Salvation Page 2

  There was a pause before he answered. “Yeah. I think that’s right.”

  I heard the voices again outside the room, and it made my body clench in fear. Gideon was listening, and his arm got tighter around me.

  But it relaxed again as the voices faded again.

  “What are they saying?”

  “The guys who brought me here have been drinking.” Something about the terse words sounded ominous, and I shivered as I burrowed into his hard, warm body.

  I don’t know why exactly, but I started to get scared again. I mean intensely scared, the way I’d been when I first got to the house, only without the fog in my mind. Maybe I sensed something in Gideon’s body, although it wasn’t something I could clearly identify.

  He stopped making casual conversation, though.

  We sat together for at least another hour, in mostly silence. Then the voices were close to the room again. I could hear them clearly through the door, although I couldn’t understand the Albanian words.

  Gideon shifted on the floor, his whole body tensing up. He rearranged us so that I was even closer to him than I’d been before.

  My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my eyes and ears, and I could barely take a full breath. He was nervous. That much was clear. And if Gideon had reason to be nervous, then I was absolutely terrified.

  The voices were loud again—like there was a heated argument, right outside the door.

  “What is it?” I whispered, when I finally couldn’t stand any more.

  “They’ve been drinking a lot.”

  “What does that mean? What are they arguing about?”

  “About...”

  My teeth were chattering, but not with cold this time. I was clinging desperately to Gideon’s shirt, as if holding on to him would somehow keep me safe. “About what? Tell me.”

  It was dark in the room. Not pitch black but with no light but what was coming in from the moonlight and streetlights outside. I could see his face enough to see how rigidly it was set. “About whether or not to come in here.”

  I almost choked on a surge of fear. These men were ruthless, violent. And Gideon had betrayed them. They must hate him more than anything. “I thought they were waiting for the boss.”

  “They are. They’re not talking about coming in here for me.”

  I made a helpless gurgle as the words processed. “But you said...you said they weren’t supposed to hurt me. They had orders or something.”

  “They do have orders. The main crew here doesn’t want to let the other guys in. That’s what the argument is about. About whether...whether it counts.”

  I knew what “it” was. Of course, I knew what he meant. I was stupid and sheltered and living with ridiculous, romanticized notions about how I would get through this, but I wasn’t completely clueless.

  It felt like my blood had drained out of every part of my body except my heart, which was pounding everywhere, pounding with the whole world. “Oh, God, Gideon.” I clung to his shirt, twisting it in my hands. I was practically sobbing. “Please don’t let them hurt me.”

  I know it was irrational, but instinct often drives us to such irrationalities. There was no reason to believe Gideon was capable of stopping what might be coming—one unarmed man in the face of who knew how many—but I had to ask him to anyway. I had to. He was stronger than me, and I needed strength. My conscious will had no power to overcome the instinct.

  He wrapped his arms around me, either to comfort me or to still my nervous writhings. “I won’t. If I can stop them, I will.”

  The voices were even louder now. Right outside the door. I buried my face in his shirt and tried to drown them out.

  Something banged into the door, and I smothered a squeal in his chest.

  Then Gideon was moving my head, raising my face to look up at him. His voice was low and rough and urgent. “Diana, try not to panic. You need to listen to me.”

  I was shaking so helplessly I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think.

  He held my shoulders and said, still roughly but with clearer authority. “Diana, look at me. Listen to me right now.”

  I managed to control myself enough to meet his eyes. There was no way I could say anything.

  “They’re not allowed to kill either one of us yet, and that can help us. There are some things they won’t be able to do.”

  I gave a jerky nod, mostly to prove that I’d heard the words.

  “If they come in here, you stay behind me. No matter what happens, you stay behind me.” He was holding my eyes with an intensity I’d never seen before, I’d never felt before. “Tell me you understand that.”

  “I...I do.”

  He lifted his hands from my shoulders to my face. It wasn’t a caress. It was more like a desperate attempt to force his words into my head. “If something happens...” he murmured urgently, his eyes searching my face. “If something happens, and I can’t stop it, don’t try to fight them. Your instinct will be to struggle, but try not to do it. There are way too many of them. There’s no way you’ll be able to get away. And a couple of them out there will want you to fight. They’ll want it, so they can hurt you more. You can’t give them what they want. Tell me you understand.”

  Just a little while ago, the world had been cold and scary, but still with some sense of purpose and hope. Now it had turned into dark, bottomless pit of horrors, of demons. I just stared, blinded by the shock of it.

  “Diana, tell me you understand.”

  “I do,” I choked. The voices were still loud, and there was another bang on the door.

  “Send your mind somewhere safe, somewhere different. That’s who you really are, and they can’t touch that.”

  I was whimpering helplessly, and it would have been embarrassing, but I really think any woman in my situation—knowing what might be coming—would be in similar shape.

