Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
I suppose it just means that I’m a complete and utter fool…but I begin to hope again.
4
I come around to a hard shake of my shoulder. “Wake up, Cherry.”
Oh my god. I feel like I’ve been run over by a freight train made of pillows. My brain and body seem slow and muffled.
I just want to go back to sleep.
“No more sleeping.” Another shake jars me away from that plan. “Time to get to work.”
Work. Which isn’t the work I should be doing, in Dr. Singh’s office. No more mewling kittens or sweet old hounds or mean parrots. No drinks after work with the girls. But that had been over even before I flew to Las Vegas to see Matt.
“Cherry!” Victor snaps.
“I’m up,” I say groggily, and try to make it at least half true by pushing up onto my elbows. My hair’s in a tangle around my face and my mouth… God. My tongue feels swollen and dry, and tastes as if something crawled in there and died while I was sleeping.
Not sleeping. Was unconscious. Drugged.
Because I’m not in the barn anymore.
Victor tosses a towel at me and points across the room. “Piss and shower. Leave the door open. No funny shit.”
No funny shit. “Roger that.” I drag myself off of a stained, bare mattress. “I promise that whatever you find in that toilet when I’m done will be deeply unfunny shit.”
Or nothing at all. Judging by the state of my skin and my shy bladder, I’m badly dehydrated. I have vague memories of Hotel spilling water down my chin and chest, telling me to drink while the entire world rattled around me. And of Doc with a syringe, telling me that I’d be okay, that this would make it easier.
I find that injection site on my inner elbow. And another next to it, less expertly done, so it looks like a mosquito bite. As if after making sure I got some water down me, Victor drugged me again.
So that’s how they made sure I wouldn’t alert anyone while we were driving to…wherever we are now. A rundown house with a bathroom floored with cracking linoleum, sporting a Pepto-Bismol pink sink and tub, rusted stainless steel fixtures, and a boarded-up window.
Bending over the sink, I fill my cupped hands with tap water and drink—three double handfuls, then make myself stop so that I don’t puke it all up—and struggle to fill in the gaps.
I remember Papa saying that I’d be bait. Then returning to the barn to get the makeup I’d need—
Get free. Any way you can. Don’t worry about me. Just get to Harris or Martinez.
—and talk to Matt. I must have told him what was happening, because his voice rings clearly through my head.
And then…almost nothing. Just that faint recollection of Doc.
“Get a move on, Cherry,” Victor says from the next room.
Into the shower, where grimy soap scum darkens the anti-diarrheal pink. But the water is hot, something I haven’t enjoyed in months—our showers are two-minute lukewarm streams that spray into our stalls every night—and at least the moldy shower curtain offers the luxury of privacy. I wash as quickly as I can and then simply wallow in the delicious heat, letting it wake up my still-groggy brain.
Get free, Matt told me. But after getting free, I still have to be careful about who I contact. Matt’s boss suspects that there’s a leak in the Bureau, because Papa and the others who run the trafficking network always seem to be two steps ahead—and a few agents have been killed after their covers were blown. But there are two men that Matt trusts. Harris and Martinez. So I’m supposed to go directly to them, because anyone else might be dangerous.
But if I have to, I can seek the protection of local cops, because the chances that some random police officer is connected to any of this is slim. And that means getting their attention any way I can. Screaming, shouting bloody murder—or even attacking someone. Because as soon as I’m arrested, I can get a message to Matt’s boss, telling him the location of the stables. Then they’ll rescue Matt.
Whatever it takes.
It won’t be easy, because I suspect Victor will be on my ass the entire time. But I got the drop on him once. I can do it again.
Filled with purpose, I dry off behind the shower curtain and wrap myself in the towel. Victor’s standing in the bathroom door, waiting for me. “Get that dress on and come out.”
That dress is one of Lissa’s. Grief clogs my throat as I pull on the skintight sheath, and I wonder how many times she put it on and planned the same thing—of making a scene, of desperately trying to find a way to escape—but I channel both grief and despair into determination.