe anything you said. Never. No matter what it was...”

But I did believe him.

He probably knew that too, because he smiled. I was still watching his violet eyes, trying to think of worse things to say to him, when he slid his fingers into my hair.

Then he lowered his mouth and the moment was gone.

HE DIDN’T LEAVE me alone again for a few days.

Well, I think it was a few days. I don’t know how long it was actually. I couldn’t track time in there. I lost myself in light and dark, in his mind, his whims. I had no idea when he fed us or if he followed any kind of schedule. Food got delivered, we ate, we slept.

All I know is, at some point I woke up and he wasn’t lying next to me.

The room was completely dark.

I lay there, listening for him, but the only breathing I heard was mine.

Images tried to coalesce behind my eyes, memories of what we’d done earlier that night, what must have been hours ago now––hours before I even fell asleep. I shoved the images and sensations back violently, biting my lip hard enough that I tasted blood.

It was becoming a habit with me in here, I’d noticed.

Even so, something in that flickering taste of memory flipped a kind of switch in me.

Once it had, I was suddenly wide, wide awake.

I’d spent the last few days learning anything I could from him, even knowing I’d likely never be able to use any of it. It gave me something to focus on, I guess. It gave me something to accomplish, some goal...maybe because if I didn’t have that, I really would lose hope. I tried to pin him down about Lawless’s grandson, Pete, about where he was being kept. Solonik’s actual answers were vague, but more in the dismissive than the cagey sense. He clearly didn’t think it was important that I know. He said a few words in Thai, but mostly I got images in flashes behind his eyes.

Roiling water, the smell of fish and urine, rusting cages...

It wasn’t until the third time I asked that I realized I was seeing some kind of barge.

I tried to get more specifics, but his mind remained elusive, difficult to pin down.

Near the wats. Near where the killer left his bodies for Solonik to dispose of.

I tried to find out the killer’s identity from him too, since he still insisted it wasn’t him. He guarded the answer to that question more closely for some reason. Loyalty to his employer maybe, despite his annoyance with Mr. Lucky for “hiding” me from him. Loyalty to the killer himself. Whatever his reasons, I definitely got the sense Solonik didn’t want me to know. His thinking around that felt almost personal, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that meant, unless he was friends with the killer in some way.

It almost felt personal in relation to me though, which made no sense to me at all.

Solonik certainly didn’t intend for me to ever get away from him.

Whatever the truth behind the child killer and Solonik, I could feel the clock running down for me. I’d been feeling it the last few times I’d been awake, with more and more urgency. Solonik’s time in Bangkok was drawing to a close. Whatever he was really doing here, and whatever his real connection was to the child-murderer, it would be over soon.

Once it was, I was gone. I was really gone.

As the thought grew more real to me, another thought rose.

I was getting out of here. Now. Before he came back.

Even if it meant killing myself.

As the thought crossed my mind, I looked up, again remembering that faint whisper of air overhead. I’d looked every chance I got, even when he left for a few seconds to use the toilet or to pay the food delivery person, or when he fell asleep ahead of me.

I’d come to the conclusion that there was definitely a window there, although one that had been not only painted but also boarded over. The board was loose enough to let in a whisper of air from a poorly sealed frame, and that was pretty much it. I had no idea where the window led; he was obviously holding me underground somewhere, but for all I knew that window simply led to a higher floor in the same building. 

Solonik locked the door of the room where he kept me, even when he was inside.

When he left, he locked it with additional measures. I’d heard the sounds a few times now, so I knew he had some kind of padlock on the other side, not simply the lock on the door handle, which I might have been able to break if I could get free.

If I could get free.

Everything was moot until I figured that part out.

Whatever I did to get out of here, first I needed my hands. And my feet.

Sliding my body down the bed frame, I threw my lower body into an inverted shoulder-stand. I lost it the first time I tried and my legs came crashing down on the bed, my belly heaving and trembling from the exertion and the odd angle. The second time I tried, I managed to catch my balance. Sending up a silent thanks to my yoga teacher in Seaside, I carefully leaned my legs and lower torso sideways, feeling for the part of the wall where I felt the breeze with my bare feet. My right foot tapped that section of wall...tentatively at first. 

