by Adele Huxley
The disguised figure strode into the room, his hand resting on the butt of a white assault rifle. The other hand lifted a phone to his mouth and using the same voice altering software, spoke.
“What is happening in here?”
Phoenix hoped that coming face to face with the guy might shut her up, but there was no luck.
“My head,” she declared, thrusting her chin out. “I demand to see a doctor.”
Phoenix cringed at her arrogance. Throwing a snotty American attitude was not the way to make friends and influence kidnappers. He braced himself, fully expecting the guy to haul off and smack her.
Instead, much to his surprise, the man knelt between them. After sliding the phone into a hidden pocket and tucking the rifle behind his back, he made quick work of untying her hands.
With a start, Phoenix realized the kidnapper had unsecured his restraints from the post as well. With his heart pounding, he fought to stay perfectly still and not let on he was essentially free. His mind raced.
The second he’s out of here, I’m gonna get Hunter to untie my hands fully. Then I can start getting people free and…
The man pulled at both their tied hands and jerked his head up, urging them to stand.
“Naw man, I’m good. I’m not hurt,” Phoenix protested.
The next pull at their wrist wasn’t as gentle. His release wasn’t an accident. He’d meant to untie them both. Phoenix struggled to his feet and all fresh hope melted away.
As they were led outside into the fading daylight, he could feel Penny try to grab his eye. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
Chapter 4
“You don’t have to take both of us,” she pleaded as the guard led them from the barn.
They shuffled along in front of the armed man. When he wanted to point them in a direction, he used the muzzle of his rifle to tap their shoulder. Subtle. Effective.
Phoenix still couldn’t believe he was trapped in this situation. From the moment they’d stormed the buses to now being led away from relative warmth and safety, it felt like a nightmare he was about to wake up from.
It has to be a nightmare because she’s here, he thought.
If he were being truthful, he was scared shitless. Showing it wouldn’t help anything, however, so he kept a brave face in place. Hiding his true emotions through even the darkest of moments was a specialty he hadn’t needed to use in a long time.
He lied to himself. If it weren’t for the thin rope connecting them, he would’ve tried to make a break for it. He was healthy and fit. He could easily knock the guy over, maybe steal his gun. Because of the bindings attaching him to slow, useless Penny, he didn't have half a chance.
These daring scenarios ran through his mind as they were led to the opposite side of the compound. It was only as they neared a small shed, did he kick himself for not paying more attention. He realized he should’ve been counting steps to judge the distance, checking to see how many other kidnappers he saw in the area. Surely, the athletes outnumbered them, but now he couldn’t be sure.
Penny became more agitated the closer to the shed they got. When it became obvious where they were being led, she panicked. She twisted away from Phoenix and around to face the guard.
“Maybe all I need is a bandage or something. I'm feeling a lot better now.”
The guard replied by shoving the muzzle of the gun in her shoulder. She stumbled and almost pulled Phoenix down with her. It was the first time he caught a glimpse of the cut on her head.
It looked nasty. Just above her left temple, a black and blue egg protruded from under her hairline. A long but thankfully shallow gash still leaked blood.
“Careful,” he whispered. It wouldn’t do either of them any good to get hurt further. Falling with your hands tied behind your back would always end up causing injury.
The guard pulled on their bindings as they approached. He kept a strong grip and turned them slightly as he pounded a fist on the door. Moments later, it opened.
Phoenix tried to watch from the corner of his eye, but it was difficult to do so without being obvious. The man inside was tall, thin, but dressed in all the same gear. The two spoke in a different language, using their voice scramblers. The vaguely robotic, foreign sound made everything so much more ominous.
They were granted entry. Penny freaked out even more.
“Why are you doing this to us? What is all this? Why?”
She thrashed around, painfully yanking his arms back. Between his reaction and a new guard holding her down, she was swiftly subdued.
The shed was deeper than the narrow front let on. It was poorly lit with a single row of fluorescent tube lighting. The faint hum of a generator broke the otherwise silent room. The space was largely empty except for a handful of chairs gathered in the center.
A wave of genuine fear rippled through him as they were sat back-to-back. This was real. This was truly happening to them. He very well may get hurt or killed. As much as he wanted to rage against these assholes, he understood they held the upper hand. Keeping quiet was his best course of action. Unfortunately, Penny didn’t read the situation in the same way.
“You motherfuckers,” she growled. “You’re not gonna get away with this. They’ll be expecting the buses in the Village.”
The tallest of the three guards stepped forward. Hidden somewhere under his white balaclava was a voice scrambler. He didn’t have to lift a phone to his mouth. When he spoke, it came out already distorted. There was still a hint of an accent in there, but it was impossible to place.
“You’re hurt.”
“Not as hurt as you’re gonna be when they catch you.”
The man sighed. Phoenix wanted to slap a hand over her mouth, shake some sense into her, something. She was reading the situation all wrong and only making things worse. Okay, they were holding assault rifles and had them bound inside a smaller, more menacing room, but they weren’t acting aggressively. Her tirade jumped quickly from personal insults to religious to vaguely political.
