1
Greta pulled the chains one more time. The trap was firm, but not tight enough to hurt. Professional. Everything about the kidnapper seemed methodical and professional. She would remember this assessment later, in a much worse situation.
As she shifted in bed, she noticed the direct touch of the sheet on her skin for the second time. The fabric brushed the inside of her thighs. Her pants were gone.
She froze. Her whole body stopped as if waiting for confirmation. Carefully, as if examining the rubble of a newly demolished building, she ran her hands over her own skin, searching for marks, pain, any sign of violence.
There was none.
There were no new bruises, no strange sensation between her legs, nor the kind of burning she feared with all her might.
Relief came like an avalanche, intense. No sign of sexual abuse. Not this time.
And, from what she'd read in the newspapers, her kidnapper had a well-defined pattern. He focused only on robbery and murder.
Only, she thought. As if that served as consolation.
A Stephen King book surfaced in her memories—of course it had to be Stephen King. In the story, a woman handcuffed to a bed managed to escape by cutting her own wrist, using the blood as lubricant to slide her hands out of the cuffs.
Greta groaned just imagining it. No, she definitely wouldn't do anything like that. First because this was real life, not a horror book. She'd need her ankles safe and sound when a chance to run away arose. And to be completely honest, the idea of cutting herself was horrible. She'd faint just from seeing her own blood.
Exhausted, she let her head sink into the large, soft pillows. She reviewed the previous events more calmly. For better or worse (and she knew it was more worse than better) the stranger hadn't hurt her yet. The word "yet" blinked like a neon warning in her mind. And, being honest, he'd demonstrated a surprising capacity for acts of kindness. He'd bandaged her injured wrists. And, before that, filled and carried the gas cans for her.
An idea began to form. Maybe there was room for dialogue. If she could find out what he wanted, she could try to negotiate her freedom. She just needed to make him trust her. That was it.
"You can come back, stranger. I'll be nice. Until you get what you deserve," Greta promised, her eyes fixed on the trees outside.
2
The phone vibrated insistently in Daros's hand, an alarm of setbacks. Daros slid the button to answer.
"Something wrong?" he got straight to the point.
The familiar voice on the other end of the line was Daros's only real connection in the world. It functioned as his nervous system: monitoring, alerting, warning when something was about to go wrong.
"Still investigating," the other replied.
The two handled their clandestine operations on phones registered in the names of random people. When the contact called the burner phone, it was a sign that something might be wrong.
"It's probably nothing," the interlocutor continued. "It's just that I sent someone to get your motorcycle in Osório. I did some routine checks, you know how it is. Looks like someone's been querying the plate in the system."
Daros clenched his jaw.
"Since you've already relocated, you should be safe," the contact concluded.
Should. Probably. The words indicated assumptions. And Daros wouldn't have survived this long trusting assumptions. He needed certainties.
"Thanks," he replied, ending the call without saying goodbye.
Now it was official. His good mood had evaporated. Across the street, a clothing store employee was writing the day's deals in white chalk on a blackboard. The scene couldn't be more ordinary.
Daros crossed the street, cutting through a flower bed in the middle. He doubted his smile was as warm as he intended when entering the establishment. But he'd do his best. He entered the women's clothing store protected by a pink canvas awning simulating lace at the edges.
Change of plans. And a change of plans meant the conversation with the chained woman would be very different from what he'd anticipated.
3
Fatigue won out and Greta dozed off. In the dream, a tall, blurry figure walked through the dark woods toward a solitary country house. There was a blur where the face should be. No, it wasn't exactly a blur. It was a mass of bloody flesh, some loose teeth dangling from the dislocated cheek.
Greta watched the movement from the back of her own car, her hands held by handcuffs that scratched her wrists. The open door of the SUV was a morbid invitation to the horror show. Helpless, she saw the man... No, it wasn't a man. It was a sculpture of pieces of what had once been a man. He entered the house without his steps making a sound. He was floating two or three inches off the ground, oblivious to the force of gravity.
The screams started immediately. They weren't simple screams of fear. The voices revealed the brutal violence their owners were suffering. She identified a woman's low moan and a man's desperate cry. She squeezed her eyes tight when she heard a baby's loud crying. When she herself began to scream, she didn't know if it was from horror or if she was trying to mask the sounds of death coming from the house.
Her unconscious had responded with cruel precision to the questions she didn't yet have the courage to formulate fully. Whose house was that? And what had that man done to claim possession of it?
The clinking of plates and silverware yanked her from the nightmare. The sound came from somewhere distant in the house, a domestic and ordinary symphony that acted as a desecration of that terrible dream's altar. It didn't serve as relief, though. It was a terrifying proof that her kidnapper was real, tangible, and that he was performing mundane tasks just a few yards from where he kept his prisoner.
Her bladder was about to explode. Her hair stuck to her neck, with the acrid smell of sweat and fear. Greta bit her lip until it bled, considering the nonexistent options.
Call for him..
The idea stubbornly returned, like a venomous snake circling a nest of rats. Soon after it was replaced by reluctance.
It was a simple calculation: if he wanted to kill her, he'd be sharpening a knife in silence, not washing dishes, right? The logic was fragile, but also the only thread of hope she could cling to.
She pulled lightly on the ankle chains. The metallic tinkling confirmed the obvious: there was no choice.
Now, she just needed to gather courage, like a condemned prisoner showing the executioner where the electric chair outlet is.