Page 54 of Riot’s Thorn (Sons of Erebus: Reno, NV #4)
“Shut the fuck up. She got me in the balls.” He passes us, opening the door to a water closet, where he yanks a towel from the rack, wets it, and then presses it to his face. “Let’s go. We’re already running late.”
“Better get a move on then.” He pulls a roll of duct tape from his back pocket and binds my wrists. “Just in case.”
The assholes drag me from the house because I refuse to make this easy for them. At some point, the bloody guard gets irritated and throws me over his shoulder. Lifting my knee, I try to nail him in the nose again, but his tree trunk of an arm is plastered around my calves, making it impossible.
I’m tossed into the trunk of a sedan, and without a passing glance, he slams it shut, leaving me in pitch darkness.
A show I saw once taught women different ways to get out of bad situations.
One of them was getting out of a trunk or at least figuring out how to notify passing cars you’re being abducted.
Feeling around, I look for the emergency release most newer models of cars have.
They must have planned for this situation because where there should be a button, there are only wires, like they destroyed it.
I don’t lose hope yet because it also said you might be able to access the taillights from inside.
That’s a dead end too, because it’s not a feature of this car. Everything is sealed off.
Shit. What do I do now? Feeling helpless, I decide my only option right now is to pay attention to where I’m going.
That’s hard to do when I don’t know where we started from, but I try to make note of the road conditions and speeds.
Eventually, I give up on that as well because too much time passes.
Hours, even. We stop once for gas, and I use that time to kick and scream, but we must not be near any other cars because no one comes for me.
I fall in and out of sleep with nothing to do but worry. Because I don’t know what will happen when we reach our destination, I don’t even try to stay alert. These naps might be all I have for a while.
The car slows, startling me awake. We must be going over gravel because the tires make a crunching sound, and I’m jostled around.
Then, the brakes squeak to a slow stop, and the doors to the car open.
I hear male voices but can only make out a word here and there, not enough to piece together the conversation.
When the trunk finally opens, it’s dark outside, but there must be lights close by, because I can make out the features of each man.
The three men I know are there, but there’s one face I don’t recognize.
While the guards from Bart’s house are disinterested and aloof, this man is the opposite.
His focus on me feels sinister and evil.
A deep scar bisects his eyebrow and down his cheek, reminding me of Scar from the Disney movie. His hair, brows, and eyes are dark brown, but his skin is pale and sallow. He has a pointed nose, thin lips, and a receding hairline.
“What the fuck happened to her?” he asks. His voice is deep and raspy, as if he smokes a couple packs a day.
“Boss got a little carried away,” the first guard says.
“And what happened to you?” He takes in the dried blood still crusted to his nose.
“She did that.” One of Bart’s guards cackles, and the other two men join in, leaving the first guard scowling. I feel a little bad, since he was pretty decent to me, but not enough to regret it.
“Well, I guess she has about two weeks to heal. Otherwise, your boss is going to hear it. She won’t sell looking like that.”
“Two weeks is plenty of time for a couple of bruises,” the first guard says.
“All right. Well, get her out. We need to hide her before inspections because these containers are guarded heavily afterward.”
“No problem.” This time, the bloody guard doesn’t wait for me to dick around; he just pulls me out of the trunk and tosses me over his shoulder. Not wanting to lose my glasses, I hold them onto my face. Everything would be exponentially more difficult if I couldn’t see.
I blink to focus and adjust to being upside down, finally realizing I’m at a shipping yard.
Cranes are moving around steel containers with bright lights beaming down.
Surely, someone will see me, right? My mouth opens to scream, but the newcomer has already planned for that and sticks a rag in my mouth.
It smells and tastes like gasoline, making me gag.
“Over here,” the one with the scar says. I try to contort my body to see what’s ahead, but the guard’s shoulders are too wide.
After weaving through a never-ending maze of shipping containers that all look the same, we stop, and the guard tosses me to the ground.
I make the mistake of trying to break my fall with my hands but with my hands still bound, I pay the price when my left wrist bends at an awkward angle.
Pain shoots up my arm. It barely masks the bruising pain of landing on my hip or the pain in my ribs from being kicked.
My cries are barely heard because of the nasty rag in my mouth. I try to tell myself pain is just a bodily response. It’s not real, it’s in my head. But I’m almost beyond any rationale. How can this be my life? Why hasn’t Riot found me yet?
Scarface pushes up on the locking bar and pulls the cargo door open.
My eyes widen, and I hyperventilate at what I see.
Four girls, all terrified and nervous. With each pounding heartbeat, my throat constricts and my chest tightens.
I’m having a heart attack. Oh, god. I think I’m dying.
I hope I’m dying because that’s better than what’s in front of me.
“Get in,” the bloody guard says, yanking me to my feet.
“No. No. No.” The word is muffled from around the rag, but I scream it anyway.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” He shoves me, sticking a black grocery bag, the kind every gas station seems to have, into my arms and then quickly shutting the door.
Darkness surrounds me, the kind where you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face.
I can’t see them either, but I know they’re there.
Four girls. All young. At least two of them are juveniles.
They’re huddled at the far end of the container between boxes stacked as high as the roof.
It smells like piss, shit, and body odor.
The stench is so overwhelming, I have to breathe through my mouth.
“Hi, I’m Parker,” I say through my sobs because I was never taught the etiquette of meeting fellow captives being sent to another country in a shipping container.
“I’m Louisa,” a small voice replies. “There’s also Rosa, Anne, and Thea.”
“How old are you?” I ask, wiping my nose with the back of my arm. Crying will get me nowhere, and I’m probably scaring the younger girls.
“I’m nineteen. Rosa, my sister, is fourteen. Anne is seventeen, and Thea is thirteen,” Louisa says.
“Shit. Where are you from?” I start the painful process of twisting and pulling my wrists apart to loosen the duct tape. My wrist is either broken or severely sprained. Either way, I have to clench my teeth with each pull.
For the next five minutes, I gather as much information as I can from the girls, who are all from Reno. Rosa and Louisa’s parents are addicts and houseless. The two girls had been digging through trash cans, looking for food, when they were taken.
Anne and Thea are from Vegas. Anne is a runaway who was prostituting when she was grabbed, but Thea is the daughter of a congresswoman. She was walking home when she was lured into a blacked-out sedan by men who said her mom had been in an accident.
“What happened after you were taken, Louisa?” I ask.
Her voice breaks. “We were sold to a man. There was a party, and we had to do some really bad stuff.”
I don’t need her to expand. “Anne? Thea?”
“The same,” Anne says. “The four of us have been together through all of it. There were three parties before we were brought here.”
“How long have you been here?” I finally loosen the tape enough to start working one hand free.
“We don’t know. Maybe two days?” I recognize Louisa’s voice.
Once my hand is free, I pat around for the black bag the guard tossed in with me. “Were you given food or water?”
“Twelve bottles of water and a box of protein bars. I think there are fifteen in there,” Anne says.
“That’s it?” Rage bubbles inside me, wondering how anyone could treat these girls so poorly.
“We’ve been rationing because we don’t know how long we’ll be in here,” she replies.
“Well, it feels like they gave me three of those really big bottles of water and another box of protein bars. That’s good because apparently, we’re going to Canada, and if I were to guess, it’ll take a week or two on a cargo ship.”
“Canada?” Thea cries.
“Shh. It’s okay. We’ll figure out how to escape once we get there,” Anne soothes.
“She’s right. My boyfriend’s a badass biker. He’s also a little crazy, and I know he’s looking for me right now. He won’t stop until he finds me.”
“Will he save us too?” Thea asks.
“Of course he will.” I don’t know if it’s true, but we could all use a little hope.