Phoenix reached for her fingers to give them a squeeze. The second he made contact, she tore herself away.
The tall guard moved toward her, his hand outstretched to check the wound on her head.
Penny cleared her throat and spat.
The man cursed and jumped back. Phoenix saw him wipe a glob of snotty spit from his protected cheek.
He didn’t see the blow, but he heard and felt the residual ripple as it made contact with Penny’s face. Phoenix’s heart stopped at the sound of her surprised gasp. From the little he felt, the guy hadn’t pulled his punch at all. And when Penny spoke again, his heart thumped with a renewed pride.
“Fuck you,” she spat. The words were wet, bloody and just as arrogant.
In all the time he’d spent around her, never before had he had a truer sense of her character. Even in the face of all this, she still had the balls to stand up to them. He noticed one of the other guards move closer. Phoenix was speaking before he realized it, hearing the words as if they were coming from another’s lips.
“Hold up, fellas. You gotta understand, we’re a bit freaked out here. She doesn’t mean any harm—”
“The fuck I don’t. Anyone without a goddamn stethoscope hanging around their neck that tries to touch me is gonna lose their dick.”
Phoenix squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and tried again using his most bro-to-bro tone. “Guys. She obviously had a hard knock to the head. Whatever it is you’re planning here, surely it’s gonna be a lot harder if you continue adding to her brain damage.”
The two guards he could see seemed to wordless confer, glancing to the one behind him. The tallest nodded once and moved to examine her head again. This time, Penny loosed a scream before kicking out with both legs. The guard caught them and threw her to the ground. Phoenix could do nothing to stop his fall. He was merely along for the ride.
They slammed to the floor, awkwardly dropping to their shoulders and hips as the chairs
bounced away. He quickly rolled to his side to face her, hoping in the small gap between attacks, he could talk some sense into her.
“Will you please calm down?” he begged as they pushed up to a seated position.
There was a fire in her eyes he’d never seen before. The moment she met his gaze, he knew there was no reasoning with her. He considered the idea that this sudden shift in personality could really be from the knock to the head.
The guards left them on the ground, disappearing into the shadows.
“That’s right. Run you fucking pussies! You’re so screwed. You’re scared of a short-ass girl with her hands tied behind her back.”
“Ah Christ…” Phoenix mumbled.
She wouldn’t stop with her verbal attacks. In fact, the longer they left them alone on the cold floor, the angrier she got. He vacillated between proud and terrified.
One guard returned, followed by another. When the tallest approached, Penny’s attitude flipped completely around. At first, Phoenix didn’t understand why, but she'd seen what was in his hands instantly.
Hoods.
“Okay, okay,” she whined. “You proved your point.” She dug her heels into the ground, pushing away from him as they approached. No matter how scared she was, she didn’t have the strength to pull Phoenix along with her. The sudden shift still had his head spinning.
“Have I?” the man commented cruelly.
“You have,” she insisted.
Phoenix tried to gauge her expression. The difference between her aggression to this terror was so stark, he would’ve believed she was putting it on. But the horror there was real.
With no communication between them, the two other men pulled them to their feet. They righted the chairs and sat them back down.
“Feet,” the tallest commanded.
Penny didn’t put up an ounce of fight as they strapped her ankles to the legs of the chair. Phoenix was grateful they decided he wasn’t as much of a threat, but still thrummed with concern for her.
She brought it on herself, he thought without any comfort.
Once he was confident she was secured, the tallest approached. He raised the rough, burlap hood open in front of him and Penny completely dissolved.
“Please, Jesus. Nononono, please! I promise, I’ll stop. Oh, God. No, you don’t have to—please!”
The urgency gave the guard enough pause, Phoenix jumped in.
“Hey man, whatever you’re about to do to her…” He swallowed and shook his head. “Do it to me. I’ll take her place.”
The guard moved toward her once more and slammed the hood over her head.
Penny shrieked so loudly he would’ve believed her leg had just been severed. The single cry turned into muffled whimpers. He could actually hear her quick breaths and knew she was on the edge of a complete panic attack.
“Come on! I know she deserves it, but let me take the beating.”
Penny's whimpers shattered his heart. Her cries were from a place of deep, animal fear.
“Come on!” He shouted. Not only did he want to step in and save her, but he couldn’t bear to hear her cry any longer. The sound tore him up inside. “You pieces of shit. Little pussies getting off on hurting women.”
Phoenix rolled his head to the side and bore into the reflective goggles of the closest man. After only a moment or two, the man nodded.
Penny gasped for air as if surfacing from water.
Before he had a chance to question his brave gesture, the hood slammed over his head, blocking most of his vision of the outside world.
Penny’s fingers flickered and grasped for his before they were wrenched apart. As the tether between them was cut, he felt a fear and loss he never expected.
“Get her out of here.”
Chapter 5
As they tore the hood from her head and cut the cord between them, Penny struggled to stay conscious. Despite all the years of therapy, the sheer terror that hood had created in her brought sparkles to her vision. Horrible.
