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Despite my crappy day, the knots in my stomach loosened, and a small smile tugged at my lips. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve a friend like Isabel, and I would always be immensely grateful for her support and loyalty. Tomorrow night for sure!
I slid my key into the lock and entered my apartment, beyond ready to cuddle up on my couch beneath my favorite fuzzy pink blanket. Maybe I’d pour myself a glass of pinot noir to sip while I read my new rom-com novel. Nothing relaxed me like the scent of a good book and the glide of well-worn paper beneath my fingers. If I devoured this one tonight, I’d have to go to the library on Saturday to stock up again.
Some of the tightness in my chest eased at the prospect of spending an afternoon in my favorite place in the world: the New York Public Library. I blew out a sigh and closed the door behind me, my fingers automatically finding the deadbolt lock in the darkness.
Before I could flick on the light, something warm and firm pressed against my lips, stifling my shocked gasp. A hard, masculine chest collided with my back, pushing me forward so I was pinned against the wall. Panic slashed my thoughts to ribbons, tangling my rational mind into a snarl of disjointed, primal fears. Animal instinct overtook my body as adrenaline surged through my system. My hands slapped at the wall, my palms stinging as I struggled to free myself from my attacker’s hold.
He was too strong. His hand tightened over my lips to smother my scream, but he didn’t have to hold me with bruising force to pin me in place. His bulky frame surrounded me, suffocated me. My chest seized; I couldn’t seem to get any air into my lungs. The shadow-draped foyer spun around me, and terror was a copper tang on my tongue.
“Breathe.” The growled command was punctuated by a sharp prick at the side of my neck. Insidious warmth oozed into my bloodstream, pumping through my body with each pounding beat of my heart. My muscles relaxed, and fresh oxygen flooded my lungs, enhancing the strange, alarming high that muddled my mind with each passing second. The shadows around me deepened, and I floated away into darkness.
“Wake up, Freckles. We need to talk.”
My eyelids were far too heavy, and sleep fogged my brain. I groaned and tried to ignore the voice, but a harsh curse roused me. That deep, masculine tone set off alarm bells in my fuzzy mind, blaring at me to wake up.
A burst of instinctive fear pulsed through me, and I peeled my eyes open. I squinted into the darkness, struggling to make sense of where I was. A single, dim lightbulb hung above my head, cocooning me in a small puddle of illumination that threw the rest of the room deeper into shadow. The semicircle of floor that I could see beneath my feet was gray concrete.
My head spun, and my stomach churned. My surroundings were so foreign that they didn’t seem real. This was something out of a disjointed nightmare, not real life. My flesh began to crawl, and the primal impulse to run caused my muscles to bunch beneath my skin.
The world flickered around me with each rapid pulse of my heart. The sickening effect was disorienting, but I tried to bolt anyway. My arms jerked against soft bindings, and my panic spiked. I twisted and pulled, my mind refusing to accept that my wrists were tied behind the cold metal chair that provided a rigid frame beneath my trembling body.
In my increasingly frantic struggles, a pinpoint of red light drew my attention. I barely made out the shape of a camera set up on a tripod to my right. I was being recorded.
Something stirred in the shadows, a darker shade of black. I stilled, freezing like a spooked doe.
Dread coiled in my gut as the memory of a man’s hand on my mouth flooded my spinning brain. The prick at the side of my neck had been a needle, and I was lucid enough now to comprehend that my mind was still sluggish from the drugs.
The darker shadow took on the form of a towering man. He loomed over me, just at the edge of the pool of light, a nightmare shrouded in darkness. My skin pebbled with a shock of icy fear, and my belly quivered. His massive body dwarfed mine, his corded arms flexing against his tight black shirt as he crossed them over his chest. The light gleamed dimly over a mass of tousled black curls as he tipped his head back, but only the sharpest lines of his face captured any of the illumination. It rendered his face a macabre, skull-like mask.
Terror hit me like a sledgehammer to my brain, obliterating all rational thought in a burst of primal panic.
