Page 112 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
Hershoulder bag.
He twisted the clasp and opened it. She squirmed again, her heart dropped through her ribcage. He’d find the gun. He’d find it and take it for himself or toss it away, and with it, her only viable means of defending herself.
Ponytail was staring down at her skirt. “You think she’s wearing any underwear?”
Milo’s head jerked up, the bag in his hands instantly forgotten. His smile turned slimy. “Only one way to find out.”
She thrashed about, an automatic fear response. Milo bent down and grabbed hold of her knees, dragging her out of her corner and towards the open door. She flailed at them with her bound hands, attempting to push them away.
The little creep was stronger than he looked. She also noticed that he seemed twitchier than he had earlier. His eyes were bloodshot and opened wide, like he was trying to see in the dark. There was a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead. Her gaze went to the needle marks on his arms. She suspected his last hit had been a while ago.
He crawled his hands up her legs to the hem of her skirt, still wearing that evil grin.
She went motionless. She’d been on the receiving end of shit like this from men more times than she could count. When she’d worked at Femme Fatale, it had been daily. She remembered something Jade had told her on her first night at that place: “Not all men are dogs, honey. But some are real mongrels.”
The only good thing about having suffered through years of this kind of crap was that it didn’t terrify her like it might have once. She didn’t panic or struggle. She waited, biding her time, collecting her strength. Until the moment his attention became fully focused on what he was hoping to find under her skirt.
Engaging all her muscles, she reared up, angling the point of her elbow into the center of his forehead. There was an audible thud. The impact hurt her arm, but from the way Milo lurched back, she knew it hurt his head more.
“Fuck’s sake.” He pressed his palm to his forehead, his face contorted with rage. “Little bitch.”
He looked down at his hand as if he expected to find blood there. There wasn’t any, but she could already see a white and red raised lump forming.
Milo looked back down at her, his smile now a snarl. She had a sudden fear that he’d come at her twice as forcefully, but he seemed to realize the moment had passed. He gestured at Ponytail. “Get her legs.”
He grabbed her hair, yanking it so hard it brought tears to her eyes.
Together, they hauled her out of the back of the minivan like she was a roll of old carpet. Milo slammed her shoulder against the side and raked her back on the tow bar as he swung her down. Tears prickled in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Outside, she tried to snatch a glance at her surroundings. But from the way they were carrying her, all she saw was the sky, a grass verge, and a glimpse of a road. An empty road. Then she saw a pale gold sedan, parked only a few feet from the rear of the minivan. With its trunk open.
“No,” she said. “Please?—”
They dumped her into the trunk. The last thing she saw before he slammed the lid was Milo’s furious face, with a bright red welt in the middle of his forehead.
But seconds before the trunk came down, he tossed her bag in after her. It bounced off her hip bone with a dull clunk.
She knew what that clunk was.
With trembling fingers, she undid the clasp. Every movement made the plastic zip ties around her wrists bite into her raw skin. She got her hands inside and felt about until her fingers grasped the cold metal barrel of the gun.
Her little gun, the one that couldn’t shoot worth a damn. She knew her odds of successfully using it against these guys were low.
But low was better than zero.
And as she lay there in the pitch blackness, hugging her bag against her lap, she felt for the first time like she might just survive this.
* * *
Darkness, she realized, was like pain. Once she got over the initial shock and panic it induced, once you yielded to it and quit trying to fight it, it became bearable. Almost soothing. It blocked everything else out and whittled her world down to one very basic fact.
She was still alive. Even if she wished she wasn’t.
The space in the trunk was so cramped she couldn’t move her legs or arms. She tensed them from time to time, to keep her circulation moving, but she knew they’d be useless to fight or to run with if she got the chance. And because she was in the very rear of the vehicle, she was thrown around every turn like a rag doll. She’d long ago lost any sense of direction.
She could smell gasoline, rubber, and hot metal. For a while, she’d worried about carbon monoxide poisoning. She’d heard of teenagers dying of that while joyriding in the trunks of cars.
But after the fourth hour in there and no relief in sight, she started to think that a painless death in her sleep might be quite nice.
