45

SHARON GROANED AND ATTEMPTED to roll over. She failed. She was lying on her belly with her arms pinned beneath her limp body and she was freezing her ass off. The surface was cold and hard. A cement floor maybe? Hard-packed dirt? She couldn’t tell because wherever she was, it was pitch-dark, and she couldn’t see a thing. In fact, when she had first awoken, just a couple of minutes ago, she felt a sharp pang of sheer terror that maybe she was blind or even dead.

Then she realized she couldn’t be dead, not unless a dead body could feel pain in at least twenty places and debilitating cold as well. She gave up on the idea of rolling over after trying to move her arms and being rewarded for her efforts with shooting pain up her right forearm and an agonizing, bright-white explosion in her left elbow followed by nausea so intense she feared she was going to puke all over herself and then pass out in it.

I guess I’m comfy enough just the way I am, she thought to herself when she had regained her senses. This moving around thing is overrated anyway. A tiny sliver of washed-out light made its way into her prison; she could see it now after being awake for a few minutes as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Her range of vision was limited by her immobility and her position on the floor, but she turned her head inch by painful inch in an attempt to learn as much about her surroundings as possible.

The light was insufficient to make out much beyond a few lumpy grey, amorphous shapes littered around her, but to Sharon it seemed likely she was lying in some kind of large storage room or closet. The stillness was unbroken and she was fairly certain she was alone.

A headache pounded its way through her skull, not doing much to help quell the nausea rekindling in her stomach. Sharon swallowed hard and tried to recall what had happened to her. She was patrolling the big bonfire last night, or at least she assumed it was last night—who really knew how long she had been unconscious?—and something had gone wrong. What was it? The night had been long and cold and boring, that much she remembered.

She had gotten lost; that was it. She recalled her embarrassment at walking out of range of the bonfire’s orienting glow and becoming confused about which way to turn. But how had she ended up here, lying alone in the cold with what she feared were two broken arms and assorted other injuries?

Sharon concentrated hard, willing herself to remember. There must have been some kind of accident. But no matter how hard she tried to force herself to recall the events that had led her here, she simply could not. Her head pounded and swam, and she felt a warm sweat break out on her body as the nausea threatened to overwhelm her.

Fear marched through her like a conquering army as she took stock of her situation. She was alone and helpless, lying face down in some sort of big room. She had no idea where she was. Mike would be searching for her, she didn’t doubt that, but how would he even begin to know where to look? She didn’t consider herself a religious person, not by a long shot, but Sharon began fervently praying that whoever had taken her had left some evidence behind, something for Mike McMahon to follow that might lead him here.

By now Sharon’s head felt like a freight train was rolling through her skull. The fact that her arms were pinned beneath her body and she was unable to move them concerned her, but she was oddly reassured by the fact that both of them were at the moment causing her extreme pain. A loss of all sensation would have been much worse.

Feeling alone and sick and scared, Sharon lowered her head to the floor and sobbed once, regretting it instantly as the pain in her head exploded, screaming at her, taunting her, reminding her of her vulnerability. She closed her eyes, thinking of Mike, remembering how good it had felt holding his warm body against hers, sharing her bed with him two nights ago.

It was pointless and juvenile to wonder how he felt about her now, trapped as she was in some unknown location, essentially paralyzed and possibly dying, but thinking about him calmed her and took her mind off the present and all of its unthinkable possibilities. She closed her eyes, remaining perfectly still, and the pain in her skull receded slightly. It was still there, she didn’t even try to convince herself otherwise, but it thankfully moved into the background.

Without realizing she was doing so, Sharon drifted back into unconsciousness.