Suffocating to death on the hard concrete floor of a cell?
The sound of her own harsh breathing filled the air as she continued to look about, and things continued to get worse. Because she wasn't alone down here. Beside her in the next cage was a woman curled up on the floor. She had a blanket tucked around her, and she appeared to be asleep.
How could she be sleeping here?
Ally was pretty sure she would never sleep again.
This couldn’t really be a cell like a police cell. Police didn't arrest people and lock them up in cells like this. They gave you a bed, a chair, and a toilet. This cell had nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only thing inside it was her. There wasn't even a bucket for her to do her business in.
Besides, what would she have done to be arrested?
She was the kind of person who followed every rule, long since learning the art of fading into the background so nobody noticed her. Even as a teen, she’d never gone through a rebellious phase, never shoplifted or experimented with drugs. Never done any underage drinking, she didn't even drink nowas an adult. When she was driving, she obeyed all road laws, no speeding or running red lights for her. She paid her taxes on time, and she tried to be a responsible citizen in everything she did.
For goodness sake, she didn't even litter.
The thought of her getting arrested was preposterous, but the only other reason she would be in a cage was … not something she wanted to consider.
Like if she just refused to think it, then it couldn’t possibly be true.
There was no way she’d been abducted. And the fact that other women were here meant that she had probably been taken by human traffickers.
No.
That had to be a stretch.
She was reading too much into it.
Probably was the cops. She’d been arrested, it had been a mistake, and she’d get it straightened out, then she could go back home. For the last five months, she’d dreaded being home, so close to her ex’s apartment, forced to accept what she’d believed all along; that he was way out of her league and sooner or later he was going to realize it and dump her.
Only she’d start to let herself believe that wasn't true. They’d been together for almost a year before he dumped her. He was good for her. She started going out a little more rather than hiding away at home. He helped her step outside her comfort zone and become more adventurous. Some of the things they did in bed were ones she’d been sure she’d hate until he convinced her to try. And she’d gotten on the back of his motorcycle even though at first the thought had terrified her.
But it had all been a lie.
In the end, he realized she was beneath him and he’d dumped her.
For the last five months, she’d been both anxious to get a glimpse of Mateo and let him assure her it was all some big misunderstanding, and of course, he still wanted to be with her, and terrified to see him because then he could officially end things between them.
Trapped in limbo.
Limbo she’d much rather return to. She’d much rather stand before Mateo’s six-foot-three frame and hear him tear her to shreds, tell her she was an embarrassment, that she was weak and weird, that she deserved to be lonely because she didn't possess a single interpersonal skill needed to make true bonds with people. She was a freak, pathetic, cried too much, with her nose always buried in a book, not good enough for a man who looked like Mateo Adler.
Now she pushed to her feet, determined to prove him wrong. Determined to prove that she could be strong and tough, that she could hold it together in the most heinous of circumstances.
Because that’s what this was.
It wasn't a police station, there was no misunderstanding, she’d been abducted, possibly by human traffickers, or possibly by some sadistic psychopath who delighted in imprisoning women and … doing things she wasn't going to consider yet.
A wave of dizziness assaulted her the second she was upright, but she did her best to ignore it and stormed over to the front of her cell. Well, she staggered over, but she wasn't going to worry about technicalities, she was going to be a version of herself that would shock every person who’d ever known her.
She was going to yell at whoever had taken her that they needed to let her go, that they weren't going to get away with this, that she was going to fight them every step of the way.
Only when her fingers curled around the metal bars at the front of her cell, and she looked down the hallway, she saw nineteen cages like the one she was trapped in. They weren't alloccupied, but enough of them were, from what she could see, and that doused a little bit of her uncharacteristic fire.
If the person who had taken her wasn't going to get away with what they were doing, then wouldn't these women already be rescued?
Why hadn't they been found?
From what she could see, another dozen women at least were in these cells. How had they all gone missing, snatched from their lives, torn away from everything they knew and loved, and yet nobody had found them, nobody had come for them?