A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)(9)

Not that any of those ways work.

It’s hopeless to try to manage my racing brain. Resilience is a useful trait when there’s hope.

It’s horrifying when any chance of escape is gone.

The mind can calculate, bargain, analyze and shift, taking in new information and discarding old as it figures out how to get back to an even-keeled state. The body, too. My muscles find micro-changes to help lessen the pain, spasms leading to more deep breathing than you’d find in a yoga class or at a pot rally.

But you can’t escape your own mind. The anticipation of what these bastards plan for me makes the mind-body connection that much tighter. It’s my body they plan to use for whatever sick means to an end.

All my mind can do is imagine.

How could Daddy have been so stupid? The soft fibers of this pale blue bedspread feel hot against my cheek as I rotate my head and try to think. Any topic other than the screaming fear that they’ll hurt me is better. I replay the day’s events so far. Daddy telling me about going back to the Island. My argument with him. How he said it was just for an evaluation, a few days, a break.

I knew he was full of shit. I pleaded. He said my relationship with Drew wasn’t healthy for either of us. All the while, I defended Drew.

Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.

Then Mom came in the room with Anya behind her.

It all went downhill from there.

My calf seizes in a cramp. As I move to make the throbbing pain stop, I widen my legs. Cold air rushes in. I’m not wearing panties.

My day has really, really gone downhill.

Like lava from Vesuvius.

Anya had seemed pale and grim, more closed off than usual. She gets that way sometimes when Mom yells at her, or when a vote doesn’t go Daddy’s way.

But this was different, I realize. Maybe she was pissed at me for going to Jane’s house.

Or maybe she lied to Daddy and handed me off to my rapists from four years ago.

You know. A little thing like that.

If I breathe evenly, counting in fours and eights, I can fade out a little. Nothing I do will make me calm. Nothing. But I can control my breath.

Can’t control my bladder, though. It’s screaming for attention. I have two choices. Call for help, or pee myself.

“Oh, look. Isn’t she cute. Wiggle wiggle.” Stellan’s voice is followed by my ass being slapped, hard. The sting of his palm sends fear coursing through my blood like a spike, an infusion of uncontrollable tension.

“I need to pee,” I tell him.

He sighs, like this is the biggest imposition ever. Then I’m hauled to my feet. One ankle rolls and I’m half suspended. His fingers dig into my elbow as I squeal. He rights me, my body pressed against him.

Stellan’s a well-known actor now, the kind you see on television in romantic comedies. I’ve heard he’s quickly become the golden boy, making nearly a million dollars an episode. Fast rise upward.

A little too quickly.

He brings me to the bathroom. Thank God he gives me privacy, even if he leaves the door open a crack. My hands are still bound behind me. I grab toilet paper before I sit down, then realize it’s useless.

“Um, I need my hands,” I call out.

Heavy sigh. Stellan appears, his expression grim. “Turn around. You don’t need this,” he says in a chiding tone, as if it’s my fault I’m wearing a zip tie.

I bite back the urge to say I don’t need any of this.

But he frees my hands. My shoulders ache. I take one step forward. My mind has to be still. Smooth and placid like the surface of a lake. All I can do now is take one movement at a time.

And hope Drew gets here.

I sit on the toilet and can’t pee. My body won’t let me. A memory from an online psychology class pierces through the chaos in my emotional tornado. When in fight, flight or freeze mode, the muscles tighten.

That must include the bladder.

“Come on,” Stellan calls out. “We don’t have all day.”

What’s the rush? I want to ask him. In a hurry to hurt me? Kill me?

The thought doesn’t help.

Think about Drew, I tell myself. Remember his arms, how he smells. Look around the bathroom. There’s a can of shaving cream. A bar of used soap. A toothbrush holder with a crooked toothbrush hanging from it. The sink is messy, with small speckles on it. An electric razor is next to the shaving cream.

Huh. Wonder why he shaves both ways.

As I breathe my way to a relaxed state, I let myself indulge in imagining what it would have been like to become domestic with Drew. To come here and hang out. Spend the night. Slowly work our way toward a long-term relationship. Mom and Daddy would never put up with my living with him, but eventually we’d get married.

My ring finger on my left hand tingles at the thought.

Married.

Mrs. Andrew Foster.

Years ago, I had these fantasies. I lived a life before the attacks where I could be like any other woman, dreaming about the future. We even talked, tentatively, about what life would be like after Drew graduated from West Point.

We were just about there.

And then it was all taken from us.

My body finally releases out of desperation, the relief making me tremble. This must be what happens, I muse as I finish up and wash my hands, all my muscles trembling, legs and arms shaking. This is how we handle the imminent threat of death.