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I dropped the location into the Elite group chat, then pulled up the text thread.
ELITE GROUP CHAT
*Kruger shared a location pin.*
Kruger: We need backup. STAT.
35
Prism
The repeated ringing of a phone cut through the sharp throbbing in my skull. I tried to focus on the ringtone, but when I did, the buzzing in my ears tried to snuff it out.
“Shut that damn thing off!” someone barked, the voice injecting ice water into my veins. It was frigid and so ominously familiar that it paralyzed my lungs and locked my limbs. The immobility forced on me was painful, and as much as my panicked brain screamed, RUN! the invisible shackles of terror held me in place.
The phone went off again, and I clawed at the blanket beneath my hands. Whoever didn’t listen is going to be punished.
Something crashed against the wall and then shattered when it dropped onto the floor. It was followed roughly by a smack and low grunt.
“I’m surrounded by imbeciles.”
Despite my jaw being locked, my teeth started to chatter, the clacking sound unwelcome to my frayed nerves. I bunched my fingers again into whatever I was lying on. It felt like a bed. How the fuck did I get into a bed?
Like the flicker of a movie screen, my brain replayed what happened in the parking lot at the radio station. How I’d been clobbered over the head. They must have dumped me in the car and brought me here… But where is here?
I could open my eyes and see. Get the answers to everything I was wondering.
I didn’t want to open my eyes.
If I opened my eyes, I’d see him.
The owner of that voice.
The source of all my trauma.
The man I thought I’d never have to see again.
It seemed preferable to not know where I was or even what was happening if it meant not having to face him.
“I know you’re awake.”
I pretended I wasn’t even if my shivering teeth called me a liar.
Being a liar was nothing compared to everything else this man had called me.
He grunted, footsteps moving away from the bed, but I didn’t unclench. The legs of a chair dragged over the floor, and I fought the urge to wince. The buzzing in my ears was loud but not loud enough to cover the sounds he started to make.
“Room service here was very accommodating. Look at this nice cut of steak they sent up,” my father told everyone and no one. Who knew which one?
The nerve-grating sound of a knife and fork scratching over a porcelain plate filled the room and shot the willies down my spine. I shivered and tried like hell to ignore it.
It’s just a sound. No big deal. Don’t react. Stay calm. Stay calm.
Squeeeal. Slice. Clank. Draaag. The sound of metal scraping against metal and then tediously dragging over porcelain made my eyelid begin to twitch. The chattering of my teeth turned into a painful grind, and I swear I could taste the enamel wearing right off my molars.
My hands fisted into the bed, a thin type of duvet. The fabric was not soft, not at all like the stuff Arsen used to make our bed, and the realization ignited a fire across my skin. My palms tingled and itched, burning with the need to scratch off the feel of this horrible material that was touching me from head to foot.
Clink, clash, tap-tap. My mind produced a visual of the fork and knife scraping together like he was trying to scrape off food that was probably not even stuck.
