Among the Shrouded (24 page)

CHAPTER

35

MIA

Every muscle of Mia’s body screamed as she rolled from her side onto her back.  She stretched her legs and was immediately debilitated by cramping in her calves.  She sat up and attempted to massage the tightness out of the back of her legs but her wrists and hands were so heavily bruised that they weren’t strong enough to do much good.  She decided to stand up but was overcome by a wave of nausea which brought her to her knees.

“It’s dehydration,” said
Anya from the adjacent cell.  “Here, take my water bottle.  There’s still some left.”

A plastic water bottle rolled across the concrete floor and stopped several inches from where
she was crouched in the corner.  She reached for the bottle and quickly chugged all that was left.

“You should sip it so you don’t throw up,”
Anya warned.

“
I’ve already finished it,” she replied.  “But thanks.”

“You’re welcome.  You have
a nasty gash on the back of your head.  You should let me look at it.”

Her
head was throbbing and she was having trouble thinking clearly.  The events of the previous twelve hours swirled around in her head like fireflies on a summer night.  There one second, gone the next.

She remembered leaving the station, furious with her father for
alerting the commissioner to her discovery of the traffickers.  In her blind rage, she left the station without retrieving her cell phone, only realizing her mistake when she attempted to call Thomas a second time and was unable to find her phone yet again.  By that time, she was already home.

Sitting in the parking lot of her apartment building,
she beat her fists into the steering wheel of her car in frustration.  She had decided she would go inside to change her clothes and make a sandwich before returning to the station to reclaim her phone.  As she looked around the parking lot, she was disappointed to see that Chelsea’s car wasn’t parked in its usual location.  Since her engagement to Tyler, Chelsea had been spending most of her time at his house.  She was desperate to vent the day’s frustrations to someone who would lend a sympathetic ear, but without Thomas or Chelsea to talk to, she felt utterly alone.

She
had trudged up the stairs to her apartment, feeling sorry for herself and disillusioned with everything that had gone wrong during the course of the day.  Once inside, she took off her sidearm, as she always did, and placed it on the kitchen counter.  She walked into her bedroom and took a moment to pick up the sheets that were still strewn around the floor where she and Thomas had left them that morning.  Although only hours had passed since she had been wrapped in his arms, she felt suddenly as though he was merely a figment of her imagination that had never truly existed at all.

After
changing out of her uniform and into her street clothes, she returned to the kitchen to settle her hunger.  It was at that moment she realized she wasn’t alone in the apartment.  She looked to the counter for her weapon and gasped audibly when she saw it wasn’t there.  She caught a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye in the direction of the front door and called out to the intruder.

“If you’ve come to rob me, you are out of luck because
my stuff is worth Jack.  Not only that, but I’m a cop, so you’ve definitely messed with the wrong woman,” she said confidently.

A man appeared
suddenly from around the corner.  He was not a large man and although he wore a black ski mask, he didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon of any kind.  She couldn’t help but smile at him as he lunged in her direction.  Without hesitation, she used his forward momentum against him as she brought her right heel up to deliver a swift kick to his groin.  As he doubled over she used the opportunity to deliver a left hook into his face followed by a right jab to the stomach.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said to the man as she attempted to bring him to his knees
in order to restrain him.

An instant later she
was blinded by an excruciating pain to the back of her head and her world had faded around her as she crumbled to the floor.

She remembered coming
to and having no idea where she was or what had happened.  She realized immediately she had been bound, gagged, and blindfolded.  After several moments of quiet contemplation, she had determined that she was lying on the metal floor of a moving vehicle.  It wasn’t long before the vehicle had stopped and her captors had pulled her from inside.  With a gun to her head, they had removed the gag from her mouth and instructed her to leave a message for her father which implied that she was going to be away for an unknown period of time.  She had hoped there was enough fear in her voice to alert him to the danger she was in.  After the call had been made, they secured duct tape across her mouth and escorted her to a basement cell.

“Office
r?” Kate called from across the hall, distracting her from her thoughts.

“Please, c
all me Mia.”

“
Okay.  Mia. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m h
ung over,” she replied.

“They should be here with food and water soon.  It won’t be a lot, but it will be enough to help.
”

As if Kate
had summoned the men through telepathic powers, the scraping of the door lock could be heard echoing throughout the basement.  She heard a single set of footsteps coming down the stairs and immediately considered what method she could use to overpower him.  She attempted to stand up but her stomach churned angrily, returning her to her knees once again.

“Another big night tonight,” the
man yelled down the corridor as he approached the first cell.  “Make sure you are all fancied up by this evening.  We’ll be back to get you then.  Same as always, extra food for the girl with the highest bid, so do your best.”