  “Do you hear me?” he said, a little louder and rougher, since the voices had shifted to shouts outside the door. “Being strong doesn’t always mean fighting. We’ll fight to keep them from taking you. But if they do...” He was grabbing me now by the upper arms, squeezing so tightly it almost hurt. “If they do, then just get through it and don’t give them what they really want. Remember, the FBI and the police are looking for me right now, and they could get here any minute. Think about that. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is just survive.”

  I was shaking and crying and nodding all at the same time, but he must have realized I’d heard and understood what he was telling me. He used his thumbs to wipe a few tears off my face and said, more gently, “Let’s stand up.”

  He had to help me to my feet, and then he moved us into the corner farthest from the door. The argument continued, but after another minute the voices seemed to move away. They faded, got softer.

  I was still clutching his shirt with sweaty palms, but my panicked gasps slowed slightly as the voices moved away. “What’s happening?”

  “Shh.” He was obviously trying to listen. He was still tense, primed, acutely alert. I could feel it in his body as well as see it on his face.

  I could hear a vague murmur of voices through the wall or the door, but they didn’t sound angry anymore.

  Maybe the better side of the argument won. Maybe they weren’t going to come in here after all. I wasn’t supposed to be hurt. Surely anyone—even a ruthless, mindless thug—would realize that raping a woman meant hurting her. They’d been ordered not to hurt me.

  Maybe it would be okay after all.

  See, I still believed in certain things—that human beings would make reasonable decisions, that salvation would come, even at the very last moment.

  Then the door to the room banged open, and three of them came in. They carried guns and smelled like aftershave and alcohol and had the nastiest faces I’d ever seen.

  Gideon eased me behind him, so I was in the corner and his body blocked mine.

  One of them said something, harsh and slurred.

  Gideon
responded in the same language, his voice unwavering.

  They said some more things. I knew what they were saying. They were telling Gideon to get out of the way. They were threatening him with their guns.

  But they weren’t allowed to kill him, and he wasn’t going to move.

  They came closer, and I had to fight to keep from grabbing at Gideon in instinctive fear, so I wouldn’t distract him or get in his way.

  I couldn’t see clearly since his body was blocking mine, but I could tell that one of them got close enough to aim and thrust the butt of his gun at Gideon’s head.

  Gideon blocked the blow with his forearm and then swung back with his fist. I heard the impact.

  Then the other two came at him too, and I don’t really know exactly what happened after that. Gideon was fighting all three of them off. I felt helpless and bewildered in the corner of the room, so I took one of my boots off so I could have a little bit of a weapon with the heel.

  Then one of the Albanians was on the ground, and Gideon had a chokehold on a second one. The third one aimed the butt of his gun at Gideon’s head, and I reacted without thinking.

  I jabbed the heel of my boot as hard as I could into the back of the man’s neck. The man howled with pain and whirled around, swinging the gun as he did. It struck me in the shoulder, knocking me back into the wall, jarring me so much I couldn’t see for a moment.

  I was aware enough to know that Gideon went after the guy with a sound of guttural rage and actually managed to wrest the gun away from him.

  It should have been good. Gideon had fought all three of them off, and now he had a gun.

  But there weren’t just three Albanians in this house. A fourth man came from behind Gideon, coming into the room before I even realized he was there, and hit him hard on the head with the butt of another gun.

  Gideon grunted and went down. He hadn’t even had the chance to turn the gun around and use it.

  He wasn’t knocked unconscious, though, and the third man—the one I’d hit with the heel of my boot—grabbed Gideon’s arm and twisted it around his back.

  I heard the sound of bone cracking. It was the most sickening thing I ever heard in my life. My stomach almost heaved as Gideon roared from the pain.

  A man from outside the door snapped out a terse comment. Maybe a reminder that he wasn’t supposed to be killed. It got a reaction because the third man let Gideon’s arm go.

  Gideon wasn’t done yet. He was trying to straighten himself up when the fourth man kicked him hard in the gut. He released a choked huff and went down the floor. The man kicked him again. On the third kick I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I threw myself at him in a mindless attempt to tackle him. Or something. Anything to keep him from kicking Gideon anymore.

  I’m in decent shape but not very tall, and there was no way my physical strength could accomplish anything. The third one grabbed me from behind and held me helpless.

  I struggled futilely for a minute, but all it did was make the man holding me laugh.

  He laughed.

  Gideon wasn’t getting up.

  And it was happening. The nightmare was happening. The thing I was supposed to be saved from. The thing so many stories taught me would be stopped at the very last second.

  There was nothing to stop it now. I looked back at Gideon as the man dragged me out of the room. He wasn’t moving.

  It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way I’d always understood the world to work. There was something brutally wrong with it. That this good, strong man couldn’t protect me. That he’d given everything he had. There was blood all over his face. I’d heard his bone crack. And it hadn’t been enough.

  Somehow, it made it even worse.

  Despite what Gideon told me, I fought at first. I couldn’t help it. When they tear off your clothes, when they bend you over a table, every bone-deep instinct in your body will tell you to resist.

