On Dangerous Ground

On Dangerous Ground By Alexander Kelly ISBN 13: 978-1-936173-16-7 ISBN 10: 1-936173-16-6 A Pink Flamingo Ebook Publication Copyright © 2007, Alexander Kelly No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the publisher. For information contact: Pink Flamingo Publications www.pinkflamingo.com P.O. Box 632 Richland, MI 49083 USA Image © powershotz.com Email Comments: comments@pinkflamingo.com Most welcome, bondage, for thou art a way, I think, to liberty. Shakespeare Chapter One Escape Lose my freedom? f**k that! I needed to get out of town. Fast. I could give you all the details, try to convince you of my side, but really all you need to know is that certain people wanted me in their clutches and I didn’t want that. Now, I’m not a murderer or drug dealer or anything like that. I just got caught in the switches and needed to get out. So far, everything worked pretty well. I had cut and dyed my hair from its original long, blonde to a short, dark brown and managed to keep attention off of me, all the way from my hurried exit out of my dingy apartment to where I was now – a roadside diner surrounded by pine trees. Alone in a window booth I slowly sipped coffee and tried to figure out how far my last, pathetic amount of cash would take me. When I bolted from my apartment, I made sure to leave behind all my credit cards and driver’s license. A decision I now almost regretted. One measly cash advance wouldn’t have hurt, would it? No. Don’t think that way. I carried nothing that would peg me as Jordan Donovan, and that was probably why I had made it so far. So, stop it. One use of the plastic and I’d be nailed like a nervous virgin, and not by very nice people either. I took another precious sip. The coffee was almost gone and, in a more complete way, so was I. I had to leave my old life behind. What was done was done. Live with it. Live. That was something I wanted to do, very much. But at the moment, I was stuck for a ride. All the innocent families in their SUV’s that stopped for gas or candy for screaming kids or whatever probably weren’t very approachable to giving a stranger a ride. I could have tried hitching. A woman as young as me wouldn’t have had much trouble getting a ride from a trucker, only the roadside diner wasn’t on a busy interstate. I had chosen this two-lane route just to avoid as many people as possible. So, here I was, as far as my bus ticket could take me, with no mobile prospects in sight. End of the line, all right, in more ways than one. Ah, wait a sec. A truck pulled in and parked. Not an eighteen wheeler, but one of those old Ford, shortbed style jobs from the fifties. What’s more, a canvas tarp hung down from a high overhead frame and covered the bed. Perfect. I could sneak in and hide behind whatever crates they might have in there. All I had to do was wait as two young, strong men swung down from the cab and occupied a couple of barstools. The waitress greeted them like old friends and didn’t even ask for their orders, as she already knew what they wanted. So I waited, then nonchalantly threw down the last of my money for the coffee and sauntered outside. The truck bed had a short, wooden gate that swung out and all the way down in back. I was in good shape, so it wasn’t hard to give a quick twist to scan the parking lot one more time while I jumped up and landed on my ass. I pulled my legs up quick, ducked behind the tarp and pulled the gate back up behind me. Hardly any light bled through the tarp, and that heavy canvas smell seemed to permeate everything, but hardly and seemed to didn’t mean that I couldn’t see or smell something else. I wasn’t the only person there, or the only one scared shitless. Instead of boxes or crates full of produce, there were women. Handcuffed and manacled to wooden benches on either side of the truck’s bed, each one blindfolded, each one exuding a smell that no one could mistake for anything other than fear. Some had their hands cuffed behind them, others in front and anchored by a chain to a central ring in the truck’s wooden bed. A couple even held hands tightly, as if to assure the other. The knuckles on both were white as neither of them seemed to be doing a good job. One of them was real young, maybe nineteen or twenty at best. The other was older, late thirties, early forties maybe. The young one’s lips quivered, while the older pressed hers tight. What the hell was this? Were these women kidnapped? Why didn’t they call out for help? Unless they were so terrorized that they couldn’t. But that wasn’t quite the feeling I got. They were all tense, but not in a life-threatening way. A few of them turned their heads in my direction and one, who’s face was sprinkled in light freckles, almost spoke, but thought better of it. I almost asked what was going on myself, but then voices just on the other side of the tarp stopped me. “About time you showed up,” said a young man’s voice. “I like the food here, but there’s only so much lasagna you can eat.” “I’m not worried about your stomach,” said another, older man. “You got the manifest?” “Right here. You want to check it?” “What for? As long as you counted them, what do I need with this list? I could care less for paperwork, but Gisele at the end of the line can be a stickler for details, so I always make sure she knows what she’s getting in writing. They’ve been fed?” “We just got here, haven’t eaten ourselves.” The older man made a disparaging noise. “I don’t care if you’re starving of hunger. First thing, first thing, you do is feed the cargo. It calms them down and you won’t have any nervous nellies while you eat. Al and Erna run a tight ship here; they’ve probably already got the special dish ready. Get it. Now. You can stuff your face later.” The younger man’s feet ran off and the older one began unlocking the