She
watched as a man in a red sweatshirt delivered small bags of food, bottles of water, and dresses, shoes and makeup to each of the women.  Although he wore a mask similar to the assailant from her apartment, she could tell from his voice that he wasn’t one of the men who had abducted her the night before.  As he reached the end of the hallway, he addressed her directly.

“I see you were able to free yourself.  No doubt you had some help from your new friends here. 
I don’t have a dress for you, although I think you would bring in a pretty penny.  Not my call though,” he said casually as he tossed her a small bag of food.

“Who are you?”
she asked, studying the darkness surrounding the man.

“I can be your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how well you behave for us,” he replied.

She struggled to remember the voices of the men she’d heard at Wayne Brookins’ house.  She was unsure about whether the man in the red sweatshirt had been present that night.  She attempted to commit the man’s height and build to memory so she could identify him if necessary at a later date.

With his morning assignment complete, the man left the basement without another word to the women and within moments they were alone once again.

She heard each of the women tearing into their food rations greedily, like wolves on a carcass.  She took Anya’s advice, eating only small bites from her sandwich and sipping her water slowly.  Within several minutes, her stomach began to feel better, although the throbbing in her head remained.

When she finished eating, s
he looked around the basement to take in her surroundings.  She was becoming accustomed to the smell of mildew and excrement that had seemed so overpowering upon her arrival in the middle of the night.  She estimated her tiny cell was roughly eight-feet square.  The ceiling height of the basement topped out at just over six-and-a-half feet which made the space feel all the more claustrophobic.  She was grateful for the primitive toilet in the corner of the room, but there was a significant lack of privacy which made her uncomfortable.

Beyond the bars of her own cell,
she watched the other women finishing their food.  She was struck by how bright their auras were despite the horrific circumstances.  Kate, a beautiful woman with delicate features and a head full of chestnut hair, had an aura which shone as bright as any person she had ever known.  Because of the relative fullness of her face and glow of her skin, she sensed that Kate had not been held captive for very long.  This wasn’t the case for many of the other women further down the hall, whose skeletal frames and ashy complexions spoke of a far longer imprisonment.

“
Have you seen the men’s faces?” she asked her from across the corridor.

“Yes.  Most all of them,” Kate replied.

“What about the man who was just here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe his face for me?”

“He’
s somewhat unpleasant looking.  He has dark hair and a blotchy complexion.  His nose is full and his eyes are small and closely set.  I think he’s the one with the scar on his left temple, but it might be one of the other ones.”

She
knew immediately she had seen the man at Brookins’ estate.  “Yes,” she said to Kate.  “He’s the one.  I’ve seen him before.”

“You know him?” Kate asked anxiously.

“I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him with some of the others that I am sure are involved in what’s going on here.”

“Are there a lot of them?” Anya asked, joining the conversation.

“Yes.  And probably more I don’t even know about.”

“Is that why they’ve brought you here?  Because you know about them?” Kate asked.

She considered Kate’s insightful observation.  She had not yet taken the time to reflect upon the reason for her capture and realized with sudden clarity that she must have been seen at Wayne Brookins’ house during the stakeout. 

“
Oh God… they’ll find Thomas,” she said aloud.

“Who’s Thomas?” Lera asked.

“Thomas is… Thomas is my boyfriend,” she said finally.  “He was with me when we discovered the men and realized what they were doing.  If they found me they will find him too, if they haven’t already.”

“Oh
, Mia.  I’m sorry,” Kate said.

She
was suddenly less concerned for her own safety than she was for his.  For the first time since her capture, she realized there was far more at stake than just her own well-being.

“I have to find a way out,”
she said resolutely to herself.

“I’ve tried,”
Kate said.  “I was unsuccessful at picking the lock and they tie our hands before they open the cell doors.  I don’t know if any of us has the strength to overpower them.”

“Someone did,”
she said.

“What do you mean?” Lera asked.

“Several days ago at the police station where I’m assigned, a woman came in who claimed she escaped from a situation similar to this one.”

“It wasn’t one of us.  We’ve all been here for quite a while.  No one has gotten away,” Kate said.

“Then there must be another holding facility close by,” she said.

“Were they selling her for sex
, just like us?” Lera asked.

“Yes.”

“And she got away?”

“Yes.”

“How?” asked Anya.

“
She escaped after an auction when no one was looking,” she replied.

The women were silent for several moments and
she considered their situation.

“I can’t beli
eve there are more than just us,” Lera said.  “How many girls are out there?”

“I don’t know,” she replied
.  “There is a good chance this holding facility is only one of many.”

“Then m
y sisters may be out there already,” Kate cried frantically.  “I thought I would know if they’d been taken because they would show up here.  But if there are many different prisons, then I will never know.  I may never see them again!”