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Seeing the dark shadows beneath her eyes, she concealed them with makeup and added glowing blush from a stick like a big lipstick that she used whenever she needed color.
The result wasn’t her. At least not the woman she wanted to be. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was running out of hope. Something had to happen, or--or she had no idea. She would either have to kill herself or kill Josh.
And he’d made certain there was nothing in the place she could use as a weapon. That left her here, a prisoner with only one straw to cling to. Her whole being pleaded with everything in existence.
Please let Gunner get this message and show Riggs. And please let Riggs know what it means. Please, please, save me.
The misery threatened to overwhelm her, again. Georgie tried not to let the thought form, but it was too powerful. She wasn’t strong enough for this. She needed help.
Like a surge of electricity slicing through her, the urgency to check the iPad overcame her and she hurried to its hiding place. It seemed to take forever for it to boot up and she nearly panicked.
“Come on, come on.” She hissed.
Finally, its home screen appeared and she hurried to the site she used to send the message. When she saw the number 1 over the small icon of an envelope, she nearly hyperventilated.
Terrified of being discovered, she wasted no time clicking on the message.
Report received. Errors detected. Report states the trajectory was west, when the data clearly shows a north western approach trajectory. Additionally, we believe the time projection calculations to be flawed. Quickly calculating the data, we believe the time of arrival to be 0630. Please check data, recalculate and resubmit complete corrected report.
With trembling fingers she texted.
This is the call.
Georgie nearly vomited with fear as she pressed the send icon on the screen. As soon as the message went through, she deleted it from her end, erased the history, cookies and all tracking data from the browser she’d used.
Just as she was going to power down the tablet, a thought occurred. What if Josh found this? She knew she’d covered her tracks, just the way Naomie taught her. But if he found it and it was charged, would he assume she had been using it?
The thought of enraging him scared her. She knew all too well what he was capable of. She needed an excuse just in case. In a flash it came to her. She opened the browser, went to Amazon and ran a search on sexy school girl costumes.
Georgie sat staring at the screen, thinking about the message.Was this real? Was Riggs coming to save her? Was that really Gunner? Oh god, what if it was somehow Josh? What if he’s screwing with my head and…
Georgie mentally screamed at herself. Josh was many things, but tech savvy wasn’t really his wheelhouse. Besides, he’d gone so far over the edge that she doubted he spent any of his waking hours in reality.
When they were together, he played the role of a sex-starved deviant daddy, who took delight in tormenting and raping his little girl. When he went on his outings, those overnight affairs that had happened twice, he was someone else.
It was his last outing that let Georgie know how sick, how insane he was. He drugged her and she woke somewhere else. Her ankles and wrists were bound and a rope circled her body, securing her to a wooden chair.
A woman lay on the floor, across the room, tied the same. She was naked and appeared to have suffered a beating. Josh entered the room behind Georgie, startling her when he stopped beside her and handed her a cell phone.
“Be a good girl for daddy and record this for me.”
Despite what she wanted to do, or wished she could do, Georgie did the only thing she could do and survive. She wasn’t proud of herself at the moment, but would do everything she could to survive. So, she smiled sweetly at Josh and said “Of course, Daddy.”
What she witnessed that night changed her forever. She’d never be able to unsee or unhear the agony and suffering. She’d never be able to forget the brutality and inhumanity of a man she only thought she knew.
That was the moment that solidified things in her mind. If she wanted to live, she had to escape. How she would accomplish that was a mystery. At present she didn’t have a clue. And she wouldn’t until an opportunity presented itself. She had to hope it would because if she didn’t get away, one day he would do to her what he did to those other women, because one day he’d realize she wasn’t his little girl.
And then he would hate her like he hated all those other women.
Out of the blue, a memory captured her focus. It was the last time she saw Riggs. He wanted to go with her, to help with whatever she thought she had to save or erase.
“No. Riggs listen to me. This isn’t the time you can help me.”
“Will there come a time I can?”
“That’s very possible,” she leaned over to take his free hand. “And I pray you’ll come if I call.”
“You know I will. Tell me what you’ll want me to do.”