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Because if they touched her?—

If they hurt her?—

If they so much as looked at her the wrong way?—

There won’t be a hole deep enough on this planet for them to hide in.

Firelight flickers against cold stone walls, the shadows twisting and crawling like living things.

My body aches. My mouth tastes of metal and salt.

It takes a moment, my head beating like a drum, to remember what happened. Where I am.

The dark hospital hall. The chase. The pinch of the needle.

I close my eyes and squeeze them shut, trying to will the headache to stop.

When I try to move, something tugs hard at my ankles—tethered to a thick pipe bolted into the stone behind me.

My wrists are bound in front, tight enough to bruise. I can stand. I can shift. But I can’t run.

A slow, creeping panic builds in my chest, trying to claw its way up my throat.

I fight it back, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.

Panic won’t save me.

Think. Breathe. Survive.

My vision swims as I turn my head, forcing myself to scan the room.

Two dozen branding irons are fixed into some kind of holder, buried in the hot embers of the fire. This is where they brand girls with serial numbers before sending them on.

I keep looking around. This is a room of torment—knives, cuffs and chains. A handsaw.

It’s terrifying.

I turn my attention to myself.

I’m not naked or bleeding. But my pants are gone. I’m barefoot.

Not . . . violated.

Yet.

But the intent in the air is thick. Heavy. I wasn’t taken for ransom or leverage.

I was taken to be broken.

We must have gotten close to the source, because abducting a prosecutor working a sex-trafficking and police-corruption case is not a coincidence.

I breathe through the spike of terror trying to take root.

Not today.

Not like this.

Across the room, half lit by the dying fire, I spot it—a scalpel lying on a metal tray. Close enough to see, just far enough to be impossible to reach.