This was it.
Whatever was going to happen to me.
At least I didn’t have to wait long to see what it was.
The trunk opened, and there were my two attackers. Smirking down at me as though this wasn’t the lowest a man could sink.
“Not gonna lie, looking forward to this one,” the fake cop declared as he reached in to grab my arm, starting to yank me out by it.
My breath sucked in as my bad shoulder jostled, and I felt myself blanking in and out.
“Easy. That’s the bad one,” my fake employee warned. “Don’t want her blacked out when the boss man comes to see her.”
I would very much have liked to be blacked out, but I wasn’t a part of the decision-making right then.
I had no control over anything, it seemed, other than not cooperating when the guy tried to set me on my feet.
Yes, my big act of rebellion right then was refusing to let my legs hold my weight, allowing them to turn into Jell-O, sending me falling to the pavement.
“For Christ’s sake,” the fake cop hissed, reaching down to yank me back up.
And it was right then that I started to realize just how familiar this space was.
It was a place I knew better than any of them likely did, since I spent many nights staking it out.
The alley behind the jewelry store.
The hideous raised building that allowed for the lower level to act as a sort of basement without it being underground.
Cement walls.
So no one could hear the dogs snarling.
Or women screaming.
My heart squeezed in my chest as I was dragged along a familiar path toward doors I’d painstakingly opened and closed and greased so they didn’t squeak.
Would there be dogs inside?
Would I have to listen to their misery as well while I endured my own?
That was possibly the only fate worse than the one I’d already imagined.
Maybe I should have felt some semblance of hope. It was a very obvious location for them to bring me to, after all.
So if Myles happened to wake up for the dogs or to go get a snack and saw my note and got suspicious and called Remy and Remy sprang into action, it wouldn’t take much guesswork for them to come and check out the jewelry shop first.
I just couldn’t muster up much hope at that moment.
There were too many “ifs” to that whole situation.
And, really, would hope make this situation any better? Or would it be worse to endure whatever I was about to endure while I kept expecting Remy to burst through a door and save me, only to find he never came?
Better, I felt, to just assume the worst right off the bat.
No one was going to come for me.
Not until it would be too late anyway.