Page 38 of Sinister Intentions

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the memories kept coming in flashes. The helplessness. The fear. The endless hours spent waiting for a rescue that never came. The sheer terror when those footsteps echoed through the floor, when that flashlight was directed at me—the guilt about the relief I felt every time one of the girls was picked. The shame when Fee offered herself…

A guttural scream ripped from my throat as I thrashed against the ropes, my whole body contorting with the effort. I had to get out. Had to escape before that all-consuming terror took over again.

I couldn’t do it again. Wouldn’t survive this time.

“Let me out of here!” I shrieked, my voice cracking with desperation. “Please…please, I can’t…I can’t breathe…”

The words dissolved into ragged gasps as I strained for air. Black spots danced across my vision, and a high-pitched sound filled my ears.

I was losing it—slipping back into that dark pit of terror I’d barely clawed my way out of before.

Suddenly, there was movement in the shadows. A shift of fabric, the barest whisper of sound.

A low chuckle cut through the silence, but I was too far gone.

All I could do was scream.

“What the hell?” a gravelly voice barked.

The sudden flood of light seared my eyes after so long in the darkness. I instinctively squeezed them shut and turned my head away as tears leaked from the corners. But I didn’t stop screaming or thrashing against my bonds.

The ropes cut deeper into my wrists and ankles, but the pain barely registered over the pounding of my heart and the whirlwind of panic swirling through me…as I fought with renewed desperation.

“Jemma.” His gravelly voice reached my ears, cutting through the haze of terror momentarily. My stomach lurched violently at the sound—smooth and rich like velvet caressing bare skin.

That voice…I knew that voice. Tried to grasp onto it.

I blinked rapidly against the tears streaming down my face as I tried to make out my captor through the blinding brightness.

There, staring at me as if I was the crazy one was the last person I expected to see.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When I opened the blinds and pushed the blackout curtain to the side, I thought she was just being feisty and struggling in vain. Because if I’d learned one thing from our last encounter, it was that she wasn’t one to back down.

It took me a moment to realize Jemma was completely freaking out. Her entire body was writhing and thrashing against the ropes that were holding her, her face a contorted mask.

I’d expected her to be scared, sure, but this level of fear and panic was far beyond anything I’d anticipated. She was desperately fighting against the restraints, straining so hard that her face was distorted into a mask of sheer terror. Her eyes were wide open and frantic, darting around as if she was searching the room, no doubt for something to help her escape from whatever unseen horror was gripping her so tightly.

Because she didn’t focus on me.

She wasn’t the first person I’d had in a similar position—not in my apartment, of course—but bound to a chair, fearing for their life.

Human reactions to that kind of panic were varied in these kinds of situations: Panic, fear, pleading, frozen—the captors really displayed the gamut of human emotions.

Every situation was different. Every person reacted differently.

But despite all of my experience, Jemma’s reaction caught me off guard and rattled me like nobody’s business.

Never had I experienced that level of fear, which was seizing her and holding her so firmly, without physical torture or a gun to her head.

Jemma’s entire body was contorting so violently, I was scared she would break her own bones.

I grabbed her shoulders, held her, my face mere inches from hers. “Jemma.”

She writhed under my hands, her whole body shaking. I waited, taken aback by just how consumed by fear she was.

She was in the middle of a complete breakdown.

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