hell. He had to keep alert. That meant no strange foods. No booze. No women.
Definitely, no women.
Where were all the women?
Leanna wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been locked in this all but airless, filthy cell. Two days, maybe two and a half—and in all that time, she’d yet to see a female face.
She kept hoping she would because a woman would surely listen to her. Help her escape from this hellhole.
That was right, wasn’t it?
It had to be.
Leanna eyed what little water remained in the bucket she’d been given that morning. If she drank it, would they give her more? Her throat was parched from the heat, though the worst of it was over. She had no watch—the men who’d kidnapped her had torn it from her wrist—but the blazing eye of the sun had begun its descent behind the mountains. She knew because the shadows in her squalid prison were growing longer.
That was the good news.
The bad was that the darkness would bring out the centipedes and the spiders. Dinner plates with legs, was what they were.
Leanna closed her eyes, took a deep breath, told herself not to think ahead. There were worse things than centipedes and spiders waiting for her tonight. One of her guards spoke just enough English to have told her so. Remembering the way he’d laughed still made her shudder.
Tonight, she would be taken to the man who’d bought her. The king or chief or whatever he was called of this horrible place. The bugs, the heat, the taunts of her captors would all seem like pleasant memories.
“The Great Asaad will have you tonight,” the guard had said, and his gap-toothed grin and obscene hand gesture had guaranteed she understood exactly what that meant.
Leanna began to shake. Quickly she wrapped her arms around herself, willed the trembling to stop. Showing her fear would be a huge mistake. It was just that it was hard to imagine how this could have happened. One minute she’d been rehearsing Swan Lake with the rest of the corps on the stage of a tired but beautiful old theater in Ankara. The next, she’d stepped out a side door for a break, been grabbed and tossed in the back of a stinking van…
The door swung open. Two enormous men, their hands the size of hams, stepped into the cell. One stabbed his thumb upright in the air and mumbled something she assumed meant she was to go with them.
She wanted to fall to the floor. She wanted to scream. Instead, she stood tall and glared at her captors. Whatever came next, she’d face it with as much courage as she could manage.
“Where are you taking me?”
She could see that she’d surprised them. Why not? She’d surprised herself.
“You will come.”
The giant’s English was guttural but clear. Leanna put her hands on her hips.
“The hell I will!”
The men lumbered toward her. When they clamped their meaty paws around her arms, she dug her heels into the vermin-infested straw that covered the floor but it didn’t do much good. They simply lifted her to her toes and dragged her between them.
Still, she fought. They were strong but so was she. Years spent en pointe and at the barre had toughened her muscles. She had a terrific high kick, too. It had once earned her a spot in a Las Vegas chorus line and she put it to good use now.
She got the Talking Giant right where he lived.
He doubled over in pain. His partner found that vastly amusing but before Leanna could give him the same treatment, he twisted her arm high behind her back, jammed his ugly face into hers and snarled something she couldn’t understand.
She didn’t have to. Between the stink of his breath and the spray of his spittle, the message was clear.
Still, why would that stop her? She knew what came next. Talking Giant had told her this morning, though she’d already suspected. Two other girls from the troupe had been kidnapped with her. One, same as Leanna, had assumed they’d been taken for ransom but the other had quickly eliminated that possibility.
“They’re slavers,” she’d whispered in horror. “They’re going to sell us.”
Slave traders? In this century? Leanna would have laughed, but the girl added that she’d seen a news report on the white slave trade on television.
“But who would they sell us to?” the first girl said.
“To any son of a bitch who can afford to buy us,” the third girl had answered, her voice trembling. Then she’d added details, enough so the first girl had tossed her cookies.
Leanna had never been the type to throw up or swoon. Ballerinas looked like fairy-tale princesses on stage but the truth was, dancing was a tough life, especially if you came to it via a publicly funded dance program instead of some expensive Manhattan studio.
While one girl vomited and the other shivered, she’d fought the ropes that bound her. But their captors burst in, held them down and injected something into their arms. She’d come to in this horrid cell, alone, knowing she’d been sold…
Knowing it was only a matter of time before her owner claimed her.
Now, that time had come.
The giants dragged her down a long corridor that stank of sweat and human misery. They shoved her into a small room with stained concrete walls and a drain in the middle of the floor, and slammed the door behind her. She heard the sound of a bolt sliding into place but she threw herself at the door anyway, pounding it with her fists until her knuckles hurt.
Then she slumped to the cold floor, looked at the stained walls, at the drain. At the dark, wet stain around it.
She buried her face in her hands.
A long time later, she heard the bolt sliding open. Leanna began to tremble.
“No,” she whispered to herself, “don’t let them see how scared you are.” Somehow, she knew that would only make things worse. Slowly she dragged herself to her feet and lifted her chin.
A woman entered the room. Leanna sagged with relief. Two men with cold, dead eyes stood behind her but the woman’s bearing made it clear she was in charge.
“Do you speak English?” Leanna asked. No reply, but that didn’t prove anything. “I hope you do,” she said, trying to sound reasonable instead of terrified, “because there’s been an awful mis—”
“You will disrobe.”
“You do speak English! Oh, I’m so—”
“Leave your clothing on the floor.”
“Listen, please! I’m a dancer. I don’t know what you think I—”
“Do it quickly, or these men will do it for you.”
“Do you hear me? I’m a dancer! And I’m an American citizen. My embassy—”
