Chapter 6
Paige woke hanging from her wrists with her back against something painful. Her neck pounded and her hands felt as if they were about to pop free from her arms. She lifted her chin, blinking back the grogginess. Her back prickled with pain as she moved, as if she were leaning against a bed of cactus. What had happened?
She struggled to put her weight on her legs and pull away from the surface poking into her back and buttocks. Metal clinked with her effort. Then her stomach knotted and it came to her. Her client had lost his mind. He’d punched her in the face, kidnapped her, cut off her dress.
Paige looked around to see what held her. Heavy shackles padded in thick leather were clamped around each of her wrists. She thrust her hips and chest upward to take the weight and strain off her wrists. The prickling pain in her back and buttocks eased. Her arms had been restrained above her head, pulled to the trunk of a tree. She was chained to the ugly Sycamore behind Edward’s house, assuming he’d brought her to his house. The thick bark of the tree was what had been digging into her flesh.
How long had she been hanging? Her shoulders were knotted up tight. She had been unconscious, but for how long? A couple hours? That sounded like a long time to be out from a punch, even to the back of the head. Maybe it had only been a few minutes. It was difficult to tell. The sun wasn’t yet high in the sky, so it had to be morning. Maybe nine-ish, assuming she was looking east as she thought she was.
Her head ached. Her thoughts were jumbled and slow. She thought it likely she had a concussion. His fists were so hard and heavy, like blocks of ice, that she had to be bruised badly. Her cheekbone could be fractured. The swelling made her skin tight, hot, and she knew the pain would only get worse. At this rate her cheek would be twice its normal size come morning. If she was still alive come morning.
Paige tilted her head stretching out her neck. She had to clear her mind. Think. She needed to think if she was going to survive this. What could she do to help herself?
The afternoon sun caressed her skin, and despite its warmth, she shivered. She looked down at her body. She was naked. Anger fired through her like lit gunpowder. The bastard. The sick bastard had stripped off the rest of her clothes while she’d been unconscious.
She felt her face blush at the thought of him seeing her naked, at being mounted to the tree. She wondered if he had touched her. She wondered where he had touched her. She had no way to cover herself. The body she’d grown up hating stood showered in light, available to him as he liked.
Why was Edward doing this? Had she done something to provoke him? Had she said something wrong?
None of it made any sense, unless he was playing some sort of game. Albeit, it would be a sick twisted game she didn’t want any part of, but maybe Edward thought he was fulfilling some sort of weird fantasy for her. If so, then he was a very sick man. Delusional.
When she saw him again, she’d set him straight. Tell him his game had gone way too far.
But deep inside she knew Edward wasn’t playing any game. This was no misunderstanding. He had kidnapped her, had taken her against her will, and now she fought to keep her mind from touching on what he might have in store for her. He meant to do something awful. She knew that. The awfulness of his intent hung in the air like humidity. She wouldn’t be able to stop him. He’d chained her to the tree in such a way that she couldn’t stop him.
At least her legs were free. She could cross her legs, kick, fight. But how much damage would she really be able to do with just her legs? How long would she be able to keep him off her? And why hadn’t he chained her legs to the tree. He’d had the opportunity. Did he want her to be able to kick? Would it excite him?
Oh God, her scars. No one but Eddie had seen her scars in a long time. She’d tried so hard to forget their existence. But here, nude, in the bright sunlight, they might be seen. Thank God, he didn’t chain me to the tree spread eagle. There would be no hiding them then. No way to miss them.
Thankfully, Edward’s car was gone and there was no sign of him. She sank back with relief. Her secret was safe, for now.
The back of his house was visible from where she stood, along with a few trees. She could even see the long driveway and the black iron gate leading up to the house. A winch had been bolted to the concrete slab he’d parked on when he’d brought her here. She didn’t want to think about the purpose of the winch. Pulling off parts of her body? Her knees nearly buckled at the thought.
She was just a real estate agent, relentless in the pursuit of properties for her clients, eager to buy or sell, and quick to offer an approachable smile to every customer. She did her job, dreamed of one day becoming an artist working with paints and canvas instead of contracts. Why hadn’t she gone back to the office as Eddie had suggested? She’d been such a fool. She should have protected herself better. In retrospect, she found her complete lack of caution amazing. Sure, she was no Miss Marple, able to spot cunning killers through the subtle twists and turns of seemingly insignificant clues. Still, she should have known better than to climb into another man’s car, a man she barely knew. She should have been able to spot some hint into his true character. Part of her job was reading people.
