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A low, pained sound escaped me as I made my way toward it, feeling as though it took every store of energy in my body to do so.
And as soon as I got there, launched myself into the brightness, my world was full of pain.
It was nothing short of a crippling migraine , the likes of which I had never experienced before – and I was experienced in the awfulness of migraines – immediately overtaking my whole head.
It started as a piercing at the back right of my skull, but wrapped its painful grip all the way around, making it pound behind my eyes, in my temples, made an aching tightness overtake my neck and jaw.
It hurt everywhere at once, making it impossible to do anything but experience it, fight back the wave of familiar nausea.
My knee-jerk reaction was to raise my hands to cradle my forehead, the pressure the only thing that could stave off the worst of the pain.
But as I tried to do so, I felt the pull preventing movement.
A pull.
And a burn.
I didn’t have to have experience with it before to know the sensation.
Rope.
Around my wrists.
Pain momentarily forgotten, my eyes flew open, finding myself in mostly darkness.
But there were things I could see thanks to a small window letting in a slit of moonlight.
A bathroom.
I was tied up in a bathroom, my wrists bound under a floating sink. I could feel the cold, unyielding underside of the sink against my temple, my neck cocked awkwardly to the side to accommodate it.
“Ow,” I whimpered, trying to think past the screaming inside my skull, the aching in my shoulders, the crick in my neck.
Kidnapped.
Someone kidnapped me.
The hysteria bubbled up, rampant as a wildfire hellbent on destroying a forest.
I took a deep breath, banking it down, forcing myself to focus, to think, to be objective.
A surefire way to ensure your own demise was to panic in a life-or-death situation.
And a kidnapping, even if you had no idea the motive, was always life-or-death.
Because even if their intent from the get-go wasn’t murder, it would be the inevitable outcome. I’d see a face, hear a voice, notice distinguishing characteristics.
Any young guy wet-dreaming about crime in his bedroom at night knew from a few Cold Case episodes that witnesses could be their undoing.
And semen.
Semen was usually their undoing as well.
But I couldn’t let my mind go there.
Not then.
Not even if that was the logical worry to have.
Rape.
Because why else would men take women off the street?
But I couldn’t get so hung up on the terror of that that I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t stay in the moment.
The moment where I was alone in a bathroom.
Who knew how long I had.
Minutes.
Hours.
But it was time.
Time to think.
Time to plan.
Time to try to escape.
My fingers curled upward at my bindings, looking for the knot, the edge to try to grab, pull, work the restraint free.
If I could get the rope off, I could haul myself out that window.
It was small, all bathroom windows were. But I was slight. I could shimmy myself through.
I could get myself out of it.
To what? I had no idea.
The ground?
Nothing but open air?
Hell, I might be willing to jump, take my chances at shattered bones – or even death – than the fate that might befall me at someone else’s hands.
There were things worse than death.
Working at Quin’s for as long as I had, reading the true crime I had an insatiable appetite for, I understood that. Viscerally.
I’d rather end up with every bone in my body broken by my own choice than be held down and gang-raped by men who got off on pain and power.
I would make that choice if I had to.
“Ugh,” I growled after what felt like ten long minutes of trying to find the edge to the rope with no luck.
My arms arched further up, making me suddenly thankful to Gemma who dragged me to yoga any chance she could get, making me able to twist my body in interesting ways. It was something that proved completely useless most of the time, but just this once, just this once it could help save my life.
Once I got out of here, I was going to treat myself and Gemma to a year of twice-weekly yoga sessions. And I wouldn’t back out just because of work.
My wrists turned, letting my hands reach around for what I was attached to, feeling a rush of victory when I felt something other than what I had been expecting – and dreading – a metal pipe, but instead some sort of curved metal tube thing that, while not exactly pliant, could absolutely break. Likely from where it had to be connected to the actual pipes, probably held there by a washer and some glue. If I could just get my arms up a bit further, I would try to work the washer free.
