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CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
PERSEPHONE
When the car finally comes to a stop, I jerk awake. For a second, I am totally disoriented. I can’t place where I am and why it’s so dark.
My mouth tingles and tastes faintly of chemicals. I lift my tongue as I try to focus my eyes. My arms and legs can barely move, and I’m bound at the wrists and ankles.
I squint into the darkness. It feels a bit as though I am struggling to move through a sticky glue-like substance.
“Get her out of the trunk.” A man’s voice cuts through my daze.
Like a light switch being flipped, I remember everything. I suddenly know exactly where I am and what has happened to me.
I remember the rough hands that shoved me into the trunk of this car. The cold gleam of the barrel of the gun that was pointed at me while I struggled; the glint of the syringe as my captor brandished it; the sound of my panicked breathing and the sharp pain as the man jabbed it in my arm.
I remember screaming and thrashing until I was hoarse, until the rough carpet beneath my body rubbed angry welts into the exposed skin at my wrists and ankles. My arms grew heavy, and then my head, and then the entire world slid away. my head dully thudding. The loose black caftan I wear has twisted around my thighs and bunched under my shoulder blades. I can hear my captor rustling around in the car.
Think, Persephone! Move! Get ready to surprise the man somehow, with something.I wrinkle my face, bringing my bound hands up to press at my temple.
If only my thoughts came a bit easier. Right now, they come in clumps, all backing up on each other, getting snarled and tangled.
What was I just thinking I needed to do?
The car door opens, and I begin to tremble. I know this all too well now. I brace myself for the same set of rough hands to pull me from the trunk.
Whipping my head around, I try to think of where the opening to the trunk should be. I need to attack, I need to get free somehow… Sweeping my bound hands around the perimeter of the trunk, I hope like hell that my kidnappers have been stupid enough to leave a tire iron or… I don’t know, maybe a pencil?
Anything that I can wield against them.
But my captors have been too smart for that.
Shit. I suppose my next best option is to pretend I’m still unconscious, then. I try to stop the trembling in my hands and the rapid rise and fall of my chest.
Stillness may be my savior today.
When the trunk is flung open, I crack my eyelids just a little. Enough to see, but not enough to seem aware. Pitch black night sky is the first thing I see. Without moving my head, I try to scan the horizon. All I can make out is a large light gray building… an airplane hangar, maybe.
My captor steps into view and I lay eyes the same figure dressed in head to toe black tactical gear. A shiver of fear races down my spine but I try my best to repress it.
When he reaches in the trunk for me, I play dead. I keep my eyes closed as I let him pull my limp form from the trunk without so much as a whimper. His clammy hands grip me as he tosses me over his shoulder as casually as a sack of flour.
Inside, I’m seething at his audacity. But I keep pretending that I am still knocked out so that I can take in my surroundings and maybe hatch a plan for escape.
That all ends pretty abruptly when I catch a snippet of passing instruction. “Take her over to Constantine.”
In an instant, I go hot and cold all over. My mind races and I lift my head, hoping to see what we are approaching. The man who’s holding me is in blocking most of my view and if I wriggle too much, he’ll know that I’m awake. I can’t hear over the surge of blood pounding in my temples. Around the man’s thick black form, I can just make out an airplane hangar.
My thoughts run riot, my mind flooded with fear. I know I have to get away. There is no way I can just let this stranger carry me straight to my ex-boyfriend turned enemy.
Planning seems important but my mind can’t hold onto any kind of scheme for more than a couple of seconds. So I do the only thing that makes sense inside my snarled tangle of a brain.
All at once, without warning, I stiffen my muscles and throw myself to the side. The stranger who is holding me fumbles and stops as I slide off toward the ground.
But in my drug-addled state, I don’t prepare for what comes next. Namely that I will crash to the ground, my knees and elbows taking the brunt of my fall to the pavement. I feel a sharp, burning pain ranting from my knees on impact.
For a split second, I know a note of sheer agony.
As I land with a thud, I tense up my body to begin scrambling away. But my bound wrists and ankles stop me from moving with any kind of speed.
