Page 9 of Take Me

Panic wraps my mind in dizzying colors, reducing me to frantic instincts. I claw at the fabric with my bound hands as I pant with shallow gasps.

“Breathe in through your nose,” a deep, accented voice says close to my ear, pushing my bound hands back into my lap with surprising gentleness. “Out through your mouth.”

Readjusting his hand on my forehead into an almost calm grip, he takes a loud breath through his nose as if to spur me on.

I try to imitate but only manage a superficial breath.

“One more,” he urges, flattening his other hand over my chest. The weight should be oppressive, but it’s not. It’s something else. Soothing, I think.

My entire body shudders as I drag in a long breath through my nose, and another wave of shivers rolls through me as I push the air back out through my mouth. The fabric billows slightly over my head, but it doesn’t stick to my mouth, and with a few more repetitions, I find that it’s possible to breathe through it.

The man behind me releases me, and I’m a bit disturbed to find myself missing the warm hands.

The man at my side hoists me up, and a strangled gasp escapes me as I land over his shoulder with a thud. Now I can truly feel his size, and it’s even more frightening than I thought at first. His shoulder is wide and solid like it’s made for carrying a body, and his back is hard plains of solid muscle under my head.

It takes all my focus to breathe as I bounce in time to his long strides. He, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to strain the least as he carries me through the car. I think I’m no more than a sack of potatoes to him.

Part of me wants to bang my fists against his back, but I already know the outcome, and my brief panic attack seems to have drained all my energy. So I just hang there, and when the chilly night air lets me know we’re leaving the train, he easily passes me to his partner.

The new man—or rather, the one who put the sack over my head—takes me in his arms, holding me close to his chest as he walks. He’s not as bulky as the other man, but I feel the devastating strength in the effortless way he handles me, nonetheless. I wouldn’t stand a chance even if it had only been him.

The realization is not enough to deter me from launching into another fit of struggles when I hear the train screeching against the tracks. The sound jolts me from my paralysis, and I start writhing and whimpering, not caring that I might fall from his arms and crash hard. I just need to get back on that train, no matter what it takes.

“Don’t waste your energy,” he simply says, but his words only ramp up my furious energy. And then I’m screaming again.

I expect him to act quickly, cover my mouth to muffle the sound or grab my throat again, but he just keeps on walking without a care in the world. It scares me shitless, and I’m headed straight for a new panic attack when he dumps me onto something hard—a surface, box, something half-enclosed.

A trunk, I realize as my fingers grapple and find a steely edge.

A large hand presses against my chest, and I can’t figure out if it’s meant to soothe or subdue.

It works both ways.

I go still beneath its weight, and when the man drags in a loud breath through his nose, I automatically follow.

He repeats a few times until I go still, breathing somewhat steadily.

“Seriously, don’t waste your breath screaming.” He’s close this time, the deep timbre of his voice resonating close to my ear. “No one but the bears will hear you, and I’ll be quite disappointed to come back here and find my merchandise having choked on her own screams.”

His words stun me into silence, and I don’t move when he proceeds to tie a rope between my wrists and legs. Finally, he stuffs a few big pillows around me to create a sort of tight nest.

“No bruises except the ones we allow,” he explains, shoving a final pillow into the space above my head. “Remember to breathe,” he says, and then there’s the loud thud of the trunk slamming shut, snuffing out the fresh air and leaving me alone and trapped in this tiny space.

An engine rumbles to life, and then we’re moving, bouncing along a gravelly road that makes me grateful for the small mercy of the pillows.

It’s the first, but not the last time I’m grateful for something my kidnapper grants me.

CHAPTER

3

I jostle against the pillows as the car bumps along uneven terrain, deep into the forest or up into the mountains, where no one will find me.

At least not until it’s too late.

No one will start worrying until I don’t show up at home in two weeks. And maybe even then, another week will go by before someone will notice something is wrong. That’s the consequence of being a recluse, preferring to spend my vacation among mountains and trees instead of drinking cocktails with my girlfriends on the beach.

Whatever search will be conducted once someone realizes I’ve gone missing will be brief. This country won’t care about a young woman who has gone into the mountains alone. They’ll conclude that I’ve been eaten by a bear or fallen off a cliff. Another victim to Mother Nature. People die in these mountains every year.

---