‘Christ Almighty! Would you shut that one up already?’ The taller of the two men suddenly bit out, anger flushing his face a deep red.

That’s when the noise filtered through to Rachel, and she realized Cheyenne or Meghan – she couldn’t remember which was which – had begun shaking back and forth as her fingers gripped her mattress, undecipherable words and spittle flying from her mouth in a chorus of high-pitched wails.

Tendrils of dread worked their way up her spine as she watched the girl’s reaction to seeing the men. And then her gaze flew away as Tall Guy announced, ‘That one.’ When Rachel saw he was pointing at her, her eyes shot around the room, searching for a place to run, to hide, to escape. And then the man produced another key and unlocked their enclosure. As he stepped inside, she noticed a third man standing just off to the side, holding what appeared to be a weapon of some sort. A gun? Taser? She couldn’t tell.

And then it didn’t matter because the three men ordered the other girls to stay put as they moved toward her with purpose. Rachel scrambled to get away though there was nowhere to go… except out there. The door was open, and without thinking about the consequences, she bolted between the men and was brought roughly to a halt when one of them reached out and wrapped a handful of her hair around his fist, yanking her to the ground.

Ignoring the pain shooting through her skull, Rachel jerked her head forward trying to escape the man’s grip, relieved when his hold on her hair released. Taking advantage of being loose, she shuffled backwards and huddled into the corner of the enclosure, pulling her knees in as tightly as she could, wrapping her arms around them, violently shaking her head back and forth, barely recognizing the sounds coming from deep inside her.

Stopping at her feet, the imposing figure of one of the men asked, ‘You going to cooperate, or do we do this the hard way?’

Rachel didn’t have time to wonder what the hard way was because Faye answered for her, in a voice much softer and gentler now than the one she’d used before. ‘She’ll cooperate. She’s just scared. You don’t have to… she’ll cooperate.’

Hysteria bubbled up inside, threatening to erupt. Scared? She wasn’t scared; she was freaking terrified. And despite her efforts to make herself invisible, rough hands reached down and dragged her out of her corner. Immediately, and regardless of Faye’s promise of cooperation, Rachel struggled, clawing her nails down the face of one of the men, eliciting an outraged howl of pain. Even as the men tried to control her flailing limbs, she kicked out at anything she could. It was only when the cold barrel of a gun pressed into her temple that the fight drained out of her, and her body went limp as Tall Guy and his partner gripped her arms and hauled her upstairs while the third man relocked the cell.