Take Me (Enslaved #1)

CHAPTER 2

I’m about to drift off when a hand taps my shoulder. Blinking the sleepiness from my eyes, I look up to see the chubby conductor with a wide mustache.

“You’ve already seen my ticket.”

“I’m gonna have to ask you to move to the last car,” he says in an accent so thick I’m not sure I heard it right.

“I’m sorry?”

“The last car,” he repeats in a not-so-friendly tone, taking off his hat and swiping at his sweaty hair.

“Why?” I glance around at the many empty seats. It’s not like there’s not enough room here, so I can’t think of any good reason as to why he needs me to move.

He takes my backpack from the seat beside me, slings it over his shoulder, and gestures for me to go ahead.

Too tired to argue, I slide out from the seat and step into the aisle. Another irritated hand gesture has me moving toward the end of the car. I almost feel like a thief being escorted from a building as the conductor follows close behind.

The last car is completely empty, and I ignore an eerie sensation as I settle in one of the seats a little way down the hall. The conductor places my bag in the seat beside me and walks away without another word.

Once he’s gone, I take out my phone to check Facebook. It’s my favorite way to stay in touch with friends back home whenever I go on one of my hiking trips.

A little red dot informs me I have ten notifications, and I frown as I click on it and find one of my friends having commented on a post: Why Italy?

Why Italy, indeed? I have no idea what she means, so I open the post and stare incredulously at the screen as I see an update I haven’t written. But it’s my name, my picture.

Change of plans. I’ve set my sights on the Dolomites. Online access will be patchy, so I might be offline for a while.

My heart pounds in my rib cage. Has someone hacked my account?

I press the reply button and type out a message, explaining that my plans remain the same and I’ve been hacked. But nothing happens when I hit send, so I copy the text and refresh the page, only to get a white screen.

Turning my eyes to the thick forest below a darkening sky, I curse under my breath. No service when I most need it, of course.

Fuck it. It doesn’t matter that people think I’m headed for Italy for another hour. So I shut off my phone and close my eyes, trying to expel the scary questions pressing for attention in my mind.

***

The sound of screeching metal stirs me from a deep sleep, and I jolt in my seat as the train comes to a stop.

As I peel my eyes open, I find pitch-black darkness outside the windows. No lights from a station platform, no cars, no people. Only dead still darkness and the shadows of mountains looming in the distance.

Great! The train gives out in the middle of nowhere. You really can’t trust things to run smoothly in this part of Europe. I’ve learned this firsthand more than once.

Hopefully, it’s just a minor issue and we’ll be up and running again in half an hour or so.

I close my eyes and lean my head back to let sleep take me back in its gentle arms.

But the peace is brief.

The sound of movement behind me jolts me wide awake. My eyes fly open, and a gust of air blows across my skin just before something descends over my head. A hood or a bag. Thick enough to cover my world in darkness. Then hands press down on my shoulders to keep the hood—or me—in place.

Terror pounds through my veins, and I burst into uncoordinated panic. Shooting my arms up, I rip at the hands. Rip at the fabric. Squirm in the seat and try to wriggle down, out of the bag.

But it’s no use. The hands are like two vises, pinning me back against the seat with terrifying ease.

A shrill sound fills the air around me, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s my own scream. I can’t stop it, and I can’t stop my frantic struggle.

A hand releases my shoulder to snake around my throat, probing a bit before digging into the sides. My airflow remains intact, but the strength seems to drain from my very bones. Terror blazes in my mind as I remember what Nikolai said as he pressed against my pulse points. In a matter of seconds, you’re out.

My scream dies, darkness descends over my mind, and I sag in the seat, hovering on the precipice of consciousness.

Before the darkness can claim me whole, the fingers relax, and awareness seeps back in. But it’s slow and muddled, and it takes me a moment to remember what’s going on.

Someone is beside me too—someone big. His enormous size is evident when his muscular shoulder brushes my arm and when a hefty, calloused hand grabs my wrist.

It’s not the same one who shoved the bag over my head. That man is still behind my seat, holding my droopy head in the crook of his arm as he secures a knot on the bag.

There are two of them.

And the one in the aisle is tying knots at my hands. Ropes around my wrists.

The realizations filter in one at a time, filling my head with an urgency I can’t act upon. At least not until it’s too late.

Once my limbs wake up, the ropes are already secured, locking my hands firmly together. I make an effort, anyway, twisting my wrists against the coarse material. But there’s no give.