Then a bit harder.

The material there definitely gave. It also didn’t feel anything like the lower wall. Plywood maybe, nothing particularly thick. Likely water-warped which maybe accounted for the breeze. I lost my balance briefly and couldn’t catch it with my ankles bound together. I landed back on the bed, panting, then I threw myself immediately up into another shoulder-stand.

That time, I tried kicking at the wood.

I didn’t expect to make it through the wood itself.

I wanted to break the glass. If I could have kicked it straight on, I was reasonably sure I could do it, but with the sideways angle I was less sure. I didn’t have a lot of choices though, with my wrists still tied to the metal ring above the bed. I tried again, and again.

I could feel myself running out of time.

I didn’t want to think about where Solonik was...burning another child’s corpse in his sick parody of “purification,” raping other women...hunting Black.

The combination of thoughts made me grit my teeth. I swung my body harder that time, putting most of my weight behind it.

I was rewarded with a cracking sound.

I also lost my balance. My legs and lower body crashed back down on the bed. I was sweating by then, and my wrists hurt so badly from the repeated chafing I was biting my tongue against the pain. Even so, I didn’t wait, but threw myself back up into another shoulder stand. That time, I launched my whole body at the plywood covering.

A crashing sound greeted me. I let out a low gasp, losing my balance again.

That time, when I got back up in the shoulder-stand, I worked to jam my bare toes under the edge of the plywood. I gasped a few times at sharp edges, feeling something slice open my big toe. Groaning at the pain that shot down my leg, I forced that same foot harder and deeper into the crack until I finally felt what I’d been waiting for.

Pieces rained down past my foot, nicking my leg. At least one good-sized one fell down through that opening I’d created, and landed on the bed.

Extracting my toes and feet from the plywood made me gasp again as I sliced more skin on my way out. Biting my lip harder now to keep from crying out, I felt around frantically on the bed with my leg and back until I found the shard that fell, and was relieved to find it was as big as I’d thought when it landed. Then I slid my body up the bed, wincing again at my foot as the cut bottom bled on the sheet. I found the shard with my feet again and managed to grip it between the soles. 

Holding it as tight as I could, gasping with a focused concentration and a near-terror I might drop it, I scooted down the bed again, then threw my lower body up, this time into a plow position, with my feet up over my head to where my hands were. I managed to keep hold of the glass as I did it, my whole body shaking with exertion as I plucked the piece of glass from between the soles of my feet.

Gasping again, I let my feet fall back to the mattress, still panting with exertion.

I didn’t wait, but started sawing, hard, through the rope.

It seemed to take forever.

I barely breathed while I did it. I sawed methodically, gripping the shard in a death grip, oblivious to it cutting my fingers or hands in my determination not to drop it. It got slick with sweat––then with blood––but I still gripped it with every ounce of strength in my fingers, sawing determinedly at the rope between my wrists, right at the point where I pulled it taut between my hands. I nicked my wrists and winced but didn’t stop, didn’t loosen my hold. I kept sawing, my eyes closed, my jaw clenched as I saw in my mind where each strand parted.

When it finally came away, some part of me didn’t believe it at first.

I still gripped the shard in my hand, still held onto it for dear life, when suddenly, I yanked on my wrists and they pulled completely away from the wall and from one another.

It took every ounce of my willpower not to scream aloud.

I gave myself two deep breaths, then I lurched up to a seated position. Without waiting, I began to saw through the rope on my ankles.

That one didn’t take as long...the angle was a lot better. Even so, I didn’t take out the gag until I’d cut through the last of that rope.

I stood up on the bed at once. Gripping the edges of the plywood in my fingers, I was startled to feel how loose it was. I’d actually split the wood in half with one of those kicks, and now, when I yanked on it, a piece of it came away from the window in my hands, causing more glass to rain down on the bed. I yanked harder on the wood.

I could see light out there. Artificial, but I felt air on my face. I smelled smoke. Diesel fumes. Food.

Legs walked by me and I froze, looking up.

