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I put my hand over my mouth, feeling nauseated again. “Oh, Brielle.”
“That’s what the lodge is for,” she continued, and I got the feeling she just needed to get this all out. “The other girl, Desi, was really excited about the lodge. She said the best girls will get to live there. They’ll go to big parties with rich people and service their clients there instead of in hotels.”
“Oh my god, that’s why he’s building that mansion?”
She nodded. “But Desi said to do what I’m told or he’ll send me away. She said girls who are sent away don’t come back. They’re sold.”
“Sold?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “To whom?”
“I don’t know. But I know it can’t be good.”
“No, that’s definitely not good.” I took a deep breath, hoping to ease the returning nausea.
Preston Bradford was a sex trafficker.
And he had me locked in his cabin.
This was so surreal, it was hard to acknowledge the depth of my fear. Was this actually happening?
“What are we going to do?” Brielle asked, her voice breaking. “I don’t know what he’s going to do to me when he comes back.”
I moved in close and took her by the upper arms. “He’s not going to do anything. Do you hear me? We’re going to get away and he’s not going to have the chance.”
She nodded.
“But we have to be in this together. I can’t help you if you’re trying to sabotage me because you’re afraid of him.”
“I won’t. I want to get away. I don’t know where I’ll go when I do, but I can’t stay with him.”
“We’re not going to. We’re going to find a way out of here.”
How, was another story. As was what we would do once we got free. I had no way of knowing where we were. The drive here was a black hole in my memory. I had no direction, no time frame, nothing. At least the sun was coming up. It would be easier to find our way in the light.
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that Zachary was looking for me. In my heart of hearts, I knew he was. That he’d stop at nothing until he found me. If we could get out, someone would find us eventually. Even if we were in the middle of nowhere, hours from Tilikum, there had to be people searching. I had to believe we’d be rescued, if we could just get out.
“First things first,” I said. “We need to break a window or something.”
“I don’t think we can get out any of those.”
“What about upstairs? We could make a rope out of bed sheets and lower ourselves down.”
“Will that work?”
“We’ll only know if we try.”
I went to the kitchen and found a frying pan. It was sturdy and hard. I hoped it would be strong enough to break the glass.
Brielle followed me upstairs and started stripping the bed. I told her to stand back while I took a whack at the window.
I swung the pan as hard as I could, smashing it against the glass. It left a deep indent and cracks snaked out from the center, but it didn’t break. I hit it a few more times, hoping the sharp glass didn’t come flying back at me. Finally, I broke through, the glass shattering outward.
Cold air blew in as I used the pan to push the remaining shards outside. The window wasn’t large, so I needed to make sure as much of the glass was gone as possible, otherwise we’d shred ourselves to ribbons on the way out. We didn’t need to add bleeding cuts to our list of problems. Especially when we were about to head into the wilderness in late fall without any way of knowing where we were or how to get to safety.
One problem at a time, Marigold.
“I don’t think this is going to be long enough,” Brielle said.
She’d tied the sheets together, but we needed to tie it off on something sturdy to anchor it. And she was right, it wasn’t going to reach very far.
