Page 11 of Caging Liberty
My mind has been spinning too much to register movement, but I concentrate on it now. Sure enough, it isn’t just my vision swaying. It’s my whole body. The movement is slight, just a gentle up and down, but it’s enough for me to pin it as the cause for my stomach flipping intermittently.
“How long do you think you’ve been awake?”
“It’s hard to say,” Combat Boots replies, the first hint of fear in her voice slipping through. She’s tough, I can tell.
Good. We’ll need tough.
“A couple of hours maybe,” she settles on.
I nod as if that tells me anything other than wherever we’re going possibly requires a long boat ride. Or they’re just driving us around in circles to confuse us.
They. How do we know it’s more than one man? How do we even know it’s a man?
I close my eyes and run my tongue along my chapped lips, searching for some kind of relief. Or at least enough moisture to make it easier to talk.
“I’m Lib.” I bump my shoulder with Red’s and turn my head her way. “What’s your name?”
She sniffles as she turns her head. Her green eyes meet mine, and I see so much fear in her irises it makes me want to look away, but I don’t.
“Anna.”
I nod then turn my head toward Combat Boots. “What about you?”
She looks at me, and I see the same fear that’s in Anna’s eyes but with a layer of frost over it. “Naomi.”
“How about we take turns saying everything we remember. Okay?”
Naomi nods.
I take a breath and face forward to ease the strain in my neck.
It takes maybe a half hour to get through everything, but only the first minute or so of everyone’s turn has to do with how we each got here. We spend the rest of the time talking about the gist of our routines, trying to figure out what we have in common.
Anna was hitchhiking when a guy in a truck picked her up and knocked her out a few miles into the drive.
Naomi was chased through a park where she sometimes crashes. She was taken by two men, one with the same description Anna gave of her guy.
And I remember absolutely nothing about my abduction.
One thing that immediately stood out to me about us is how different our situations are. Both Anna and Naomi alternate between couch hopping and being homeless. Both have no one who will report them missing. Both are prime targets for a psychopath plucking girls off the street.
I’m a Manhattan housewife. The police will start searching for me within forty-eight hours of my abduction, and my dry cleaners isn’t even in a bad neighborhood. Certainly not a prime predator spot.
So … why me?
I can tell Naomi is wondering the same, but we both keep quiet about it.
Time drags on and on, and I start to understand where her pessimism is coming from. The farther from home we get, the more hopeless our situation feels.
And then, out of nowhere, the boat stops.
Our bodies lurch, and my stomach does somersaults. Anna gasps, and for the first time since I woke up, she goes completely silent and still. We all do.
My back is to the door, so I don’t see the person who swings it open. My muscles stiffen as a shuffling sounds, and I search uselessly for a weapon I know I won’t find. I swallow and breathe to slow my rapid heartbeat, trying my hardest not to panic.
Wooden boards creak as two sets of footsteps travel down to us, then thump on the cabin floor.
Someone coughs. “Fuck, it smells.”