“No, no, no, no,” I whimper as I squirm, putting in more energy as my strength returns. I try to twist my head and bite the arm around my neck, but the man behind me simply traps my head against the seat with a hand on my forehead.

So I kick my legs instead when the bulky man grabs my foot. But my body either hasn’t regained all its strength, or he’s simply too strong. Within seconds, he has my feet gathered with rope and is securing the knot.

I make a final attempt at getting free, but the effort sends a stab of defeat through me as I become achingly aware of how trapped I am. Head, hands, feet. And with the way my head is stuck, I can only move my body a few inches.

Hopelessness sets in, devastating and severe. The knowledge that these two men are going to take me no matter what I do burns through my mind.

Choking terror infiltrates my system, twisting my gut and squeezing my chest so hard I can’t breathe.

I feel like I’m drowning as I heave for air without getting any. All I achieve is getting fabric into my mouth and blocking my airway further.

Panic wraps my mind in dizzying colors, reducing me to frantic instincts. I claw at the fabric with my bound hands as I pant with shallow gasps.

“Breathe in through your nose,” a deep, accented voice says close to my ear, pushing my bound hands back into my lap with surprising gentleness. “Out through your mouth.”

Readjusting his hand on my forehead into an almost calm grip, he takes a loud breath through his nose as if to spur me on.

I try to imitate but only manage a superficial breath.

“One more,” he urges, flattening his other hand over my chest. The weight should be oppressive, but it’s not. It’s something else. Soothing, I think.

My entire body shudders as I drag in a long breath through my nose, and another wave of shivers rolls through me as I push the air back out through my mouth. The fabric billows slightly over my head, but it doesn’t stick to my mouth, and with a few more repetitions, I find that it’s possible to breathe through it.

The man behind me releases me, and I’m a bit disturbed to find myself missing the warm hands.

The man at my side hoists me up, and a strangled gasp escapes me as I land over his shoulder with a thud. Now I can truly feel his size, and it’s even more frightening than I thought at first. His shoulder is wide and solid like it’s made for carrying a body, and his back is hard plains of solid muscle under my head.

It takes all my focus to breathe as I bounce in time to his long strides. He, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to strain the least as he carries me through the car. I think I’m no more than a sack of potatoes to him.

Part of me wants to bang my fists against his back, but I already know the outcome, and my brief panic attack seems to have drained all my energy. So I just hang there, and when the chilly night air lets me know we’re leaving the train, he easily passes me to his partner.

The new man—or rather, the one who put the sack over my head—takes me in his arms, holding me close to his chest as he walks. He’s not as bulky as the other man, but I feel the devastating strength in the effortless way he handles me, nonetheless. I wouldn’t stand a chance even if it had only been him.

The realization is not enough to deter me from launching into another fit of struggles when I hear the train screeching against the tracks. The sound jolts me from my paralysis, and I start writhing and whimpering, not caring that I might fall from his arms and crash hard. I just need to get back on that train, no matter what it takes.

“Don’t waste your energy,” he simply says, but his words only ramp up my furious energy. And then I’m screaming again.

I expect him to act quickly, cover my mouth to muffle the sound or grab my throat again, but he just keeps on walking without a care in the world. It scares me shitless, and I’m headed straight for a new panic attack when he dumps me onto something hard—a surface, box, something half-enclosed.

A trunk, I realize as my fingers grapple and find a steely edge.

A large hand presses against my chest, and I can’t figure out if it’s meant to soothe or subdue.

It works both ways.

I go still beneath its weight, and when the man drags in a loud breath through his nose, I automatically follow.

He repeats a few times until I go still, breathing somewhat steadily.

“Seriously, don’t waste your breath screaming.” He’s close this time, the deep timbre of his voice resonating close to my ear. “No one but the bears will hear you, and I’ll be quite disappointed to come back here and find my merchandise having choked on her own screams.”

His words stun me into silence, and I don’t move when he proceeds to tie a rope between my wrists and legs. Finally, he stuffs a few big pillows around me to create a sort of tight nest.

“No bruises except the ones we allow,” he explains, shoving a final pillow into the space above my head. “Remember to breathe,” he says, and then there’s the loud thud of the trunk slamming shut, snuffing out the fresh air and leaving me alone and trapped in this tiny space.

An engine rumbles to life, and then we’re moving, bouncing along a gravelly road that makes me grateful for the small mercy of the pillows.

It’s the first, but not the last time I’m grateful for something my kidnapper grants me.