THE WORST HANGOVER Grace had ever experienced occurred the day after she celebrated her twenty-first birthday. When she woke up at the crack of noon, her stomach feeling like the greasy water found at the bottom of a dumpster, her throat scratched raw from the hours spent throwing up, her head pounding as though a car had backed up over it, she could still recall, without effort, almost every single detail from her birthday party.
That wasn’t the case now.
She remembered the van sliding up next to her and she remembered seeing the armed men. One of them smashed the driver’s-side window—with a crowbar—because she had been frantic, fumbling at her seat belt buckle. She managed to free herself, but it was pointless; a man, maybe more than one, had grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out through the window. Yes, there had been more than one; she remembered several hands on her. She remembered being thrown into the van and being pinned against the floor, screaming for help against the cold steel, and she remembered the stab of a needle in her neck, and that was all. She had no idea what had happened since, or how she’d arrived here.
Here was a blow-up mattress with a pillow and blanket in a room she guessed had once been an office—low-pile beige carpeting coated in a film of dust, the fibers dented in areas where furniture had sat on it. No windows. On the white walls small holes left by nails used to hang whatever. The door was closed and, she assumed, locked. She didn’t know because she hadn’t gotten up from the bed to check—knew she should but it was too much of an effort. She couldn’t summon the energy.
Has to be the drug or drugs they gave me, she thought, and drifted back to sleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, her environment had changed slightly. A small lamp had been brought in and set up on the floor, and in the dim light she saw a bright yellow pail with the word toilet written across it in black marker. There was stuff in there; she could see a couple of rolls of toilet paper peeking over the top. She tried to reach for the pail—it was right beside the mattress, maybe a foot or so away—but she couldn’t hold her arm up; it flopped back against the mattress.
What did they give me? Why can’t I move?
It wasn’t exactly true that she couldn’t. She could move her fingers. She dug them into the carpet and worked her hand across the floor and up the pail and knocked it over, revealing the bounty inside: rolls of toilet paper, a bag of vinegar potato chips, a can of warm Diet Coke, and the kind of prewrapped sandwich only the truly desperate bought at convenience stores, the inside of the cellophane dripping with moisture and mayo. The thought of food repelled her.
Where am I?
Where am I where am I where am I? The question kept repeating itself over and over, trying to fire up her anxiety, to get her to act. She was fully aware that she was in serious trouble—she had been bloodnapped, her worst nightmare—but her mind calmly told her there was no reason to lose her shit, because she had a surgically implanted tracking unit. She hadn’t had a chance to activate it, okay, but her mother had been on the phone with her when it all went down. Her mother would have called the police, and the people there would track her. All she had to do was wait for the police to arrive. They were probably already on their way here—maybe were already here, about to—
The door opened.
She heard footsteps.
Someone was coming for her.
The police. Thank God. She turned her head slightly.
The man standing next to her mattress could have easily been a cop—he was a big tattooed guy—but he wasn’t dressed like one. He wore workout shorts, and his tank top, stretched across a chest swollen and rippled with muscle, was drenched in sweat. He was barefoot and had pale skin, and he left the door open.
He sat down in front of her and crossed his legs. Grace, lying on her side and curled in the fetal position underneath the blanket, could see his tattoos clearly now—the noose around his neck and, on his massive left arm, the gingerbread man with a knife clamped between its fanglike teeth. He had more tattoos along his arms, these colorful, bizarre-looking skulls with jeweled eyes and teeth.
The combination of tattoos and his pale skin made him look like a clown—a big, handsome, but mean clown. He had to be mean, and dangerous, to carry off tattoos like that.
And yet she didn’t feel any anxiety or fear or terror. Those things were there in her mind, absolutely, but she couldn’t feel them. She was fully and completely disconnected from all her emotions. It was as if they had packed up and gone away on a vacation or something, leaving this shell of a body that could only sleep and drool onto the pillow. She felt a whole lot of nothing, which explained why she didn’t jump or scream or turn her head when he brushed the hair away from her face.
“How you feeling, baby girl?” He had a warm smile and kind, attentive eyes.
Her mouth felt as dry and rough as sandpaper, her tongue a block of wood.
“Tired,” she said, the word a rasp.
“Totally natural.” He nodded in understanding. His damp skin gave off a musky but not unpleasant odor—the way men smelled after vigorous exercise. Or a fight. “Give it another day or two, and you’ll feel settled,” he said. “You cold? Can I bring you another blanket?”
Why is he being so nice to me? So kind and considerate? It scared her, but she couldn’t really feel it, and that scared her more, and she still couldn’t feel it, and it was becoming difficult to keep her eyes open—she was so, so tired.
“I’m sorry about the accommodations,” he said. “You won’t be here too much longer. I’m going to take a—”
“You gonna hurt me?”
His eyebrows jumped in surprise, maybe anger, and he removed his hand.
“Why would you ask me a question like that?”
“Because I don’t know you—”
“I’m Paul.”
“—and because I don’t know where I am.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
She couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She stopped fighting, gave in, and shut them.
“That’s it—get some rest,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
She believed him. For some reason, she believed him.
The man named Paul stroked her head.
“I need to ask you a quick question,” he said, and Grace heard the smile in his voice as she drifted.
“Um-hum.”
“Any chance you know what time of the month you start ovulating?”
Grace didn’t hear him. Mercifully, she had fallen asleep.