Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
A few minutes later Trig came back in the room. She braced as he moved swiftly toward her, lifting his hand and slapping her across the face once and then again. Pain exploded behind her eye, and she whimpered, pressing herself into her pillow in a useless attempt to avoid another blow. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, his breath sour and tinged with the smell of cigarette smoke even through the thin paper of his mask, “If you do something like that again, I will put a bullet in your pretty head, is that clear?”
Cami nodded, a jerky movement that made her eye throb where she’d been hit. Her stomach roiled, and for a moment she feared she’d be sick and that the tape would ensure she’d aspirate on her own vomit. Breathe. Breathe.
“Good. Daddy is taken care of. He won’t bother us, but he will listen to what we do to his women. That’s the whole point after all.” He laughed as he pulled a phone from his back pocket and opened it before turning it toward her. No. Oh no. Needles poked the underside of her skin. It was her father, tied to the chair in his study, tape over his mouth, blood running down his cheek from a cut over his eye, his head lolling on his shoulder.
Trig put his phone away and stood back, and though she saw the pull of his mask as he smiled, his eyes remained mean. “First, though, I’m hungry and a man has to eat.” Then he turned and walked out of her room.
She lay there for several minutes, the sounds of the men rooting through their cabinets drifting to where she was. She heard the clink of beers and the sound of the microwave door opening and closing. She tried to listen for her mother or her sister but didn’t hear a sound from either of their rooms. She pictured them there, lying bound to their beds like she was, terrified and listening to the noises from below. Waiting to find out what horror would happen next.
“You check out the one in the leggings?” she heard one of them ask the other from below. “She’s hot as fuck.” Cami felt vomit in the back of her throat. He was referring to Elle. Fourteen-year-old Elle.
“Sure, if you like jailbait,” the other replied casually.
“Hell yeah, I do. Haven’t been with a virgin in a while. There’s nothin’ like ridin’ a virgin. You ever popped a cherry, Trig?” The vomit rose higher, and Cami swallowed it down.
There was a pause as though Trig was chewing. “Yeah, popped a few cherries. But I prefer the feel of a broken-in pussy.”
“Rich bitches ain’t got no broken-in pussies. They get surgery for that shit.”
The man named Trig let out a soft guffaw. “Man, you’re stupid as hell.”
Cami took in slow, deep breaths, the conversation solidifying her deepest fear. These men weren’t only here to rob them of their cash and jewels. They meant to take much more than that.
Dad is unconscious. He can’t help you. And no one else is coming home. You’re going to have to try to help yourself. And then Mom and Elle. She had only two options—comply and hope they’d take what they wanted afterward and leave, or try to find a way to get free and fight. The first option would mean enduring even more unspeakable traumas than they already had, but she didn’t currently see any way to make the second option happen.
Movement in the mirror over her dresser across the room caught her attention. She could see Mrs. Willoughby in her yard, trimming her roses. She was behind a fence that separated their properties and was blocked by the branches of a tree when she moved to certain spots. But she was there, so close.
And yet so very far away.
Her heart jumped and then began pounding, even though she knew Mrs. Willoughby couldn’t see her where she lay. And she wouldn’t catch a glance of Trig when he entered the room, either, as long as he went directly to Cami, as he’d done so far. But Cami could see Mrs. Willoughby, and if she had a way to signal her . . .
Cami twisted her head to look at her bedside table next to her, just beside the window. She’d pushed it away from her bed so she could access the power cord to charge her phone, and she regretted that now. Deeply. Only a lamp and an alarm clock and a few books were on top, but there was something in the drawer she might be able to use.
The drawer, however, might as well have been located in another town for all the good it did her.
Her eyes darted to the mirror across from her again. Mrs. Willoughby was out tending to her garden, but she probably wouldn’t be for long. Think, think.