The room spun around her as she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair, then rubbed at the back of her neck. At that moment she panicked all over again.
Her presentation was this morning, and she wasn’t going to be there! What would her boss think? Hopefully, her secretary knew how to retrieve it. Someone else would give it. Someone else would get the client.
And then reality set in.
Missing a presentation was the least of her troubles. There was every possibility she would die here. Except for the mattress on which she was sitting, the only other things in the room were an old sink hanging precariously from one wall, and an ancient commode. Then she finally focused on the door—the huge metal door! Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t locked.
But when she got to her feet and staggered toward it, her hopes were dashed. It wouldn’t budge. She doubled up her fists and began pounding on it, screaming over and over for help. The sound of her voice was diluted within the small space, but it didn’t silence her. She pounded until her hands were throbbing, and her throat was sore from screaming before she finally dropped to her knees, sobbing hysterically.
She cried until her eyes were swollen, her throat now downright raw, before she crawled back to the mattress. But she was afraid to close her eyes for fear of what would come through the door, so she curled up in a ball against the wall, her knees beneath her chin, and waited.
Two
Sonny Burch was a forty-something-year-old man with blond thinning hair and pale green eyes. He claimed being six feet tall, but he wasn’t. Without the lifts in his shoes, he was barely five-nine. To make up for his lack of height, he worked out—keeping his arms and shoulders muscular, and his belly flat. At work people called him Boss, but he always thought of himself as Sonny, because that was what his mother had called him.
Sonny arrived at his office and went straight into a meeting. There was cake in the conference room in honor of a colleague’s birthday. He liked cake, but his personal celebrations always had to do with playing the game, and winning the prize.
Sonny was a man who led two lives—a man who wore two faces. His public face and his private face. But he excused that as a given because he was a Gemini—the sign of the twins. He was good, and he was evil. He liked to make people laugh, and he liked to make people cry.
And when he went home after work today, he would get to play the game. It had been four years since he’d given in to this need, and knowing who was waiting for him made it hard to concentrate on work. He equated his obsession to being on a diet, and then finally giving himself a long-awaited treat, and he was starving for this high—the high of watching her bleed, and hearing her scream.
* * *
Rachel woke up again with the hangover from hell. The remnants of the drugs were still in her system, and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was that single lightbulb high above her head, burning away the dark.
This time, without the initial shock masking everything else, she caught an underlying stench of urine, and a steady drip coming from somewhere behind her. This wasn’t a bad dream. This was real, and she had no idea how long she’d been here. Without clocks or windows, or anything to mark time, all she felt was extreme thirst. She rolled over to get up, and again, the room began to spin. So she tried again, this time stopping when she was sitting in an upright position, and when the spinning stopped, she managed to stand and headed straight for the door, praying with every step that this time the knob would turn, and the door would open. But it would not.
She doubled up her fists and began pounding on the door.
“Help! Help me!” she screamed, until her hands were throbbing, and her voice was raw.
She turned her back to the door, her hands clutched beneath her breasts, in complete disbelief. The truth was staring her in the face and she still couldn’t grasp it.
Why had this happened? Was she the victim of human trafficking, or was the person who took her some kind of serial rapist? Would he kill her, or just torture her until she wished she were dead?
She staggered to the sink hanging near the ancient toilet, then turned on the tap. Both water and air came out in a sputtering whoosh, along with some bits of rust. She let it run until it was clear, then leaned over the sink and sluiced her face until the last of the drugged feeling was gone, then cupped her hands beneath the flow, and drank without thought of contamination.
She flushed the toilet just to see if it worked, and then stood, staring at the disappearing water circling the rust-stained bowl before she finally allowed herself to use it, then flushed it again.
Looking back at the old mattress, she suddenly focused on the faded stains within the fabric and realized they looked like bloodstains. Faint and faded, but bloodstains, nevertheless. She shuddered in renewed horror. She didn’t want to die, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Unwilling to lie back down, she stood in the middle of the floor until the muscles in her legs were trembling from the strain, and the room was beginning to spin.
Staggering back to the mattress, she sat down, still facing the door, and again, the remnants of the drugs still in her system pulled her under.
* * *
Rachel Dean’s absence had not gone unnoticed at Addison-Tunnell. Her secretary, Lucy Arnold, was in a panic. Their boss, Russ Addison, was in a bigger panic. The clients were in the conference room waiting.
“Call her apartment!” he ordered.
“I already called five times!” Lucy cried. “This isn’t like Rachel. Something is wrong!”
Russ shoved a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Who else is familiar with this project?”
“Uh...maybe Ralph? He did some initial research for her. I can get the file to him.”
“Then do it!” Addison said. “I’ll let him know what’s happening and talk to the clients myself until he gets in there.”
“Yes, sir!” Lucy said.
“And then check on Rachel again,” Addison said.
Lucy pulled up the files on Rachel’s computer, did a quick search for the right one, then sent it to Ralph. She didn’t know what had gone wrong, but she was just sick for Rachel. She’d worked so hard on it.
As soon as it went through, she pulled up Rachel’s personnel file and began looking for contact information, then made a frantic call to Wayne Dyer, the manager of the building where Rachel lived.
Wayne lived in a ground-floor apartment on the premises and was at his desk in the manager’s office, working on accounts, when the phone rang.
“Detter House. This is Wayne.”
“Mr. Dyer, this is Lucy Arnold, from Addison-Tunnell Advertising Agency. I’m Rachel Dean’s secretary. Rachel lives in apartment 210 on the second floor of your residence, and she didn’t come in to work this morning. She didn’t call, and she’s not answering her phone. We’re extremely concerned. She had a very important presentation this morning and would never have missed this. We’re asking if you could do a wellness check?”