Taken

Had anyone missed her yet?

She had been abducted on a Friday night. By her reckoning, it was Tuesday morning. They would have noticed when she didn’t show up for her shift on Monday. Someone would call from personnel eventually. When they got no response, would they investigate further?

What would they conclude? After all, while it was obnoxious and irresponsible for an adult to suddenly disappear from work, it wasn’t illegal. Would they just figure she’d quit without notice and leave it at that?

How long until someone figured out she was missing? Her brother, who had a military career, was posted overseas, and they rarely spoke. Her father had died when she was ten and she wasn’t at all close to her mother, who had recently moved down to Texas with husband number four. She did have a few work friends—girls she sometimes ate lunch with—but they would forget her soon enough. The landlord would figure it out eventually, when her rent check wasn’t received at the end of the month, but that was weeks away. She might be dead by then.

No. Unacceptable thinking. Next topic.

If she ever got away, things would be different. She would volunteer at the SPCA, maybe even adopt a small dog of her own. She would accept invitations for lunch from the other girls in the medical records department. Sarah, who sat in the cubicle next to hers, had always been nice to Jane. She could invite Sarah out for happy hour one Friday. They might become actual friends. Maybe she’d even work up the nerve to talk to Jeff Simmons, the cute tech guy who came around to do updates on their computers.

“Not if you ever get away, Jane,” she murmured. “When.”

In the meantime, she needed to stay strong and determined. She needed to keep her eyes and ears open for any possible opportunity of escape. She needed to stay alive.

She was hungry pretty much all the time, the hunger a constant hard knot in her belly. Her captors did feed her, but rarely more than once or twice a day, and never enough. Robert refilled the water bottle every day, thank goodness, but she had to be careful not to drink too much, since she never knew how long she’d be confined in her cage.

She had taken so much for granted in her past life. If she ever got free, she would cherish all the simple pleasures every day of her life.

When she got free, she sternly reminded herself.

She had been worrying the edge of her blanket with nervous fingers. There was a lose bit of fabric on the fraying edge. She pulled it, inadvertently tearing a small strip loose. Thinking about the yellow ribbons people used to tie around trees as a welcome for returning soldiers, she tied the strip around a bar at the back of her cage.

As she loosely knotted it, she realized this might be a good way to keep track of time. She pushed the ribbon down to the floor of the cage and covered it with the edge of the blanket to hide it. This was her fourth day. She’d move the strip each day to the bar beside it. There were sixty total bars on her cage—ten each in the front and back, and twenty along each side. Somehow, before the ribbon made its way back to the first bar, she would get herself free.

Each day of captivity brought new horrors and indignities. With no choice in the matter, she did her best to comply with every new task and torment. She was learning to steel herself to the pain and humiliation, reminding herself of the end goal—escape.

“Brenda’s pleased with you, little frog,” Robert had said the night before, after gagging her with his cock for what felt like an hour before finally shooting his disgusting jism down her throat. “She says you can join us upstairs for a while tomorrow.”

Jane had been thrilled at the news, though she kept her face blank. Her plan must be working! They were starting to trust her. She would get a chance to scope out her environment a little more. The knowledge might help her in her plans for eventual escape. No matter what, it would be a welcome change from the dank, dreary basement and her confining cage.

The sound of the door opening jerked her from her reveries. The heavy clomp of feet on the stairs told her it was Robert. He came into view on the stairs, dressed in gym shorts and sneakers, his big, burly chest bare, save for a thick gold chain.

“Hey, lazybones,” he said genially as he approached her. “While you’ve been lazing around, I’ve already done my morning run. Brenda’s making us blueberry pancakes. You get to eat with us before you clean the house, you lucky girl.”