They yanked her to her very unsteady feet. She chanced a look back and her knees buckled at the sight. Phoenix, tied and hooded, in the center of the room. Absolutely horrific.
Even after everything, she thrashed to get away. They physically had to drag her out of the shed.
The frigid air smacked some sense into her. The wound on her head stung and her jaw ached from the smack she’d earned, but it didn’t matter. All she was worried about was Phoenix.
She couldn’t hear much through the thick door, but there were sounds of a scuffle. She thought she heard and felt a hard impact, maybe Phoenix falling to the floor again, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Please make it stop,” she begged the person holding her. But the goggles stared straight ahead. If anything, the grip on her wrist tightened.
Through the fog of fear and anxiety, she made a mental note of his height. It gave her enough clarity to look around and absorb even more information.
At first glance, the area appeared to be an old farmyard, but many of the buildings were newer. Some looked newly built. They weren’t all re-purposed barns, but structures designed for a reason.
Judging from their footprints and reversing their path in her head, the large barn in the distance was where they’d first been held. There was another to the far left, smaller, but with the same evidence of foot traffic prints in the snow.
The guard noticed her quietly observing their surroundings and whipped her around. Without a word, he palmed the back of her head and slowly pressed her nose against the door.
Yeah, got it, she thought as her gut twisted. She used the moment to slip her hand into her jacket pocket and press the emergency button. And you’re about to get it too. She carefully pulled the button out and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to stand in the cold for too long. Closer to the door, she could hear more of what was going on inside. The scrape of chair legs against the floor. Heavy footsteps. The twist of the latch handle.
Because of her position, she came face-to-face with Phoenix’s hooded figure. She wanted to burst into tears at the sight, but held back by biting down hard on her bottom lip. The guard behind him lifted the covering by pinching the top.
Penny didn’t want to look. She expected to see him bruised and bloodied, a broken nose, missing teeth. That sight would have surely pulled tears from her eyes. What she didn’t expect was to see he was perfectly fine.
Phoenix looked down at her with an unreadable expression.
The frightening tall guard with the built in voice changer spoke behind him. “Take them back. Make an example of them.”
Penny’s mind raced as they were ushered to the barn. Her original plan was to get a better sense of their surroundings. If she put up enough of a fuss, she figured they’d have to improvise. Those moments typically exposed weaknesses she could later use to exploit.
But when Phoenix had gotten roped into it with her, everything felt wildly out of control. At first it seemed as though she hadn’t learned a thing, but as they strode back to the barn, she wondered if that were entirely true.
Night was falling quickly around them and it became clear the camp was not lit. In fact, no one operated any flashlights and no lights shone from any of the buildings. It was one last detail Penny squirreled away before they were pushed back into the main barn.
As if to contradict her observation, the guard pulled out a flashlight as the door closed. Instead of a bright white LED spread, it glowed a faint red. It was bright enough to see by but not enough to cause blindness.
Neither of them put up any fight as he shoved them to the empty post. Penny slid to the floor and kept still as he secured them to the beam and to each other.
Lifting the phone to his mouth, he confidently strode between down the paths as he spoke.
“Whatever your partner does, you will be punished for. If they try to escape, you will be beaten. If they make noise, cause trouble, you will be beaten.”
“If you call them pussies and insult their mothers, you will be beaten,” Phoenix muttered under his breath.
Penny whipped her head around. “Are you okay?”
His fingers found hers, intertwining with comforting warmth. “Body shots, mostly. I’m good. Rock-hard abs, you know.”
The guard was far enough away, she didn’t feel like they were in any danger speaking.
“I’m so sorry you got dragged into that. I didn’t mean—”
The red light swept across them but carried on in another direction. He was warning the right side of the barn.
Penny continued. “I was trying to get a reaction out of them, figure out their motives.”
“I guess that explains all the religious shit,” he grumbled. “I figured you were just a bigot.”
“Religious terrorism is a thing,” she snapped, her hackles rising. She tore her fingers from his.
It was as though he had a map of her buttons. Even in a situation like this, he couldn’t help pressing a bunch of them, like a flat palm to a dial pad.
“I hope my ass-kicking got you what you wanted, then. What’s their motive?” he demanded in a sharp whisper.
She opened her mouth to speak but slapped it shut as the guard approached. He stopped at the door, took one last look back, and left.
It was like a balloon deflating in her chest. The pressure and tension flew out of her. She didn’t realize how much she’d been carrying. Whether it was adrenaline or temperature or a combination, she began to tremble.
Penny tried to hide it, but Phoenix obviously felt her fear.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his tone much softer and forgiving. “I’m sorry I’m being such a prick.”
“It’s okay. Kind of extraordinary circumstances here,” she replied, her voice quivering.
“You really gave ‘em hell though,” he chuckled.
It bought a tiny smile to her lips. “I tried.”
She could feel him shift a little, twisting around to press his shoulder into hers.
