“Easy,” she said. Her voice was gravelly, as if she’d been screaming a lot. Maybe not getting enough to drink.

My vision was still a little fuzzy, but I could see that her baggy T-shirt and sweats were grayish and soiled. I squinted again, and this time her face became clearer. Her cheeks had hollowed out in the few weeks since I’d seen her, and lacerations were scabbing on her chin and forehead. The skin around her right eye was tinged yellow, as if a black eye was healing.

“It takes a while for the drugs to completely leave your system.”

“Drugs? It was just chloro— Oh, shit.”

I crawled as quickly as I could to the toilet in the corner and heaved. Nothing but stomach acid. It coated my tongue with bitterness and made me gag again.

When had I last eaten? I’d scrambled some eggs at Ryan’s house—God, I wanted Ryan—and drunk a cup of coffee. Right? I willed my mind to churn. Yes, and then I had gone to work. I hadn’t been able to get the vacation time I requested, so I had quit. I went home to pack and— My father.

My father had brought me here.

He intended to sell me into human slavery after all.

I couldn’t say I was surprised.

An image crept into my mind—of two blurry figures standing over me.

Someone else… Someone had helped my father drug and take me.

“Juliet…” My voice was nearly as gravelly as hers.

“The drugs make you sick. Coming out of it really sucks. I’m afraid you’ll have another couple hours of it.”

“Great.” I spewed into the toilet again.

“I wish I could help you. But I can’t move to where you are.”

I didn’t really need any help vomiting, but the thought was nice. I retched once more and then leaned back, gravity taking over until I was flat on my back. Sweat poured from my forehead. I tried to lift my arm to wipe it off on my sleeve, but I couldn’t find the strength.

“How long have I—”

The door opening interrupted me. Someone entered. I was still lying supine, so I couldn’t see.

“Ready for some fun?” A man’s voice. A masked face looked down at me. “She’s a mess, but that’s a tight little body she’s got.”

“She’s off-limits, remember?” another voice said.

I forced my eyes to stay open.

“Why should she be?” the man staring at me said. “No one’s off-limits around here.”

“She is. Boss’s orders.”

“Can’t even knock her around a little?” His eyes were brown. Brown and laced with evil.

“Only if you make sure you don’t leave a mark. And Bud, you always leave a mark.”

So I was hands off. Not a bad thing. But what did that mean for— I dragged myself into a sitting position. Another man turned Juliet around and pushed her sweats down her legs.

“Hey!” I pushed myself to my feet. “Get the fuck off of her!”

“It’s all right, Ruby.” Juliet sniffled. “Just let them get it over with.”

“The hell I will.” I ran—more like stumbled like a drunk—toward the man who was now unbuckling his jeans.

The other one grabbed my arm and wrenched it until I shouted in pain.

“Let go of me, you fucking brute!”

Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get free. My mind was still muddled, and he was twice my size. My body wouldn’t form any self-defense moves. It wasn’t cooperating.

“I can’t just stand here and let him rape you!”

“It’s okay,” she said again.

No. This was so far from okay.

She wasn’t crying. Wasn’t even whimpering. In fact, she didn’t even flinch when he shoved himself into her.

A vile scent hung around the dank room—a putrid aroma of soiled bodies laced with corruption and misery. All I could do was watch the fat hairy ass pumping as the man forced himself inside Juliet.

All I could do was watch.

* * *

They’d both taken a turn.

I’d tried to close my eyes, to close my ears to the grunting, the painful silence of Juliet’s resignation to her fate.

But after fighting so hard to open them, two invisible toothpicks had propped them wide apart like two separated curtains. I couldn’t look away from the train wreck, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Instead, I’d held back the nausea that threatened to consume me and let the horrid scene imprint itself on my brain.

Juliet was slumped in the corner, and I crawled over to her, guilt overwhelming me. They hadn’t touched me. Why?

“Can I do anything for you?”