The shackles around Paige’s wrists had cut off the circulation to her hands, turning them a deep, ugly shade of red. She opened and closed them into tight fists, trying to force blood and feeling back into them. The chains rattled as she moved and a drop of sweat ran down her nose.
Guilt gnawed at her that she hadn’t fought viciously for her freedom when she’d been in his car. She was no action heroine, no Angelina Jolie who could jump and kick her way through a dozen armed men while wielding a pair of machine guns. But she was a fighter. At least, she’d always thought she was. She had fists and teeth and nails and the will to fight for her life. But she had done nothing in the car to fight Edward. She hadn’t fought him until he’d brought her here and then it was too late.
She should have used her legs, kicked at him, at the glass, at the steering wheel forcing the car off the road. Had Edward’s actions been so quick, so suddenly violent and so beyond her expectations they’d paralyzed her? She could think of no other explanation. Her own mind had frozen, betrayed her at the sight of a straight razor. It was seeing the leather collar that snapped her out of it, made her realize he saw her as nothing more than an animal.
She ran her tongue over the wound she’d bit in her lip when he’d brought the blade toward her throat to cut her dress from her. She was ashamed of her initial submissiveness and she let the shame build. Build until it turned. Turned to anger. Anger that beat down her fear. She clung to the anger. When the opportunity came she would unleash it. His razor wouldn’t freeze her again.
Paige took a closer look at her surroundings, analyzed her situation, hunted for some way out. A wood porch ran around both sides of the house. Two windows, a door. The door was maybe thirty feet away, looked solid, without glass. One of the windows, wide and off to one side, had dark curtains preventing her from seeing anything within. The other window, smaller, stood in front of her with a thin white curtain parted just a bit. She could make out a table of some sort inside, but everything else was in shadow.
The wind gusted. Leaves rustled in the nearby trees. Tiny grains of dirt stung her body as they struck her, and Paige slitted her eyes against the onslaught. Crows cried and a squirrel chattered at her angrily. She looked down at the ground, for some rock or sharp object she might be able to pick up with her feet, for something to use. Never mind how she would get it from her feet to her hands. But there were no rocks of any size, no sharp objects, only dirt and thick tree roots.
She realized then that from the top of the small canyon her voice would carry for quite some distance, maybe even a couple of miles. If someone lived close enough or if someone were hunting nearby, they would hear her. Weren’t men often out fishing or hunting
? There had to be water to fish and animals to hunt nearby. You couldn’t go more than a mile in the woods without running into a pond, a lake, or a river and every other man seemed to shoot deer, birds, or something. If they heard a woman screaming surely they would come to investigate or call a sheriff. Wouldn’t they?
“Help!” Paige yelled. The crows took flight. She listened.
She had a weird feeling of déjà vu she couldn't shake. She’d never experienced anything remotely like this, but it was all still frighteningly familiar, like some recurring nightmare that, until now, had been repressed deep in her memory.
The leaves rustled in the wind, the squirrel chattered at her again, but there was nothing else. Her throat dried, and she swallowed a couple of times to try to moisten her vocal cords.
Paige yelled again, louder. “Help! Anybody, please help!”
She forced the words from her stomach rather than her chest. While watching football with Eddie an announcer had said the coach wouldn’t have lost his voice so quickly if he’d yelled from his stomach instead of his chest. She didn’t know if that was true or if she was doing it properly, but she wanted to keep her voice as long as possible, so she yelled from her stomach.
The only response was silence.
The squirrel had quieted, probably frightened by all her yelling. Even the wind had stopped. Now that it was calmer, her voice might carry even further. Surely, someone would hear her. Surely, someone would come.
“Help! Somebody, please help!”
Her whole body strained, directing all of her attention to her ears, listening for any sound.
And she heard someone.
The sound was very faint, someone calling something back to her, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Help! I’m over here!” Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Someone was going to rescue her. For a moment, relief took hold and her whole body relaxed. It would be Eddie. No. It couldn’t be him. He had no idea what had happened to her. He must be worried, though, since she’d never called him back. He had to be looking for her by now, but it was too soon for him to have been able to find her. She knew that. Still, she desperately wanted it to be him.
