LITMIR.BIZ

       3

      Stevie had given up the screaming and swearing, crying and pleading, halfway through the first night. She’d given up shaking and tugging at the bars of her cage after what felt like twenty-four hours. Neither of these things had been a choice. She’d stopped screaming because she’d screamed her throat raw and could barely talk anymore, and she’d stopped shaking the bars because she had broken, bleeding blisters on both hands. After that she’d spent her time exploring her cell.

      There were three concrete walls around her and prison bars in front, with a locked door. There were bunks attached to the walls on either side with chains. Two high, two low. Four beds total. There were a toilet and sink on the back wall. The water worked. There was a box under the bottom bunk on the right with a few supplies. Someone had used duct tape to drape a vinyl shower curtain in front of the toilet. It smelled new. Everything else about the place had a damp, musty smell to it. It was cool enough to make her grateful she’d been wearing a sweater.

      Her captor had thrown her into the cage after a long drive. She’d lost her cell phone. She’d only realized it when he had searched her—thoroughly—while she’d still been tied up. Then he’d finally dragged her to the bars and stuck her hands through, holding them there while he went outside and closed the door with a frightening bang.

      From there he’d cut the zip ties from her wrists. As soon as they were free she jerked away from him, yanked the tape from her mouth and started calling him names and demanding to be let go, and screaming and swearing. But a few minutes later she’d realized he was gone.

      Her possessions were few. There were a plastic water pitcher and a few plastic glasses. Spoons but no forks. Washcloths. There were a roll of toilet paper, a tangle of brushes and three wrapped bars of soap in addition to the new bar that sat on the sink. There was a single blanket on each of the bunks. And that was it.

      Every few hours he brought her something to eat. Protein bars, a bag of chips, a piece of fruit. Never a meal. Just snacks. At first she’d refused to eat, figuring the food might be drugged. Then when the hunger got bad, she decided she had nothing to lose. She was a prisoner. How could being a drugged prisoner be any worse?

      She had no sense of time and no real idea how long she’d been there when she heard the door open and jumped off the bunk, lunging toward the sound in desperation, only to bang hard into a person and fall on the hard floor as the door clanged closed again. Scrambling to her feet, she shouted and threw herself at the bars, grabbing and shaking them, and swearing at her captor.

      But there were only retreating footsteps.

      And the knowledge that she wasn’t alone anymore. There was someone in here with her, sitting on the floor now, making muffled but urgent sounds.

      She turned toward the sounds, knew there were tears streaming down her own face, and felt horribly guilty for hoping it was another captive like her. “All right, all right. I’m coming.” Holding her hands out in front of her, Stevie moved slowly closer, until her hands bumped against a head. She turned her palms inward, running them lower, down the sides of a face, and felt the blindfold around the eyes, the tape over the mouth, and then lower, as the poor thing sat perfectly still, shivering. It was a girl. Had to be a girl. Stevie got to the hands, zip-tied together behind her back. The Asshole, as she’d taken to thinking of the kidnapper, had cut the zip tie partway through. She bent it back and forth until it gave and the newcomer’s hands pulled free.

      The girl whipped them around fast, and Stevie stepped backward, waiting for her to remove the tape herself. “What the fuck is this?”

      Stevie said, “I don’t know. I’ve been here... I don’t know, a couple of days, maybe.”

      “Bullshit. This is bullshit.” The other girl went to the bars, and just as Stevie had done when she’d arrived, she shook and screamed and pounded and pulled. She didn’t beg or cry the way Stevie had. She sounded strong, sure of herself, confident. Everything Stevie wasn’t.

      Eventually she stopped fighting the useless door, and paced the cell instead, back and forth.

      Stevie was sitting on the bottom bunk hugging her sweater around her and waiting until it felt like time to talk. Eventually she tried. “My name’s Stevie. Um, Stephanie.”

      The pacing stopped. She felt the girl looking at her. Eventually she said, “Lexus.”

      Stevie nodded. “How did you get here?”

      “Fucker grabbed me right off the damn street is how I got here. Threw me in a van, tied me up and tossed me here.” She shuffled a little. “You?”

      “Same.”

      “He come in here? He do anything to you?”

      “No. Nothing. He shoves food through the bars every little while. Never says a word. It’s creepy. I’m not even sure if it’s a man.”

      “Oh, he a man all right. I grabbed him by his balls before he got me bound and gagged, put a hurt on him he won’t forget. Piece’a shit. I get the chance again, I’ll rip ’em right off.”

      “I’d like to see that.”

      “Don’t look to me like you see anything,” Lexus said. “You blind, girl?”

      Stevie nodded.

      “Shee-it, you get all the luck, don’t you?”

      “Looks like.”

      Lexus came to the bunk, sat down beside Stevie. “A’right, then. We look out for each other, you and me. We got no one else. We got to get out of this shit, you follow?”

      “I do. Maybe between the two of us we’ll find a way.”

      “Ain’t no maybe about it, girl. We will.”

      Stevie felt a rush of relief. There was no doubt in her mind that Lexus was older and wiser and stronger than she was. She’d been reassuring herself that her father had enough clout and connections to be turning the planet upside down to find her from the outside. Now she had help from the inside, as well. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, immediately clapping a hand to her mouth.

      “Yeah, that makes one of us. Not how I ’spected to be spending my eighteenth, you know?”

      “Your eighteenth...birthday?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      She wasn’t older, then. Maybe stronger, maybe braver, but not older. She was just a kid. Stevie’s conscience gave her a needle-like jab. She should be comforting the teenager,

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