Page 12 of Love Bleeds Red
“Walk, and don’t try anything.”
The first step I take is painful, like pins and needles. I stumble but his grip tightens, holding me upright. Our footsteps echo against what must be concrete, bouncing through the space around us. I focus on the sounds, trying to piece together where I am. Each noise travels too far, like we’re in some giant empty room. A warehouse, maybe.
My pulse pounds as he guides me forward. There’s a change in the ground, the sounds, even the air smells different here. Thicker, like sweat and metal.
“Three steps up,” he says flatly. I lift my feet carefully, testing each step before moving up.
He holds me still, and I hear the squeal of hinges.
“It’s a bucket,” he says. “I’ll loosen your hands, but the hood stays on.”
A bucket?He pulls on my restraints, slicing through them until my hands drop apart. I stretch and test the strength in my fingers which tingle as blood rushes back to them. After a moment, I don’t hear his retreating steps.
“I can’t… not with you standing there,” I whisper, clinging to whatever shred of dignity I have left.
He sighs, that same tired sound. “Get used to it, Bailey. Privacy isn’t something you’ll have anymore.”
“But I?—”
“You have thirty seconds,” he says, voice more on edge than before.
Shame creeps over me, stronger than fear, as I fumble with my dress, trying to position myself over what feels like a plastic bucket. He’s watching me, probably getting off on this. His words play on loop while I manage to go.Get used to it, Bailey.I’m truly fucked. No one knows where I am. What will they do to me? I’ll probably die here.
When I’m done, he ties my wrists again, looser than before, but still secure. As we walk back, I pick up other sounds. The whir of machinery in the distance, far away voices, metal clanging against something hollow.
“Almost time to move,” he mutters, sounding like he’s talking to himself more than me. He pushes me back to the floor. It’s colder now, the concrete feels like ice. “Stay here, and stay quiet so I won’t have to drug you again. Nod if you understand.”
I nod as his phone rings, echoing through the space like an alarm bell. But it’s the man’s next words that have my body shaking.
“I’ll bring her out back.”
His name is Sweeper.That’s what the other guy, Yuri, calls him before he closes the van door. I have a feeling I’ll wish it was Sweeper here with his exhausted sighs and gentle grip soon enough.
The van door only opens once in the long drive, letting in crisp autumn air that feels like a blessing in the stifling space. I count four women, five including me. Four different cries and pleas with gravelly voices echoing my own fear. One of them whispers a prayer that has tears leaking onto the fabric of my mask. Wherever they were before now, at least they were together. I want to talk to them—the others. Ask names and offer what little comfort I can, but fear holds my voice captive. Fear that the man seated back here with us will do what he threatened, and it’s not killing us, not in the literal sense. What he threatened was much worse.
After hours of driving, we’ve stopped. Yuri and the other man climb out of the van, speaking loudly in Russian. Their voices fade as they move away. Now’s my chance.
“Hello,” I whisper. “Are you all okay?”
A few hopeless seconds go by before someone answers. “Not really.”
She sounds young, barely out of her teens like me. Those two words shake yet they have this inkling of defiance to them. Something I can admire.
Then another, small and meek. “I’m scared.”
I want to reach toward her voice, offer some comfort in this darkness, but my bound hands and frozen limbs hold me back. Instead, I use my voice. “I’m scared too. What’s your name?”
“Don’t tell her,” the first voice says sharply. “She can’t be trusted.”
I should feel hurt, but she’s right. If they’re also masked, they have no idea I’m in the same position they are. I stay quiet to save my strength.
“Listen to her voice, Cat. You really think she’s one of them?” another woman to my left says, her voice nasally.
“What the fuck, Lydia? Why did you tell her my name?” Cat seethes.
Lydia—I think she’s the one who was praying earlier. I file their names away in hope that we’ll be alive long enough to use them later.
We’re cut short by the van door sliding open again. “Time to go,” one of the men barks.
