Page 3 of Love Set Free

“Jackson? Jackson?” And when that produces no response from him, the words “I’m sorry” tumble from my mouth.

I don’t even know why I’m apologizing. Or am I trying to tell him I empathize? I can’t, not entirely. I’ve only been here for…hours? A day? I don’t know. But it certainly hasn’t been the two weeks Jackson concluded he’s been here.

Not that it matters. Jackson doesn’t reply to my words. There’s still no further sound from him. Oh shit. What if…

I’m pretty confident that I’m relatively unharmed. Pissed off and inconvenienced, definitely freaked out and scared, but unharmed. What if Jackson isn’t? What if he’s just beyond my reach and my sight and…hurt? Severely hurt. Dying. Could he bedying?

A surge of panic sweeps through me. Some of it’s because if Jackson isn’t there, that would leave me stuck in this nightmare by myself. Selfish, I know. But also because, even though we’ve only just sort of met, I don’t want the man to die.

“Jackson? Jackson!” I cry.

Even though I yell loudly, there’s no sound from him.

My body crumples to the floor of my cage. My hands are still tightly wrapped around the metal bars, which are the only thing keeping me somewhat upright.

Fuck.

“Jackson…”

Chapter Two

Phoenix

“Two weeks and a day.” The low, drawling voice is raspier than it had been before, but it’s such a fucking goddamned welcome sound. I can almost feel Jackson’s sigh stirring the air as he adds, “It was January 19th, so it’s been fifteen days. Two weeks, plus one more day toward a damned third that I’ve been here.”

The room, or whatever space we’re in beyond the bars of my cage, had been dark and gloomy. But now it’s lightening up to simply gloomy, so I suppose that means the start of another day.

One day for me, fifteen for Jackson. An improbable burble of laughter tries to crawl up my throat as I contemplate whether it would be worth the effort and splinters of using my fingernails to gouge tally marks into the plywood floor of my cage to keep track of my days of captivity. Hopefully, this whole nightmare mess will be over quickly—a day or two for the kidnappers to contact my father with their demands, a swift transfer of the requested money, then transporting me to whatever agreed upon extraction site, and…off and away I’d be back to my safe, cozy life.

But in reality, I have no idea how long my ordeal could last. Surely, the kidnappers had some sort of plan in place before they’d snatched me, but what if they don’t? What if they don’t know how to contact my father? What if he thinks their claims are a hoax? He would check them out for certain, but he won’t act until he concludes without a doubt that I’m not simply holed up somewhere safe and sound.

Shit! I came to Rio to attend a house party and had planned on being incommunicado for a full week which my father is well aware of. And the house party is being hosted by someone I’m only vaguely familiar with, full of other people I’m only on loose acquaintance with. None of them will miss me when I don’t show up; they’ll just assume I changed my mind or found some other party to go to instead. Which means it could be at least a week and possibly longer before somebody even notices I’m missing.

The whole scene—loud, crowded parties, filled with glittery, self-absorbed people only looking for the next thrill, the next high, the next scandal—had already been getting tired for me. When I first started hitting the rounds, using the parties as a means of ditching my daily stresses and responsibilities for a short while, I’d done so with my best friend, Hadley. But ever since he fucked off to London for his dream job, it had just been me flying solo to these parties. And lately chasing after the fun has started to seem more like work than relaxation.

Or maybe, it’s not Hadley’s company I’m missing. Maybe, at the ripe age of 29, I’m just getting too old for that brand of hedonistic fun.

The money component of all this, I don’t question. That will be handled as quickly as electronically possible; my parents will see to that. But the rest of it… What if I wind up stuck in this fucking cage long enough that I’d be grateful for a physical record of how many days have passed?

Without giving it much more thought—I’d only wind up freaking out and spiraling downward into a quagmire of choking panic if I did—I half shimmy, half slide to one back corner of my cage and dig my thumbnail into the plywood, carving a shallow but clear, jagged line into its surface. As anticipated, the jagged material of the board pokes and jabs into the delicate skin just beneath the protective edge of my nail. Then I make a second one, right next to the first, to mark the start of a second day of being in a cage.

“Phoenix? Hey, Phoenix… Sorry about, you know…the whole going radio silent thing. Phoenix? Phoenix?”

At Jackson’s call, I make my way back toward the front of the cage. Not that it’s big enough to make much of a difference. Moving myself to the front is probably more a psychological trick to feel closer to the only human contact I’ve had since waking up in this living purgatory than a logistical necessity.

I spent some of the silent night repeatedly counting how many metal bars made up the enclosure of my cage. Forty-eight. There are forty-eight metal bars making up my jail, each spaced about six inches apart.

They aren’t all uniform; some seem older than the others, with bits of rust streaking along the jagged grooves in the metal surface. And having had plenty of time in which to examine them in detail, while they’re all about two inches in diameter, the thicknesses of the bars seem to vary by a centimeter here and there. A few have a smoother finish, but most of them are rough, and the welds holding them together are blobby, bumpy, worm-like ropes. It makes me think that my kidnappers, or whoever constructed my cage, scavenged the parts from somewhere and threw it together solely for the purpose of holding me.

My own brain scoffs at me for that bit of ego. Of course, I naturally leap to the conclusion that I’m somehow special, that something was crafted with only me in mind. In truth, I havenothing to go on to make me think I’m not the second, fifth, or even twentieth person they’ve shoved in this homemade metal prison.

Maybe I should just be thankful that they’d made the cage the size they did. I have to angle my 5’10" body a bit diagonally if I want to be able to lay down flat, but at least I’m able to lay down. And while I can’t stand up in it, with the bars only being about 4’ in height, at least I have the option of being able to sit or kneel or crawl. They could’ve made my life even more miserable by making a cage that’s half the size it is.

If I felt at all kindly toward my captor or captors, I’d probably be inclined to think that the generous size of my enclosure is an indicator of their intention to treat me gently while I’m their unwilling guest. I’mnotinclined to think kindly toward them, but I’m at least grateful that it doesn’t seem as if physical torture is their intent, or a sought-after side benefit.

“Yeah, I’m here.” My own voice, as I reply, is croaky.

So far, my captors haven’t provided anything to eat or drink and I definitely feel the effects of a dry throat. I also haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday’s lunch. At least, I’m working off the assumption that it was only yesterday when I was taken. I assume that I’d be much hungrier than I currently am, even through the anger, anxiety, and fear, if it was more than twenty-four hours since I’d last eaten.

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