gate. s**t! He was going to come in here! If he saw me he would toss me out in a second. But there wasn’t any place to hide! Oh, yes there was. And in plain sight. Of course, a lot depended on him not checking that ‘manifest’, whatever was on it. Spare leather blindfolds hung on a wooden slat near the end of the bed, right next to several pairs of shiny handcuffs. In a flash I grabbed a blindfold and secured it over my eyes. My hands groped for and found a pair of cuffs that I locked on my wrists, but not tight, so I could wriggle out of them later. I kept my hands in front and took a chance that the men wouldn’t notice that, unlike the other women, I also didn’t have a chain running to the ring in the bed. When the time came to jump out of the truck on some stretch of road, I wanted my hands available for use, even if they were cuffed. I just got my ass planted on the end of the bench next to freckle-face when the tarp was pushed aside. Fresh air blew through the truck bed, then was cut off. Several pairs of booted feet clumped on the bed’s center. “All right, eat up,” the older man said. “It’s been a bit of a trip already for some of you, and there’s still a ways to go. Can’t have any of you falling over from hunger.” The scent of well-seasoned, hot food filled the truck and my mouth watered. I hadn’t anything to eat since lunch yesterday and my stomach demanded satisfaction. Now! Bowls and spoons were pressed into our laps, then food, from the smell most likely beef stroganoff, was generously ladled out. Spoons uncertainly clinked against porcelain and I sensed the men fed the women whose hands were behind them. A few comments floated around about how eager all the women lapped up the food, myself included, even though we couldn’t see it. Wait a minute. What was in that food? All too suddenly, a strange feeling came over me…I could hardly make my brain work. I was getting sleepy. My head fell back against the wooden boards. No, don’t! You need to…to…stay…awake... Even though my mind faded in and out I knew the bowls were gathered. But when it came my turn a pair of fingers hooked in between my wrists and held them up. My arms hung limp. “What kind of sloppy work is this?” said the older man. “You’re lucky these just don’t fall off! And she’s not even chained to the ring.” Another voice, probably the other young man that jumped out from the cab earlier, said, “Not my problem, Logan. Talk to the people at the sally port. I just drive today.” “And if one doesn’t show up it’s out of your pay, Burton,” said the older man, Logan. “But that’s not my problem either.” With a quick gesture he tightened the cuffs. He scrambled around my numbed feet, locking another set on my ankles. From then on I wasn’t sure what else he did. My head lolled to the side and softly bumped against Freckle-face. At least, I think so. Couldn’t tell... The black under my blindfold was replaced by another, deeper darkness. *** Something filled my mouth. It pressed down on my tongue, pushed out against my teeth and the sides of my cheeks. I tried to work my jaw and found I couldn’t do that either. A thin strap, secured tight underneath my chin, prevented any movement. More straps pressed all around, a wide one across my lips to wrap around my head, another one above that ran from my forehead to just below my crown in back, and others that angled up from the corners of my mouth alongside my nose to a point on my forehead. The scent of leather pervaded everything. My gummy eyes blinked and I slowly turned my head. I was still in the back of the bouncing truck, its lurches now also waking up the other women. All similarly gagged now, and bound in thick straps like me, most of which held our arms tight in back, legs welded together and torsos upright against the wood slats behind us. The truck probably wasn’t going that fast, but the enforced vertical position was for our own protection since we were no longer on smooth roadway, but rough terrain. Whoever was running this show didn’t want the cargo injured. Whatever that was worth, I took it for a good sign. But, based on the fear in everyone’s eyes, that was the only one. Freckles awakened. Green eyes slowly focused and over the engine whine, once she realized her current state, she emitted more than a few whines of her own. The young one that had held the older woman’s hands let loose with some squeals, but the others remained silent. The older woman next to her, who sat opposite me, seemed to have an air of grim resignation about it all, as if this was just another in a long line of incidents that needed to be tolerated. She scanned the others, studying each one for a brief moment, then our eyes met. I sensed an endurance, a deep well of hidden strength of which no one yet had discovered the full depth. From that point on I ignored the others and tried to draw courage from that gaze. For the most part, she returned my look, briefly breaking away now and then to lay her head in reassuring comfort against the young, scared woman. The truck slowed even further, then revved up a steep slope and suddenly leveled off. The bouncing ceased as the truck found a smooth surface, then stopped. A garage door rolled closed and the tarp flipped up. A young man with small, round glasses, and then a tall woman, her age close to my own late twenties, climbed into the truck bed. She carried a clipboard and exuded an officious air. “So, these are the latest?” she said. She strode up and down the truck bed. Straight, dark red hair curled inward to high cheekbones while delicate hands checked things off on the clipboard, the edge of which pressed against her flat, tight stomach. Utilitarian riding boots clumped on the floorboards. “Well, well, never thought I’d see you here, Coretta,” she said to the older woman. “Finally decided to take the plunge?”