“This isn’t Aurora. Where the hell are we?”
He told me he was taking me back. In the truck, before the tarp, he said it flat, like it was already done, and I spent the ride bracing for a gate and a room that locks from the outside. This is none of that. This is a mountain I don’t know, and not knowing where I am is worse than the gate would have been.
“Put me down!” I throw my weight sideways, hoping to unsettle him. Nothing. He starts up a path I can’t see the top of, and I might as well be a load he’s shifted to carry easier. “I said put me down, you… you… big thug!”
I twist. I go limp. I get a boot into his hip. He climbs.
“Where is this?” It comes out higher than I mean it to. “You said Aurora. This isn’t— Where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Please. Just tell me where we are.” A branch drags across my back. “You said you were taking me back. So either you lied, or you changed your mind, and I need to know which. I need you to say something—”
Nothing.
“You son of a bitch!” I’ve never been much for cursing out people, but I find all of it now, low and useless against his back. “You can’t just haul a person off a mountain and not say something. Say anything. Bastard!”
Still nothing.
I scream. Threaten. Call him things that should make me blush.
He climbs. My voice gives out before the path does, and by the time the twilight gloom becomes something darker—a mouth in the rock, the air dropping colder as we cross into it—there’s nothing left in my throat but breath.
He sets me down on stone.
The only light is what leaks in behind us, and it’s going fast. He steps back and looks at me. Not angry. Not anything I can use. A man studying something he hasn’t worked out yet and isn’t in a hurry about.
“Listen.” I keep my voice even. Screaming at his back got me nothing, and I’m done spending myself on nothing. “Whatever you think I am—whatever Aurora told you—you don’t know all of it. Tell me what you think you know, and I’ll fill in the rest.”
He looks at me.
“What would change this?” Another way in. “What do you actually want?”
He crouches, reaches forward, and runs his hands down my sides to the top of my pants. My breath catches.
No. No, not this.
“Please,” I gasp. “Please don’t…”
Don’t what? The warmth of his palms soaks through my shirt, and the heat that follows doesn’t match what my mind is screaming. Because my body likes the heat.
His hands skim my hips, thumbs gliding over my hipbones, then down my thighs—the outside, then the inside. My heart stops as they move higher. I clench my legs together.
“Please,” I choke out. “Don’t… don’t hurt me.”
He glances up with a frown. “Why would I hurt you?” His hands are over the top of my jeans. He pats my pockets and pulls out my burner phone. Flips it over, pulls out the sim, and tucks it into his back pocket.
My breath comes out in a rush.
He was just patting me down.
He takes my wrists, works the knot loose. The rope falls away, and the blood comes back into my hands. I rub them.
“You going to run?” he says.
I hold his eyes. “No.”
He releases me.
