Stolen(6)

She cringed and rolled away. She’d been sleeping in vomit and feces . . . and something else . . . that looked like blood.

No. No. No.

She touched her forehead. Sweaty hair stuck to her face, but she was cold . . . really, really cold. She saw that her hands were trembling, and then, without warning, her entire body began to shake violently. She couldn’t control her limbs. They jerked open and shut, jackknifing at the joints. Panic travelled over her in waves as tangible as the convulsions. Her head slammed against the floor, but God took no mercy on her—the head bang didn’t knock her out. She remained fully conscious through every excruciating muscle spasm until, after what seemed an eternity, the seizure passed. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. What the hell was going on?

Get off the floor, Laura.

If she could manage to stand up, she told herself, everything would be okay. She’d look around and realize that this had all been one of her bad dreams. Or maybe a hallucination. After all, she’d seen things that weren’t really there before. But . . . that was so long ago, and she’d been heavily medicated at the time. Dr. Webber had said the hallucinations were caused by an interaction between her antidepressants and her sleeping pills. Once he’d changed her meds around, the visions had stopped. At the moment, she couldn’t remember much about the recent past, but one thing she knew for sure: she’d tossed out all of her pills the day she left DC for Denver.

There was no way drugs could be the cause of all this because she hadn’t taken any.

Get up, Laura! Now!

Lurching to her feet, she looked around. Her eyes filled with tears. Everything was still there: the puke on the floor, the blood, and the stench that permeated the air, bearing shameful witness to her incontinence.

Hallucinations didn’t smell—at least not the type she’d had in the past.

This was real.

She’d been passed out in a pool of her own bodily fluids, and she had no idea for how long. It might’ve been hours or even days.

Shuddering, she dragged her gaze around the interior of the room. Its bare walls brought a glimmer of recognition. She remembered seeing this cabin before . . . before . . . before what? She yanked at her damp hair, as if that could stimulate her memory. And maybe it worked because she now recalled the flicker of a candle. A table. Her hand went to her throat. Her heart, already racing, kicked into overdrive. With her fingertips, she sought out the razor-thin scars that had long marred her neck and felt new wounds—ones that were still moist and excruciatingly sore.

Dead ahead was the table she remembered, as well as a chair with her silk scarves—the ones she wore to cover the marks on her neck—wrapped around its arms.

Another flash of memory: He’d tied her up.

But as she studied her arms, she didn’t find any telltale ligature marks.

Because he’d used her silk scarves.

Unlike rope would have done, the scarves had left no trace, no physical evidence, but she remembered being bound. She remembered . . . a knife.

He’d held a knife to her throat.

Gripping her abdomen, she doubled over, barely managing not to throw up.

She closed her eyes and recalled her mouth being stuffed with a damp, stinky rag.

The pieces were slowly falling into place. He’d drugged her, taken her from her room and brought her here to this remote cabin. That must be what happened.

It was him.

It must have been.

Her legs tried to buckle, but she didn’t collapse. He would not bring her to her knees. She would not cower naked on the floor. She retrieved the soiled sheet that had covered her, wrapped it around her shoulders and body, and in the process noticed her purse where it lay open beneath the table. Rifling through it, she located her wallet. It still contained the five hundred dollars in cash she’d withdrawn from the bank on Monday to loan to her friend, Harriet, who was in a tight spot after falling out with her mom. Laura had never learned to drive, but she had a Colorado state identification card. It was there, along with her Holly Hill student badge. Only her cell phone appeared to be missing.

With clumsy hands she removed a compact of powder from her bag. She opened it, took a bracing breath, and inspected herself in the mirror. It wasn’t the haggard look in her blue-gray eyes, it wasn’t her bone-white complexion or even the vomit and blood matting her long black hair that made her want to climb out of her own skin. It was those fresh marks on her neck. There, just above her old scars, she touched the new wounds—each one a nearly perfect match to the scar below. She bowed her head, not to pray, but to think. The cuts were fine and shallow. Too superficial to be the cause of all the blood on the floor . . . and yet she didn’t seem to have any other injuries. As shaky and weak as she felt, she could still stand, still walk, still think. Like everything else, it made no sense . . . unless all that blood wasn’t hers.