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No one even bothered to look our way despite the initial commotion. I guessed they were either too focused, too scared, or too used to such things to bother. Or maybe a combination of all three.
"Stick her over there," D said, waving a dismissive hand toward a small closed off space in the corner, like an office, except the walls didn't go all the way to the impossibly high ceiling.
"Come on," Trick said, his voice going low. "Better not to piss him off. The boss won't do the talking with fists and boots. You're better off laying low until the check in."
"Check in?" I found myself asking, immediately cursing myself for being nosy and cringing at the pain even the slightest bit of talking did to my, I imagined, hideously bruised jaw.
"Check in," he agreed, not dumb enough to elaborate as he opened the office door and ushered me inside. "You got about... two hours," he said, looking over the room quickly before moving back toward the door. "Sit tight." With that, he closed and locked the door.
For a long second, the panic swelled up to epic proportions. I felt like I was choking on it. It made my skin feel like it was crawling, like bugs were going to burst from the hair follicles covering my body. It made my mind race and my breath hitch.
There was some kind of slamming outside the door that made me jump and somehow managed to fight back the swirling thoughts so I could think clearly.
Panic wasn't going to help me.
I needed to think.
I needed to...
"Idiot," I hissed at myself, reaching into my back pocket and grabbing my cell. I was so nervous that my hands fumbled and screwed up my password twice before I took a deep breath and tried again. My screen unlocked and flashed bright and beautiful, like a lighthouse beacon to a lost ship. That was until I looked at my service bar and saw a big, ugly X over it.
My brows drew together, confused. I'd never seen an X over my service. I had service every-freaking-where. I was once in a field full of wind fans in the middle of bumbfuck Montana and had all my bars. It was never simply... gone. Not willing to accept the X, I clicked off of the now-blank Facebook page, and hit my number pad, typing in 9-1-1, hitting send, and bringing the phone up to my ear. I waited. I pulled the phone down when I heard no ringing, saw that it was doing the dot-dot-dot thing, trying to connect, brought it back up to my ear and waited some more. I hung up. I dialed again. I waited again.
But it was no use. There was nothing.
Maybe the Third Street guys had one of those signal-blocking things.
On a sigh, I slipped it back into my pocket and crept across the room, taking it in fully for the first time.
No windows, obviously, and just the one door. There was nothing on the bare Sheetrock walls. In the center of the room was a cheap Ikea-looking black desk and ergonomic desk chair. On the surface was a blank memo pad and two pens. I grabbed the pens and stuck them in my pockets, knowing it wasn't much, but it was something. As much as my stomach turned over at the idea of stabbing something like that into someone's eye, well, if it would save me from rape and death... I was willing to steel my stomach and do what needed to be done.
I took deep, slow breaths as I moved methodically over every inch of the small space, looking for any point of escape (there were none) or anything I could use to defend myself (aside from the pens, all I found was a heavy rock that I guessed someone used to prop the door open).
It wasn't much.
It certainly wasn't a metal, bone crushing padlock.
But it was something.
It was all that I had.
With nothing else to do, I sat down on the office chair, tried my best to ignore the pain that was overtaking my entire body, and tried to ready myself for anything.SixteenPaineI'd like to say I knew something was wrong, that I had a gut feeling, that I had some kind of fucking sixth sense that told me my girl wasn't okay. Sure, I'd love to claim that. But it wasn't true. I wasn't some superhero and I wasn't psychic.
So at eight when Elsie still hadn't showed up, I expected she had stayed a little longer at the gym, doing a guilt workout to work off the whole container of Chinese food she had devoured in one sitting. When eight-thirty rolled around and I was sitting in her kitchen next to the dinner spread of a giant salad, baked rosemary chicken, and side of green beans I had made, mindful of the fact that we both liked to keep our bodies in shape and to do that, you had to feed them right at least sixty-percent of the time, and she still hadn't showed up, I started to worry.
