I touched my thumb to the engagement ring he’d given me half a year ago right when we’d bought our house together, but a new panic overcame me. Raising my hand, I looked at my finger, at the tan line there where a ring should have been.
It was gone.
Another memory came, the feel of fingers tugging the three-carat princess cut diamond ring from my finger. Tears stung my eyes and every hair on my body stood on end. Of course, they’d taken it. They’d try to get money from Arthur now. Or my dad. They’d ransom me back, wouldn’t they? I looked at the other women again. Were we all to be ransomed?
Moving the timeline up?#p#分页标题#e#
No fuck-ups, nothing linking back to me. Otherwise, make it look good.
That memory hurt. I closed my eyes and leaned back, warding off the sleep that wanted to claim me again, my head throbbing where a bump was, my neck tender. The truck drove fast and cars no longer passed us. I wasn’t sure where we were or how long we’d been driving. I knew I’d been sedated, as I suspected the other girls had been — they too kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
Just as I was nodding off again, the sound of gunfire jolted all of us awake. Women screamed as something exploded in the distance, lighting up the black sky for a moment before a second, smaller explosion followed. The truck then swerved off the road, throwing us against one wall. Pain shot through my wrist, the chain linking the girl and me yanking at our arms. More gunfire rang out, along with the sound of men yelling. We all huddled onto the floor, covering our heads, many of the women weeping, screaming in terror.
I don’t know why I remained silent, or how. Panic filled me and all I could do was count to keep my focus, to keep myself calm. I counted screams. I counted gunshots and prayed I wouldn’t be killed in a spray of gunfire. I prayed like I had never prayed in my life.
A bullet ricocheted off the steel frame of the truck and that time I did scream. We held each other tightly and huddled as low as we could, making ourselves as small as possible until finally — an eternity later — it stopped.
It was nearly silent after that, the only sound the whimpering of the women. I peered out from between the steel slats of the enclosure wall, the tiny slit too small to get a good view outside. It was then I heard them. Two men talking, a door opening, something — or someone — falling with a loud thud.
“Fucking bastards,” a rough male voice said.
Another replied but I couldn’t make out the words. The voices were those of strangers. Were they our rescuers?
One more gunshot jolted us, the sound of metal on metal echoing through the truck as someone unlocked the door. The women huddled back. My eyes were glued to the door, my heart beating fast, dread of the unknown turning my blood cold. The door creaked as it opened from the top, rotating on the hinge at the bottom until it formed a sloping ramp down to the ground creating a sort of ramp used to load and unload animals. I could make out the form of a man — a large man — a weapon slung over his shoulder. It was too dark to see his face, but he shone a flashlight into the truck, the light stabbing through the blackness, blinding us. A few of the women screamed and he banged on the truck wall with the butt of his weapon.
“Settle down. No one’s going to hurt you.” His voice was deep and low, the sort of voice you felt rather than heard.
The women quieted to soft whimpering which he seemed to accept. He passed the light over us again and while the women cowered away, I remained still, looking straight at him, determined to make him look at me, to make him know I would fight. I knew somehow that this wasn’t a rescue. I felt it. And the man standing at the door did nothing to change my mind. He shone that flashlight in my face and held it there until I heard a clicking of his tongue.
Suddenly, the headlights of an approaching vehicle blinded me, forcing me to look away.
When it came to a stop, the headlights flooded the interior of our truck, also illuminating the man who stood just outside it, the one who had opened the door. He was dressed in full black, his hair a shade darker than the night, his face impassive. He stared back at me, never once shifting his gaze, not to any of the others, not to the pickup truck now parked a few feet away. No, his gaze remained locked on mine, black eyes that made me tremble, that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.#p#分页标题#e#
Footsteps approached, another man, bigger, his expression harder even as his golden eyes sparkled in the moonlight. He stood beside his partner, studying us, taking each girl in by turn before his eyes came to rest upon me. He looked at the first man, the pair exchanging whispered words before both of them turned to me again. A cold sweat broke out over my whole body. I could hear the faint sound of music from the pickup truck the second man had driven up in, the melody momentarily distracting me from the surreal situation. I recognized the song, the words of the chorus eerily appropriate to our predicament. We were the prey — and we’d been hunted by these men. Their gazes were impenetrable and predatory, the coldness in their eyes chilling.