A woman in a red dress. She staggered past the window, her feet at my eye-level, and I realized, looking in both directions, that we were in an alley. It was night.

I could hear traffic somewhere, now that the wood was gone.

I hadn’t been imagining that before. But why had Solonik left me in a room with street access?

But I already knew why.

I didn’t know how I knew exactly, but I must have picked that up from Solonik, too. He knew the people around here. They’d heard sounds coming from this place before...they thought he was a crazy Russian who liked to get rough with his girlfriends. No one fucked with him because of his mob ties. Because of his ties to “Mr. Lucky.”

I almost had a picture of the latter in my mind by now, too.

Shoving all of that out of my head, I yanked harder on the wood, desperate now to get it off. I had no doubt Solonik had been serious about taking me with him when he left Thailand. I’d even felt glimpses of where he meant. Moscow. Possibly Riga, since he wouldn’t want to be too close to Mr. Lucky’s people while he “tamed me,” as he thought of it.

The word brought another wave of revulsion in me, right before I threw my whole weight into trying to yank the plywood off the window.

That time, the bigger piece came off.

Jagged pieces of glass stuck out of the bottom of the window frame, but I couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief that there were no bars. I began pulling the bigger chunks of glass out of the metal frame with my hands, almost oblivious to cutting myself now. Then I picked up the wood and broke what I couldn’t pull out. Once I decided I’d done enough, I jumped off the bed, heading for the corner where I’d occasionally seen Solonik’s bag of clothes.

I felt all around the table and the bench, but it wasn’t there.

Hesitating only a half second, I briefly turned on the light.

I took in the room in two turns of my head, looking for something––anything––I could wear out of there, but even the sheet on the bed was gone. 

I remembered then. Solonik had muttered something about laundry the day before.

Once I remembered that much, I turned off the light.

I stood there, wondering how far I’d get naked, covered in blood, then realized I didn’t give a fuck about that either.

Black? I sent tentatively. Black? Can you hear me?

Silence.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

Urgency practically burst out of my skin. I could no longer tell if it was paranoia or real; to some part of me the distinction almost didn’t matter. If I didn’t get out now, I’d never get out. I knew that. I’d never get another chance; Solonik would make sure of it.

As soon as the thought came, I crossed the room in a handful of steps and leapt up on the thin mattress. I grabbed the window frame as well as I could and pulled myself up, grimacing in pain as more glass sliced my palms from my weight. Ignoring it as best I could, I got my head and shoulders through the opening and sucked in a lungful of damp air. It smelled like chicken and chili and sweat and exhaust but right then it was the freshest air I’d maybe ever tasted.

Feeling a sudden rush of energy from even being half-way through the opening, I started crawling the rest of the way out, crying out as my leg caught on another shard of glass, my back and shoulder scraping a few more.

Then I was clear.

I knelt there, gasping. Then I was on my feet.

I’d barely gotten up when I was running, flat-out, for where I could hear the most cars.

CATCALLS FOLLOWED ME as soon as I hit the streetlights, nervous laughter.

An older woman yelled at me in Thai, gesturing up and down and frowning before she spat on the sidewalk. I didn’t bother to read her, but I got whispers of drug addict...farang whore. I stared up and down the street, scanning faces without really seeing any of them, barely hearing the voices or noticing the stares as I fought panic, trying to decide which direction to run, which direction he’d be least likely to come from.

I had no way of knowing.

I’d already been running for blocks. I’d tried to run in straight lines. I’d followed the loudest sounds I could, but I might have gotten turned around.

He could be anywhere.

I had no idea where I was. I didn’t know Bangkok at all.

Black? I thought, even softer than before. Black? Are you there?

MIRI! MIRIAM MY GOD! MIRI! MIRI!

I flinched, nearly fell to a knee as his mind exploded in mine. I held out a hand, saw people walk around me, staring at me, looking like ghosts.

MIRIAM! WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?

I don’t know...I’m on the street. I’m...I have to get out of here, Black. I don’t know where I am. How do I get out of here? I looked down at myself, swallowing. I’m conspicuous. I can’t stay here...

