Page 9 of Under His Watch

“Hurry. Before the cops come.” He shut the door as that warning rattled in my head.

No!

Beforethe cops came? I had to gotothe cops. And he wanted to avoid them.

I was in a worse situation than before, but instead of crying or succumbing to the lure of blanking out and going numb, I resorted to more fury.

He slid into the driver’s seat and immediately engaged the locks. They weren’t standard issues. No matter how much I tugged on the handle, I couldn’t open the door.

“Stop,” he instructed, calm yet mad.

He pivoted in his seat, flashing a knife.

I screamed—muffled with this gag—and shrank away from his reach.

“Stay still.”

How about fuck no!He wouldn’t kill me easily. I wouldn’t behave and just let him stab me.

“Stay still,” he repeated as he reached back toward me. His fingers gripped my gag, notme, and he deftly sliced off the nasty rag.

I coughed, breathing too quickly. As I licked my lips and gasped in steadier inhales to better fuel me through this panic, he turned, started the car, and sped off.

Falling back from the force of his speed, I rubbed my face and worked on reclaiming a natural closure of my mouth, licking my lips, swallowing hard, and working my jaw. I sat there and processed that he’d removed the gag.

If he wants to kill me… Does this mean he’s a sociopath who listens to his victims scream?

“I want to help you.” His voice hadn’t lost that hard edge, but again, a tiny voice had me thinking he wasn’t madatme.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, trying a few times to get the words out with my croaky voice.

He replied by handing me a sealed bottle of water from the cupholder. “Drink.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” In any other circumstance, I would’ve felt bad to talk with that snark. He was my rescuer—maybe—and he was due some respect for that save. But I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was locked too deep in survival mood to know if I could trust this man or whether he’d actually rescued me at all.

“Where are you taking me?” I said again before he could respond to my snark.

“My home.”

“No.” I shook my head, spilling some of the water that I’d drunk. His home? So he could keep me captive there? “No.”

He narrowed his eyes at me through his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I’m taking you to my home to help you.” As he said the words, he furrowed his brow, almost as though he questioned his decision.

“No. That’s not…” I shivered as flashbacks of those men raping me filled my mind’s eye. It’d just happened, and blocking out the memories wasn’t something I’d perfected yet. Tears burned anew as the car went over a pothole, jolting me on the seat.

My ass hurt. My vagina felt so raw. Reminded of the horror I'd suffered, I slipped back into that scary state of wishing I wasn’t alive to feel this anymore.

The shame. The fear. The anger. They coalesced into an angry storm that had me freaking out with the chance to voice it all.

“No one” —I choked on a hard sob— “No one will want me now. I’m damaged. I’m all damaged goods now.” I couldn’t see pastthe blur of tears, and I swore my soul was crushing my heart. My chest was too tight. My head was a heavy mess of darkness and despair as the first reactions punched through me.

“Elliot won’t want me now.” And in a truly sick way, I felt free. I was glad that I would finally have an excuse to not be with him. Never in a million years would I have wished this to happen this way. Never. But if I had to take hold of a silver lining…

“Who is Elliot?”

I shook my head, almost forgetting for a moment that someone else could hear me say such a thing. Something that didn’t fucking matter among everything else. Elliot wasn’t a priority. Surviving what happened to me was.

“Your husband?” he guessed as he drove.

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