Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“Anyway, the foot of the bed was tied to the radiator because the first time he left the room, I tried to drag the bed over to the window. And I was cuffed around one post of the headboard. So I worked out the screws on that side and slid the cuffs off.” She flicked her fingers, feeling the strong nails where there’d once been only bloody nubs and that stiff, painful ridge of not-quite-nail underneath that wasn’t thick enough to budge a screw. “It took me four hours.”
Two hundred and forty of the longest minutes of her whole life. Holding her breath, listening for sounds that he’d returned and it was too late to escape. Andra dropped her feet to the floor of the truck and folded her hands in her lap. Her spine sat in an exactly straight line along the back of the seat.
“He’d wedged the door shut from the outside, and I don’t know where he put my clothes—” She broke off. LJ didn’t need to know that part. “I had to go out the window. It was a small one; I almost didn’t fit.”
“Good God,” he said. “If you hadn’t made it—”
“I know. But I thought if one person saw me like that, it’d be over.” Gavin had said even if she told anybody, it would be her word against his and no one would listen. But if she had a witness, he couldn’t drag her back even if he caught her. You couldn’t get undressed wearing handcuffs, so if you were naked, everyone knew you’d been naked when you were cuffed. Anyone who saw her would know the whole story in a glance. Andra’s hands lifted to pull at her hair, and when she realized what she was doing, she dropped them back into her lap. She was in a truck five years later. There was nothing in this moment to be upset about.
“What do you mean?” LJ said, his voice strained as if it was having a hard time making it out of his throat. “Did someone see you, and . . . it wasn’t?”
“Nobody saw me. The street was empty. When I screamed for help, it sounded so weird I kept having to fight the urge to lower my voice.”
That was the part that always came back in her nightmares. The hard jab of gravel under her bare feet. The tiny spots of blood her fingers left on people’s doors, and the way the handcuffs rattled when she lifted her hands to pound on the first house, then the next, and the next.