He frantically looked for a way out, even though it might not exist. The key to fooling people into thinking his health was at risk lay in tricking himself into believing it to a degree, so he made himself breathe fast, until he started really struggling for air.
Riggs pushed him lower, but it wasn’t to help him lie down. Something clicked, and Clover pulled himself up when metal closed around his ankle. Pushing at his captor with his shoulder, he punched the rough wooden floor and dashed toward the blurry darkness of the door. For a split second, he thought he’d succeeded, but then a firm tug of a chain knocked his legs from under him, and he dropped like a log.
He moaned into the gag as his head spun.
“You’re not going anywhere, so stay put for your own good. I wouldn’t want to disappoint your buyer. You were a very special request,” Riggs said, and walked off without even checking if Clover hadn’t lost a tooth. Maybe it didn’t matter to the client.
The door slammed shut behind Riggs, and the sound of a metal clicking didn’t inspire hope in Clover. This was it. This was a new reality he’d have to deal with. A reality of blur, uncertainty, and rough floors. He should have known better than to trust anyone, but the false sense of security working for Jerry had offered had lulled him and made him soft. And it was too late now to save himself.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to escape, but his suspicions were soon confirmed—he’d been chained to the piping, and despite repeated attempts, the goddamn metal wouldn’t budge. Riggs had sedated Clover, so he had no idea where he could be, beyond the fact that the air felt hot and dry when he breathed it in. For all he knew, it could have been days, not hours, since Jerry had accepted a thick wad of cash and passed Clover to Riggs, as if he were merchandise.
Clover shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, Jerry wasn’t his friend. His interest in having Clover around lay in the money Clover could bring him, in leads and stolen goods. Maybe his unusual looks and poor eyesight made him less successful at pickpocketing and muling than some of the other boys and girls living at Jerry’s home. At nineteen, was he becoming too old to be part of Jerry’s crew? He could have passed for underage for a while longer, and while his albinism made him stand out, it also caused people not to see him as a threat. He and Jerry could have earned hard cash together for a while longer, but maybe the price offered for Clover had simply been too high to pass on.
He didn’t respect that. He wasn’t okay with that. But he understood that in this business, personal connection meant very little when push came to shove.
Regardless of the real reasons for Jerry selling him to Riggs, the story ended with Clover in a dusty room. Gagged, bound, and helpless.
He sat in silence, his head throbbing from all the thoughts rushing through it when he heard a car approach somewhere outside and park. The only window was boarded up with wooden planks, but the glow of the headlights still snuck in through the gaps, briefly illuminating the blurry darkness.
No matter how much he didn’t want to acknowledge the reality of his position, he knew this wasn’t about revenge or anything personal like that. Sometimes, people just disappeared into thin air, and those people were taken for something. A reason that wasn’t about who they were or what they’d done. If he was lucky, he’d end up as someone’s exotic pet, raped into submission. If he wasn’t, he’d be tortured first.
Maybe killed.
Jerry had mentioned a place where a special kind of customer could live out the most brutal of fantasies without the hassle of capturing their victims and disposing of the bodies. Cargo, Jerry had called them. It had been an anecdote shared over drinks, yet even then, when nothing had yet foreshadowed his later abduction, the story had made Clover’s blood curdle.
Months later, he was cargo too—someone’s property to be used as they saw fit.
Fear passed through Clover as he struggled with the shackle again, but the steel wouldn’t give and bruised his flesh further, so he went quiet and listened instead. People discussed something downstairs. He didn’t know how many or who they were, but it couldn’t be just Riggs. Were those other people the buyers? Was this where he would die?
Pain throbbed along his leg, made worse by the uncontrollable shudders shaking his body when he remembered a movie scene where someone put a drill to another person’s eyeball. If his new owner decided to do that to Clover, he could. He could do anything, and there would be no one around to cut the pain and suffering short.