Page 36 of Reclaiming Adelaide

“Adelaide, stop this bullshit now.”

“I’ve got her,” the man said.

“Don’t fucking hurt her, Tonk.”

That was Tonk? The man from the awards ceremony?

I didn’t get a good look at his face in the dark, but how was it someone looked bigger without clothes on than with?

“You mean you didn’t bring her here for me?”

“She’s already scared. Stop trying to make it worse.”

I raced behind the pool house, searching for another gate, then turned right and slammed into a solid smooth mass.

“Ahh!” My voice broke as it hit glass-shattering decibels.

“You made this too easy,” he said, his baritone voice resonating in my chest. “Want to try again?” Jake wrapped his arms around my upper torso and hauled my feet off the ground as his friend watched.

“I’m having a serious case of déjà vu,” Tonk said to Jake as they assembled back where we’d started.

What did that mean? Had they done this before—taken someone against their will?

“Let. Me. Go.” I kicked his shins, but Jake stood stolid.

“Again. Making things harder on yourself.”

Tonk disappeared into the pool house and walked back out with a syringe in his hand.

Jake sat down on the ground with his arms tight around my body, then pinned my legs beneath his, immobilizing my struggles. “It’ll only hurt for a second,” he whispered in my ear.

“Jake, don’t do this,” I screamed and thrashed around as a sharp pinch hit my thigh. Jake’s arms around me loosened, and he let me go.

“That’s better. I like them compliant,” Tonk said.

“Meet my serial killer friend, Adelaide.”

“You told her that?”

“It started out as a joke.”

He released his hold on me as my heart lodged in my throat, his voice warping into some out-of-this-world dialect.

Startedas a joke? Did that mean it wasn’t?

I wrapped my deadening fingers in his shirt and fell against him. “I said… was sorry.” My words slurred as my tongue sat like a bar of lead in my mouth.

The green earth below smudged into textured lines on a soiled canvas. I crawled off his lap. The pricks of luscious grass stabbed into my hands like shards of glass—the sensation contradicting the pillows beneath my knees.

What did he give me?

I crawled until my hands slipped across the textured tile, and the shimmer of aquamarine water glistened in the near distance.

The moon’s bright reflected light sent wild ripples dancing against the cemented bottom, luring me into their whimsical pattern. I touched the warm liquid, its essence smoothing over my fingertips yet offering me no comfort. My eyelids pulled down as if the weight of the world was pressed upon me.

I fell to my belly, dragging myself closer to the ledge.

“Let’s go, sweets.”

---