Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

Be positive, she told herself, lifting her chin and swallowing hard. It helped that they hadn’t hurt her. After she’d stopped shaking, after she’d muted the panic that threatened to crawl up her belly and through her throat in an inhuman scream, she’d heard Schmidt tell his partner that there wasn’t to be one mark on her. So maybe Chambers just wanted to scare her out of pursuing this story. To force her to back way off, and warn her of what would happen if she didn’t.

Yet when they were left alone, Schmidt’s anonymous partner had run rough hands along her limbs, too intimate and too long, claiming with a smile in his voice that he was just making sure she was in good health. She knew then that this was the same man who’d accompanied Schmidt to her home and attacked her the first time, and she shivered with the memory, though she knew that it could have been worse.

It might be worse yet.

As if she’d voiced these worries aloud, the door to her prison opened, and he was suddenly there. She knew his boot steps already, the same way a trapped mouse might know the slithering sound of a snake’s belly. She sensed his movement like she sensed the night. The man approached, footsteps deliberate and heavy, and stopped too close, his hot breath and cool attention squarely on her. Kit felt that, too. But if she could just get him talking, it might buy her time. And if there was a person alive that Kit couldn’t get to talk to her… well, she hadn’t met him yet.

However, just in case this one had more on his mind than talking… “I have to pee.”

“I don’t care.”

Despite the ice in his voice, Kit rose from the chair she’d been ordered to sit in and said, “Seriously, I really have to go. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.”

“Fine.”

An immediate shove, like he’d been planning to do it anyway, and she crashed into a wall, hunching there until she was sure that was all he was going to do. Silence met her attempts to right herself and she fought the urge to scream. Instead, she patted at the wall, looking for a door, yet rammed into a table, and elicited a curse from behind.

“No bruises, you idiot.” Another shove and her blindfold was lifted. She blinked, though the light was dim, and peered up into a hard, stubbled, and familiar face. “Hitchens.”

No wonder she hadn’t been able to get the police to help. No wonder even Dennis had seemed deaf and mute to her pleas for prompt assistance and investigation. Was he in on it? Had he been party to Nic’s death? “Where’s Dennis?”

Hitchens laughed. “Dennis is too soft to be of any use to us.”

“But… he’s your partner,” she said feebly. She was having trouble ordering her thoughts amid all the latent panic and adrenaline and fear.

“ Chambers is my partner,” Hitchens shot back with such vehemence she immediately knew he only wished it to be so. He also knew she knew it. His round jaw clenched. “I thought you had to piss.”

Swallowing hard, she looked around. A trailer, double-wide, uninspired. Typical. The bathroom was behind her. She’d run into a fold-out table.

“Oh, this is for you, too.” Hitchens pulled his other hand from behind his back and threw a wad of black material at her. Kit looked down at the strips of fabric in her hands, wondering what she was supposed to do with them. Wipe?

“Put that on when you’re done. Do it quickly and quietly or I’ll put it on you. And you won’t like that.”

Kit couldn’t help it. Her chin began to wobble.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t enjoy it. Your type isn’t even close to appealing to me.”

“My type?” she parroted.

“Yeah, you know…” The depths of his eyes lit, a bare bulb of meanness shining right through to spotlight her. Kit expected the vulgar and the familiar-sluts, whores, bitches-so Hitchens surprised her entirely when he said, “Weirdoes.”

Slumping, Kit looked down at the “clothing” in her hands. She didn’t have to think now because there was nothing to figure out. She knew exactly what was happening here, and could pretty well guess what would happen next. In case there was any doubt, Hitchens held out a pair of black stilettos, too. Taking them, Kit bit her lip. She’d always told herself, and believed, that knowing was key because knowledge could keep you safe from harm and all the things you didn’t know. Not the easy answer, like her dad had said, but the truth.

The truth was that she might not ever step foot outside of this trailer again.

Tears welling, she looked back at Hitchens. “You killed Paul, didn’t you?”

“He was an asshole.”

Her fingers tightened against the thin silk. “And Nicole?”

“Nah, that was my bowling night.” Tucking his hands into his jeans pockets, he rocked back on his heels, and smiled cruelly through his lie.

Slumping, Kit swayed. “That’s awful.”

“Only if it happens to you,” he replied coldly, because they both knew it would never happen to him. “Now shut up and take your piss. And make it fast, weirdo. You’re up next.”

Kit entered the small bathroom, dull glaze moving over the dingy linoleum and dirty sink. No lock on the door, of course. No other exit but the…

Window.

It was tiny, glazed, but also half-open. Problem was, Kit could practically hear Hitchens breathing on the door’s other side. She looked around, gaze dropping to the sink’s press-and-hold faucet. Then she looked at the cheap shoes in her hand.

Hell if these were going on her feet, she thought, and pressed the heel against the faucet, pushing down, and wedging the toe against the wall, forcing a steady stream. If she were quiet, this just might work.

She thanked God for the winter chill, which had forced her into cigarette pants instead of a pencil skirt. The argyle sweater would also keep her warm once outside, provided she could get out of the tiny, rusted window.

“Hurry up in there!” Hitchens yelled, as she climbed onto the toilet.

“My tummy hurts,” she said, raising her voice to hide the window’s squeak. She only got halfway. “And I’m being careful not to put a run in the hose.”

There. But only her arms and torso were through the window when Hitchens’s voice rang out again. “I didn’t give you any hose.”

Kit pushed, the sharp steel scraping her hips as the door rocketed open. She squealed, pushed harder, and was falling before she could right herself. Hitchens’s face appeared above her, brows drawn down hard over his eyes. “Fuck!” He disappeared.

Kit fought to sit up, and against the stabbing in her chest. No time to relearn to breathe, she thought, wobbling to her feet. There was barely even enough time to run.

Running had left Grif breathless, nerves had him shaky, and if he didn’t already know where the Marquis had stood, he’d have bypassed it altogether. It was enclosed by a temporary construction wall hemmed in by a chain-linked fence so that no one on the outside could see in.

Apparently, no one could get in, either.

“I told you to wait for me.” Courtney appeared so soundlessly he jumped.

“Which way?” Grif said, not sparing her a glance. He felt like a lion pacing a cage, caught on the outside of the long, linked fence.

Courtney pointed the opposite way. “You passed the entrance. It’s the section that’s boarded, with a rendering of the new casino. It swings open to allow passage from the side street.”

Of course. Chambers and his band of merry child-rapists wouldn’t want to attract the attention of some annoyingly curious tourist. Yet he was still unprepared for the sight of a fleet of mostly foreign luxury cars once he’d passed to the other side. It looked, he thought, like the parking garage at the Ritz.