Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

The GM was licking his chops over the furor she’d caused while at the same time distancing himself from it. If something really unsavory was forthcoming, his news staff would be first on the scene to cover the story, but he wouldn’t want her shadow of disrepute to fall on his station.

But in addition to her anger, she felt abandoned. Without her work, she truly was at loose ends and lacking any bastion of support. She watched the highlights of her press conference on the evening news and concluded that she’d come across as sincere in her sorrow over Jay’s sudden death, and truthful in her allegation that she couldn’t remember anything because she’d been drugged.

But she wasn’t naïve. People were more likely to suspect the worst than to believe the best.

Darkness fell, and her spirits sank further. Telling herself she was hungry, she heated a Lean Cuisine but finished less than half of it. She took a long bath but couldn’t really relax. Her mind returned again and again to that night. She’d already gone through it a thousand times, from the moment she entered The Wheelhouse until she woke up the following morning.

Hours of time were missing from her memory, hours during which anything could have happened. She didn’t remember having sex with Jay, but she didn’t remember drinking the scotch, either, and obviously she had.

If Jay hadn’t given her the drug, who had? And for what purpose? The possibilities caused shudders of revulsion. Did she want to remember? Or was it a blessing that she couldn’t recall what had been done to her while she was stripped naked and incapable of protecting herself?

She had gone to her gynecologist and requested an examination. Britt had insisted the doctor prepare a rape kit, in case the need for it should ever arise. The doctor did as she requested, swabbing her mouth, vagina, and anus, all the while telling Britt that the chances of the swabs providing any conclusive evidence of rape were slim. She had showered. Too much time had passed.

At least she was comforted to learn that any sexual congress hadn’t been violent. She’d suffered no apparent physical damage.

Even if she hadn’t been sexually abused, she’d been emotionally and psychologically violated, and because she couldn’t remember it and deal with it, the assault continued. Sitting in her bathtub, knees to her chest, her head resting on them, she cried so hard her sobs echoed off the walls. She cried until she had no tears left.

Eventually she got out of the tub and prepared for bed, then went through her house turning out lights. She peered out her front windows to make certain that some resourceful reporter hadn’t discovered where she lived. It would have been difficult, because Britt Shelley was a professional name, not her real one. All her tax records, deeds, debts, and such were in her legal birth name.

Her phone number wasn’t listed under either name, and she received her mail at a post office box. Only her most trusted acquaintances knew her address. She’d been able to elude reporters when she left the police station after being questioned the last time, so she didn’t think she’d been followed. Nevertheless, she checked to make sure.

The street was dark and quiet.

Later, she would marvel that she had managed to go to sleep at all, much less fall into a slumber so deep that she hadn’t heard the chirp of the alarm when the contact was broken, hadn’t sensed him looming over her bed, hadn’t been signaled of his intrusion in any way until he clamped his hand over her mouth.

“Turn it off.” A growl close to her ear. “Turn it off!”

He shoved the portable keypad into her hand. Terrified, she fumbled with the rubberized digits, trying to remember the duress code, which would signal the monitoring agency that she was indeed being forced to disengage the alarm. But she couldn’t remember anything except her standard code.

How long had it been chirping? When would the actual alarm go off? Please, God. Now! Now!

“The code.” His breath was hot on her neck. “Do it.”

Over the back of his gloved hand she could see the lighted numbers. She punched in the correct sequence, and the chirping stopped. He relaxed, marginally, but the hand across her mouth did not.

With his free hand, he tossed back the covers and jerked her from the bed. She stumbled, fell, hard and hurtfully, but freely. His hand no longer over her mouth, she screamed, then scrambled across the floor.

He grabbed her hair, causing her to scream again. “Shut up!” he commanded as he hauled her up by her hair and clamped his hand over her mouth again.

She thrust her elbow back as hard as she could and got some satisfaction from his grunt of pain.

That was the last thing Britt heard before her world faded to black.

When she came to, she was lying down on her side.

She ached all over and her head was throbbing. Additionally, every hair follicle had its individual pinprick of pain. Her feet were bound, her hands tightly secured behind her back. She had been gagged by something fabric, maybe a handkerchief, that had been twisted into a tight rope and placed in her mouth like a horse’s bit. She could push her tongue against it, but she couldn’t work her jaw.

Something had been placed over her head like an executioner’s hood. Or like the hood of one about to be executed. The thought filled her with terror.

Instinct told her she was in the backseat of a car, although it wasn’t moving. Had she come to when it stopped?

Must have been, because seconds after she regained consciousness, a car door opened near her head. Through the cloth hood, she felt the shift of air, which she gratefully breathed in through her nostrils. Besides blinding her, the hood made her claustrophobic.

She remained still and limp, feigning unconsciousness. Besides, to try to fight would be futile. She couldn’t move her limbs at all.

Hands gripped her under her arms and hauled her out of the car, then left her lying on the ground. Beneath her bare legs she could feel dirt, pebbles, dry, spiky vegetation. She heard footsteps, the jingle of keys, another car door being opened. Then he was back, sliding his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and lifting her. She was carried a short distance. This vehicle was larger, taller than the first; she could tell that because it was an effort for him to hoist her dead weight into the front seat. She allowed herself to slump to her left side.

“Stop faking it,” he said. “I know you’re conscious.”

All the same, she lay perfectly still, listening, trying to do what women were advised to do if ever in this situation.

Don’t get into the car with your abductor. She already was.

Try to get the keys from him and use them as a weapon. Impossible.

Use your senses to follow your trail. With her hands bound, she could touch nothing except the upholstery of the seat. Leather. Which she could also tell by the smell. She couldn’t see. She could taste only the gag, but that didn’t tell her much except that it was clean. It tasted slightly of detergent.

However, she could hear, so she concentrated on cataloging the sounds.

A car door closed. More footsteps. The driver’s door on her left opened and he got in, obviously behind the steering wheel, and set something in the foot well in front of her. He shut the driver’s door.

Suddenly his weight was pressing down on her and she thought, This is it.

But he was only leaning across her to reach the seat belt. He slid his other hand beneath her and groped around looking for the other part of the buckle. “You could make this easier if you’d sit up.”

She didn’t move or give him any indication that she’d heard, believing her only defense right now was to remain completely passive, even if it meant being manhandled.