could think was, Too late.
TARA AWOKE to a sharp pain piercing her between the shoulder blades.
Ow. Not fun.
She felt groggy, sluggish. Like she’d just stayed up studying all night for a test. And her arms hurt.
Lolling her head around to loosen the tight muscles in her neck, she tried to relax, to go back to sleep. But her body hurt all over, and her head was pounding. And she was so cold. Had Dad turned the heat down again to save money on the electric bill? Drove her nuts when he did that. She felt like she was ninety years old when she woke up freezing like this, every joint creaking and groaning in protest when she rolled out of bed.
But she wasn’t in bed. She felt like she was standing.
Weird.
Too disturbed by the unfamiliarity of her situation to go back to sleep, Tara struggled to open her eyes. But for some reason, they wouldn’t cooperate. So she flexed her shoulders and brought her arms down to her sides.
Or tried to.
A faint rattle was her only reward. Her hands stayed firmly above her head, pinned by something clinging to her wrists. She pulled her arms downward again, causing the pain in her upper back to radiate throughout her body.
What the heck?
Some kind of crust seemed to have formed on her eyes, like the kind that made your lashes stick together when you’d forgotten to take off your mascara at night. But this felt stickier, like mascara times seven, and it had gunked her eyes completely shut. And her head hurt like nobody’s business.
Once again, she tried to bring her hands down, to wipe away the crud on her face and stretch her aching muscles.
Nothing. Just that sound again.
The fuzziness of sleep left her abruptly as adrenaline shot through her system. That man.
Her arms jerked involuntarily at the memory of the figure coming down the mountain toward her, quick and stealthy, like a stalking panther. Tara’s heart started to pound, in time with the pulsing ache in her head. She jerked her arms again, once more noticing the rattle that accompanied the movement. The move itself had set her off balance, and her body twirled slightly to the left, leaving her torso twisted and balanced on her toes like some freakish ballerina. Cold metal dug into her wrists, and the pain between her shoulder blades grew more excruciating as she fought to right herself, her bare toes barely coming into contact with what felt like a cold, concrete floor. God, what was happening to her?
Her breathing quickened, and she felt the first traces of panic creeping down her spine like a pointy-legged spider. Tears leaked out of her closed eyes, loosening things enough that she was finally able to pull one open. She could feel the gunk on her lashes against her cheek every time she blinked, waiting to adjust her vision to a brightness that never came.
Pitch black.
That’s when the reality of her situation hit her.
She was alone, in a dark, dark room with her arms chained above her head.
And she was naked.
The chains rattled again as her hands involuntarily jerked down to cover her bare body, though of course, that proved impossible. Her skin prickled into painful gooseflesh from the damp, unrelenting cold that surrounded her, and try as she might, she couldn’t make out even the most indistinct shapes around her.
Alone in the dark. With only the sound of her teeth chattering to keep her company.
Mommy?
Tara was seventeen years old, far too old to address her mother that way, but she would have given anything to hear her mother’s voice calling, feel her mom’s soft arms around her, taking off the chains, rubbing the soreness from her shoulders.
A soft whimper escaped her. She thought she heard a low sigh in response. A male sound. A sound of satisfaction.
Mommy? Mommymommymommymommymoy!
She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until she heard him laughing.
Her body jolted again, sending her spinning to face the sound. “Who are you?” she cried. “What the hell are you, some kind of freak?”
He must have moved, because this time, the laughter came from behind her. She turned again to face him, her bare toes scrambling for purchase on the icy floor. She felt something warm running down her cheeks and realized that she was still crying. It was all coming back to her—the hike to the hot springs with Paula, the way the warm water had felt on her aching feet, the shadow on the rocks, the tall, thin stranger standing above her. She’d tried to speak to him, to say hello, but he’d grabbed her, she’d tried to escape, and then everything had gone black.
He was still laughing. A slow fury boiled up inside her, and she clenched her hands—still stretched above her head—until her fingernails dug painfully into her palms.
“What do you want?”
In response, she heard a small click, and then a brilliant, blinding light assaulted her eyes like an explosion. She turned her head abruptly to the side, squeezing her eyelids shut. She didn’t want to see. She wanted to wake up and find out that this was all just a dream, not real, not this. But after a few seconds of silence, she couldn’t stand it anymore and peered into the brightness, blinking rapidly as her eyesight adjusted.
He was standing in front of a spotlight—the large, portable kind the police sometimes used at crime scenes on TV—lighting a cigarette. The acrid smell of tobacco smoke wafted toward her, and she realized he could see her naked. Then, almost simultaneously, Tara realized that his seeing her was the least of her worries.
At that point, a horrible feeling prickled across her skin, causing her teeth to chatter again, making her whole body tremble and strain against the chains. She wasn’t going to see her mother, not ever again. Not Paula, not her school, not her boyfriend Todd, the captain of the soccer team in a football town. Just this horrible place, with this man whose refusal to speak terrified her more than anything.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice a small, shaking thing, knowing as she asked that he wouldn’t answer.
He took the cigarette from his lips and smiled. They stared at each other for a long time. And then he finally moved, putting one hand on the back of her neck, the other moving to encircle her waist. Overcome by the urge to throw up, Tara still managed not to scream. Not until she felt him crush his cigarette out on the vulnerable skin at the small of her back.
Chapter Two
As they followed the teenager’s path to its conclusion, Sabrina could practically hear the giant clock in her head ticking the precious seconds away. The sad thing was that even though she was rushing her team down the mountain, she knew they’d never make up those lost hours—and it would be Tara who paid for it.
“Hold up a minute.” She stopped and braced herself with a hand against the rough bark of a pine tree. It was always a bad sign when the mixture of dry pine needles and damp dirt and grass on the ground began to blur, the images smashing together as if someone had put pieces of the forest into a kaleidoscope.
