Page 1 of Atonement

Maddie

When Meyer took me home in the back of his car the night of his thirtieth birthday, I had thought things couldn’t get worse. He held me in his lap and ran his hands over my body the entire time, cataloging every bruise and cut, pressing his fingerprints into the blood staining my skin. I hadn’t known then that he was imprinting himself on my soul. He probably didn’t know it either. I thought he wanted to hurt me, but later I came to realize the truth. In our time together, Meyer sought out the sources of my suffering, every place I ached in the effort to make it hurtless, because he knew what it was to be beaten and left alone to heal.

His father cared not one bit. If I’d ever had any doubt of how polar opposite they were, those doubts were scattered to the wind faster than than they dragged me down the hallway, away from the last place Meyer knew to find me.

I kicked and struggled down the hall to the elevator only for Joshua to hit me hard across the head, sending my ears ringing and stars through my vision. My stomach clenched and then rolled, bile falling from my lips as he flipped me and tossed me over his shoulder.

“Let’s move,” Conrad said, warning in his voice. “We don’t need anyone coming out and seeing her like this.”

The entire elevator ride I prayed for someone to call it to their floor. I bit back the taste of vomit in my mouth and swallowed past my swollen throat, sinuses still inflamed from my hours of crying.

He will come. He won’t leave me. He’ll come.

I wasn’t sure I believed it.

The elevator reached the garage without incident and I was dropped back on my feet. My knees buckled at the impact and I fell halfway, palm slamming against the rough carpet. The pressure in my head, which had steadily grown as I hung upside down over Joshua’s back, suddenly rushed away and I was left with searing pain that seemed to explode from the center of my brain. Joshua grabbed my hair and pulled my head up to look me square in the eye. “Can you walk?”

I nodded gingerly, his fingers tugging too hard at my hair, but he released me and allowed me to make my way to the car unassisted. But my brain kicked into overdrive as we approached the car, unsure what to do. If I left with them, would we go somewhere Meyer knew to look for me, or would I disappear into the black vehicle never to be seen again? What was coming next for me if I allowed myself to be thrown into the car like a willing victim, accepting my fate as easily as I’d let Meyer walk out on me just a few hours earlier?

This might be my only chance to run.

I didn’t look anywhere except straight ahead, tried to give no indication of what I was going to do until I took off sprinting toward the door at the far end of the garage. My head throbbed, and something in my knee didn’t feel quite right, but I pushed every ounce of pain or discomfort to the side as I took the longest strides I could manage.

He didn’t even bother to tackle me.

Rough hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to a stop, halting my forward momentum and throwing me back against a hard body.

“A valiant effort,” Joshua muttered in my ear. He wrapped his arms around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides before swinging me around and guiding me back toward the car. Conrad stood next to the open trunk, scrolling through his phone.

“I expected nothing less from you, my dear,” he said. His voice was flat, as if he didn’t care. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked at me once more, then gestured to the car as Joshua released me. I stumbled forward and stopped just inches from the trunk.

“I’m not getting in there.” My voice shook, but I tried to keep my shoulders straight. I didn’t want them to beat me yet.

“Did I ask what you wanted?” He grabbed the back of my head and pushed me down so my face ground into the rough carpet, and then my legs were hoisted into the air. My feet kicked wildly and were met with a satisfying thump, but of course the men forcing me into the trunk of this car with the intent to torture, rape, and kill me were unfazed. I rolled with the rest of my body into the small space.

“Please don’t,” I gasped, voice thick as I started crying again. I couldn’t fake it anymore. “I get claustrophobic.”

“But you’ll survive.” Conrad grabbed my hands and held them out for Joshua to swiftly bind them with a zip tie, the hard plastic cutting into my skin. My hands began to tingle immediately from the loss of blood.

“Conrad, please, I’ll—”

He slapped a length of duct tape over my mouth, and then there was nothing left to say as the trunk closed and I was left in complete darkness.

Nausea gathered in my belly once more as the car flew backwards and I rolled to one end of the trunk, bumping against the wall. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to lose my stomach again lest I drown in my own sick. The car changed course and I was rolling again, this time as we flew forward. My head hit one of the walls as it jerked to a stop, and I thought I could hear laughter from the front of the car. Were they purposefully torturing me, making the ride as uncomfortable as possible? I wedged my legs against one side as tight as I could, and when we took off again, I didn’t roll so violently.

I focused on my breathing as we wound through the city streets, stopping abruptly more often than was necessary even for city traffic and taking off so quickly the tires squealed against the pavement before we shot forward. Eventually we must have gotten on a highway because the ride evened out, though I could tell we were flying down the road. Too soon, the car slowed again and we began to take sharper turns, until we finally rolled to a stop and the engine turned off.

I scooted to the back of the trunk, not that it mattered when Joshua’s long arms reached into the void and yanked me into the night. Cold air assaulted my nose, constricting the blood vessels further, and I gasped as the duct tape was finally ripped from my mouth.

“Enjoy your ride?” Conrad sneered at me, giving me no chance to answer as Joshua flung me over his shoulder once more.

“Where—” I paused to clear my throat, swallowing around tears. “Where are we?” I couldn’t see much in the low light, but I didn’t think we had gone too far out of town.

“My home,” Conrad said simply. “I don’t see any reason for us to go anywhere else. Meyer won’t be coming.”

Fresh tears stung my eyes at the fear that he might be right. But at the very least we were close. If I could get out, I could run to Meyer’s house. I had clothes there, I could get dressed and run off. But that was all assuming I was able to escape in the first place, which wasn’t looking good with my numb hands and aching head.

“You can’t do this, Conrad. At some point you’re going to have to answer for your actions, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

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