She sighed softly. “I wish you could. I wish I could go back to that day on the beach and listen to you. I should have never gotten on that Jet Ski.”

True, but now wasn’t the time to press the point. “No matter what you did, what mistakes you made, you didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.” I helped her pull her sweats back up to cover herself.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes they keep us naked. I’m used to it.”

I cringed at her words. No one should ever be “used to” this.

“Juliet, you need to help me. You need to tell me everything you know. I’m going to get us out of here.”

She turned toward me and laughed—actually laughed, though it was still entwined with stoicism. “How? How the hell are you going to get us out of here? It’s not possible. Believe me, I’ve tried everything. I tried sucking up to them. That just made them beat me harder. I tried starving myself. They didn’t care. I tried yelling and screaming until my voice was nothing but a rasp. I tried stealing a cell phone, and I got caught. There’s nothing in here. Nothing to use as a tool or weapon. Just a toilet and sink, which I can’t even get to until they come and unchain me. I’ve learned to hold everything in until they let me go.”

Damn! If only my mind were working better. I had to figure this out. “Who brought you here?”

“Those three guys.” Then she shook her head. “No, that’s not right. They put us on a boat. We never saw them again. I’m not sure who brought me here. This is the second place I’ve been. They…” She choked out a sob.

It was the most emotion I’d seen from her yet.

“What?”

“They killed Lisa. She fought back hard. Bit them a few times. They decided she was too much trouble, and they killed her.”

I hadn’t thought I could be more sickened than when I’d witnessed Juliet’s rape. I was wrong. “How do you know? Maybe they just moved her.”

“Because they made me watch! They beat her until she was unconscious.”

I managed to swallow the bile erupting in my throat. Fucking bastards. And my father was a part of this.

The acid overtook me then, and I barely made it to the toilet. The taste was putrid on my tongue and left vile stickiness around my gums.

I didn’t ask Juliet any more details about what happened to Lisa, even though I was morbidly curious. I needed to know as much about my captors as I could if I was going to get us out of here. Later. After she’d settled down a bit. The woman had just been raped.

“Juliet, you said you stole a cell phone. How did you do that?”

“One time when one of them was in here, you know, raping me, his phone fell out of his pocket. I slid it under my foot before he noticed.”

“Did you text anyone?”

“I texted my mother. And Shayna. Those were the only two numbers I could remember.” She laughed sarcastically. “I had everything on speed dial. No need to remember anything. God, first world problems! If only I could go back.”

“How many times did you text Shayna?”

“Once. Just once. I typed ‘help’ and sent it, and I texted ‘help’ to my mother, but they caught me with the phone before I could hit send.” She pointed to her healing black eye. “I got this for that stunt. It was worth it though.”

Hmm. Shayna had gotten two texts saying “help” from a private number.

“You only texted Shayna once?”

“Yeah.”

I had no explanation. Unless the sadistic bastard whose phone she’d stolen had sent the text again. Why would he do that? Why would any of these monsters do anything like this?

I didn’t want to get into that now. I simply walked slowly to Juliet and held on to her, trying to soothe her.

Oddly, after tearing up over Lisa, she became apathetic again. Though she didn’t turn me away.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said again. “I’m going to get us out of here.”

She laid her head on my shoulder. “You won’t. I’ve accepted it. This is my life now.”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her head up so she was looking at me. “Don’t ever let me hear you say that again. This is not your life. You don’t deserve this.”

“But it was my f—”

“Stop it!” I had to refrain from shaking her. I didn’t have the strength anyway. “We’re going to get out of here. I haven’t been gone very long. There are people who will look for me. And they’ll find me. When they find me, they’ll find you.”

“If they haven’t found us by now, they’ll never find us.”

“Bullshit. My boyfriend and his brothers will have the cavalry looking. Besides, I haven’t been gone long.”

She remained stoic. “Ruby, they put you in this room over a day ago.”

Chapter Five

Ryan