Paige cried out every few moments for help, screaming, “I’m over here,” and “Help me,” so they could follow her voice.
She yelled for what seemed like a long time, but she knew it probably wasn’t as long as it felt, even though she had nearly lost her voice from the effort. So much for yelling from the stomach.
The wind picked up, whipping at the leaves, rocking the trees back and forth, so the branches seemed to be waving her would be rescuer toward her. She listened as hard as she could.
Whoever it had been, they had probably gone for help. It might take them a while to get to a phone, unless they had a cell phone on them, and even then, it might still take a while for a police car to show up. The nearest officer might be several miles away.
Something crawled across the back of Paige’s neck, made its way around toward her ear. She shuddered and rubbed the back of her head against the bark in an attempt to knock whatever it was off, but little tickles that could only be tiny legs scampered down her neck, across her shoulder, and down her arm. She hated bugs. Please don’t let it be a bug. Let it be my imagination.
Looking down she saw a fat black spider. She screamed. It wasn’t rational to scream, the spider couldn’t understand her scream and wouldn’t be frightened off her arm, but she couldn’t help it.
She thrust her shoulder forward in an effort to dislodge the insect from her body, but the spider clung to her skin like a rodeo cowboy riding for the national championship.
Something buzzed at her ankle and then her ear, her nose. She wiggled her body and jerked at each buzz of wings and every touch of legs.
Paige was under attack and there was no one to rescue her from the insects, no Starbuck’s to take cover in. She desperately wanted to scratch every inch of her body while running as far from the tree as possible. Trapped and chained up, she twisted and turned as little pricks of legs, crawling itches, and stinging bites assaulted her.
Surely some of the sensations were being created by her mind. She forced her thoughts off the creeping crawlies moving across her body. She tried to think about something else, anything else, but she couldn’t do it. She lost control, something that hadn’t happened to her since she was a thirteen. Her whole body shook, and she sobbed uncontrollably.
Memories of being called into Ms. Whyte’s office flooded her with anger and humiliation. When her PE teacher told her to bend over the desk, she’d wondered at why she was being punished. Why Ms. Whyte wanted to give her swats. If the paddle hit one of her multiple sores the pain would be unfathomable. She’d been too shocked and frightened by the thought to question what was happening. And then she felt the woman’s long fingers pawing at her under her skirt. Her entire body clenched tight at the woman’s touch, but she didn’t fight. She didn’t even cry then, only after, as she walked home from school. It was the look of horror on Ms. Whyte’s face that hurt her the most. The way her mouth gaped open. The way she gasped and would not look at her.
Her mind numb from Ms. Whyte’s invasion of her personal space, she wandered right past her house and kept going. She didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want her mother to know about her sores, didn’t want anyone to know. There was too much shame in it.
As she’d plodded along toward the highway someone must have seen her and, worried about her, called the police. A wide black car with flashing red and blue lights pulled in front of her and the man inside turned the car’s spotlight on the warm tears running down her cheeks. He took her home.
Paige hadn’t lost control since.
Most of the bad things in her life happened because she didn’t have control. That was a truth she’d come to accept and live by. And she wasn’t going to give up her control again. Not without a fight.
Get a grip, they’re just bugs. They won’t hurt you.
Turning toward the spider, she sucked in her breath and blew as hard as she could. Dislodged by the sudden burst of air, the spider harmlessly spiraled to the earth. She smiled at her small triumph and let out a shaky sigh of relief. It wasn’t the same as Sigourney Weaver burning an acid filled alien’s head off with a flame-thrower, but it was a start.
Now quit crying--and screaming--think things through. You are not that same scared little girl. You have a brain. Use it. Find a way out.
But that would be a lot easier if she wasn’t becoming obsessed with her need to pee. She’d never gone more than a couple of hours without a trip to the bathroom. She had gone way past that two-hour barrier now.
A shadow of movement from within the window caught her attention. Edward was in there, moving around. She could almost feel him. He was watching her. She couldn’t see him, but she believed he was watching her, leering at her, and she shivered.
She didn’t know how, but she was going to find a way to get off this tree. Then she was going to find some clothes and make the bastard pay for doing this to her.