  It started with the third man. The one who I’d jabbed with my heel. He was angry, and he took it out on me. But Gideon was right. I could tell he got off on my resistance, so I made myself go limp.

  I tried to follow Gideon’s advice about sending my mind somewhere else. I sent it to the world I used to know. The one where Gideon had gotten the gun turned around in time and shot every one of these men dead. The one where the sirens came—signaling order and protection and safety—before this horrible man had gotten my pants down. The one where I was smart enough and strong enough to find a way out, to slip away from all these men and run to another house to call for help for me and Gideon both.

  That was the place I went to in my mind—imagining stories of my being saved over and over again—while these men did what they did to me.

  It wasn’t over with the one man. There were several men in the room, but not all of them took their turn. Maybe they weren’t interested. Maybe they were worried about the orders not to hurt me. There was conversation going on, but none of it I understood.

  In the end, there were three of them.

  You get to the point where the mind just disconnects from the body. I suppose it’s a way for us to protect ourselves, to convince ourselves that what happens to our bodies doesn’t really matter.

  Everyone with any sense knows we are more than just our bodies, but we are our bodies too. The Greeks were right about a lot of things, but they were wrong about this. Our bodies are part of us—a true part of us—and what happens to them can change the whole of who we are.

  Sending your mind away doesn’t really make it better.

  I don’t even know if I was conscious the whole time. Maybe it’s a bitter blessing—not to be aware of every detail, for the world to become a nightmare blur.

  Afterwards, they dropped me back into the room. And it was the strangest thing. That I was back where I started—in this cold, gray room, waiting for the morning when I would be ransomed and when some nameless boss would come to kill Gideon.

  He was still there, still lying where I’d last seen him.

  It didn’t really take that long. For the bottom to fall out of the world.

  I managed to fasten my pants and pull my torn shirt closed over my chest. Then I crawled over to Gideon.

  Even in the dim light of the room, I could tell he was in terrible shape. Blood was dripping and smeared all over his face, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

  It was hard to feel anything—anything at all—after what had just happened to me, but I was aware of a glimmer of something that wanted Gideon not to be dead.

  “Gideon,” I managed to say. My throat hurt with the one word. I reached out to touch his bloody face.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes. He made a grunting sound that might have been a question, but I couldn’t understand the word.

  There was a torn piece of my shirt sleeve that was hanging on by a thread so I tore it all the way off and used it to try to wipe the blood off his face. Some of the blood was drying and I had no water, so I wasn’t really successful.

  “What...” This time, his grunt took the form of a comprehensible word.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. I knew I should care. I did care. He was a good man, and I wanted him to be all right. I just couldn’t make myself feel like I cared. I couldn’t make myself feel anything but numb.

  He was still out of it, his mind not really working. “Did they...” he began, clearly trying to focus on my face and make his brain function clearly. He was starting to shift, assessing his condition.

  “Yes.”

  That was all I had to say. I saw his expression change. If he’d said he was sorry or asked if they’d hurt me or told me I could get through it—if he’d said anything at all—I would have hated him.

  He didn’t say anything. He struggled to sit up, and it was obviously hard for him. I helped him mindlessly, mostly because it was a thing to be done.

  “How hurt are you?” I asked, still trying to wipe blood off his face, after he’d gotten to a sitting position against the wall.<
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  “I’m fine.”

  That was obviously a lie. “How hurt are you?”

  “Arm broken. A couple of ribs cracked. A concussion.” He spoke tersely, but he wasn’t angry. I’m not sure I would have minded if he was angry. I don’t think it would have broken through my numb stupor.

  I kept trying to wipe the blood away, frustrated when some of it was too dried to come off.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Gideon muttered, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing deeply.

  I didn’t stop.

  He reached up and gently lowered my wrist.

  I wanted to do it. It was a thing to be done. So I briefly fought his hand.

  There was no fight in me, though. I wasn’t sure if there would ever be again.

  I whimpered and hugged my arms to my belly. I kind of rocked there for a minute.

  Gideon sat in silence and watched me. I could tell he wanted to say something, to do something. At one point, he reached out to touch me, but he pulled his arm back even before I shrank away.

  Eventually, a kind of darkness closed in. A darkness I wanted, one that swallowed up everything that hurt. I didn’t really pass out but I lost the edges of consciousness and ended up slumped over Gideon’s lap. It didn’t feel like he was touching me, and it was a little softer than the hard floor. Even with his broken bones, he didn’t try to rearrange me.

  They found us like that a few hours later, when the FBI located the house and burst in to save us.

  Just a little too late.

  Two

  The days afterwards are just as fuzzy as those final hours in the row house.

  I was in the hospital for a while. I talked to the police and the FBI and counselors and psychiatrists and volunteers from women’s groups. I had pregnancy and STD tests, which all came back negative. For days it went on. And I could do all of it because I was still numb, because nothing had unfrozen inside me yet.

  This was me. Going through the motions. Pretending to be human.