Where are you? What street? I could feel his panic coiling through me still, but the military guy was back. I felt it in his mind and it steadied me somehow. What street, Miri?

His mind clicked into sharper focus.

Never mind, he thought at me. Are there cabs nearby?

I looked around, then saw a small group of them. Yes...a few. But Black––

Walk to the curb. Get in the first cab you can. I’ll stay with you. I’ll push them if I have to. One of them will take you...

Push them? I said. How? I thought––

Just do it, Miri. Walk straight to the curb. Now.

I looked down at myself again. That time, I felt a flicker of his mind through mine. 

I felt him understand, even as panic once more exploded out of him.

WALK TO THE FUCKING CURB. RIGHT NOW, MIRI.

I began to walk, feeling him trying to will me out of there with his mind. When I reached the edge of the road, in an opening between street kiosks, I again glimpsed the short row of cabs. An older male driver stared at me, open-mouthed, as I approached his car.

Where am I going? I asked Black.

Hanu Hotel. Tell him you will pay triple if he gets you there in ten minutes. Black hesitated. Promise him whatever you have to, Miri. I’ll be at the hotel before you...but I’ll call ahead. People will be waiting for you, Miriam...

I felt another flush of emotion off him.

Grief hit me tangibly, guilt...

That time I shoved it back, hitting out at him violently.

Stop it, I snarled. I can’t deal with your bullshit right now!

He retreated at once.

That panic never stopped vibrating my skin.

“Hanu Hotel,” I told the driver, ignoring Black as well as I could. “Triple if you get me there in five minutes,” I added, feeling strange saying it, even beyond how I must look.

The cab driver looked at his friends, two other drivers, both of whom were shaking their heads at me and laughing. The driver himself looked about to tell me no, his eyes holding a thinly veiled contempt as he looked me over. I felt Black gearing up in my mind, ready to do something, but I walked closer to the driver, until I stood directly in front of him. Biting my lip, I fought not to react to the eyes I felt on me from all sides.

“Do you speak English?” I said.

He smiled, looking down my body with raised eyebrows “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ve been kidnapped,” I told him, my voice hard. “And raped. Please take me to the Hanu Hotel. Now. My family is waiting for me. Now. They will pay you whatever you want.”

Emotion plumed off Black, so intensely I clenched my jaw.

“Now,” I repeated to the driver. “Please. My family will pay whatever you ask.”

That time, when the driver looked me over, something in his eyes changed.

I saw pain there briefly, then pity, right before he nodded. My use of the word “family” hit him the hardest. I was so open then, with Solonik having torn every shred of shielding out of my mind, I could feel the man had a family of his own––including a young daughter of maybe seven or eight, a daughter he already worried about. Walking up to the passenger side, he started to open the back door, then he stopped, looking me over another time. Rather than opening the door, he straightened, walking around to the trunk of his cab.

“Wait,” he said in stilted English. “Wait please.”

“No,” I said, fighting tears. “No. No wait...no wait...please...”

But he just kept walking.

Fear washed over me again, a sudden panic that maybe I hadn’t read the right things on him, that he might know Solonik too, that he might be on the payroll of Mr. Lucky. I looked up and down the street, wrapping my arms around my body. I remembered only then that my hands were bleeding, that my feet were bleeding too. 

“Please...” I watched him rummage through the trunk. I started to back away, slowly shaking my head. “Please. Please take me out of here...please...”

He shut the trunk, holding up a hand towards me in a calming gesture.

In his other hand, he held a blanket.

Seeing it, my knees nearly buckled.

“It’s okay,” he said, walking back around the car. He motioned towards me, holding out the blanket, smiling at me reassuringly as he nodded. “Come back. It’s okay. We go now.”

I wrapped the blanket around me as soon as I’d shaken it out. 

It smelled faintly like dog.

When he opened the back door to his cab, I practically dove inside, sinking down low in the seat so I wouldn’t be visible through the windows. I decided to sit entirely on the floor by the time he’d opened the driver’s side door, wrapping the blanket around me so that it covered my hair and most of my face along with my body.

I’d also locked both of the back doors.

Seconds later, we pulled away from the curb.