Bound by Danger (The Alliance #6) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,2

to come back, but she bit back the words. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing her pleas.

When she turned back, she discovered she was not alone in her narrow cage inside one of the tunnels. There were four other women with her. They huddled in the shadows, their eyes wide and their arms around their legs as they sat on the ground.

“Where are we?” she demanded.

Two of them shook their heads, a third cried, and the fourth choked out. “We… we don’t know.”

“How did you get here?”

That only made the two cry harder while the third remained little more than a vegetable. The fourth told her they’d taken her from a jogging trail, tossed her into an SUV, and transported here. She had no idea how long ago that was.

Callie paced the confines of the tunnel. She could traverse about thirty feet before another gate stopped her. Standing on her tiptoes, she gripped the bars of the window high up on the door and tried to see what was on the other side.

It was too high to see anything, but the light flickering in the room beyond dimly illuminated their prison. At least they had that light. She couldn’t imagine being trapped here and completely unable to see anything. Just the idea of it made her feel a little insane.

She continued to pace before realizing she was wasting her energy and slid down to sit on the ground near the fourth woman. It took all she had not to leap up and start pacing again, but if she had any chance of getting out of this, she had to conserve her strength.

However, it was difficult to sit still when she was becoming increasingly sure her life was about to end.

One of the crying women became so loud she drowned out all other sounds. Callie almost told her to be quiet, but if these were the last moments of the woman’s life, who was she to tell her how to live them?

The third woman remained unmoving as she stared straight ahead with glazed eyes. Callie had worked with enough animals to recognize the look of the rabbit caught in the crosshairs of a coyote. Instead of taking off, this rabbit had decided not moving was her best option.

She’s in shock.

But Callie guessed she was in shock too. However, she would not spend her last seconds crying or trying to hide in plain sight. She wouldn’t go down without a fight; she just wanted to know what she was fighting.

Was she facing sex traffickers or a group of serial killers? Would they auction her off or stick her in a pit and lower a bucket of lotion to her? Or maybe they were a Satanic cult looking for a sacrifice.

Out of the many unnerving options, she wasn’t sure which she preferred. Killing her right away would be better than being a sex slave or skinned alive. But considering she was sitting in the dark with four strangers, she didn’t think the odds of instant death were in her favor.

How swiftly her life had changed. Earlier she was celebrating her newfound freedom, returning to her old life, and laughing with her friends while she looked forward to a shining future.

Now, she was sitting in these dank shadows with her back against a cold rock wall while she prayed for instant death.

Something shifted, and she turned as stone scraped against dirt. The two crying women sobbed louder, and for a second, Callie almost joined them, but then she gathered the remaining dregs of her courage.

Resting her hand against the wall, she ran her fingers over its damp surface as she rose. If they decided to sell her off as a sex slave, she would make them regret the decision by biting off the first dick shoved in her mouth. The idea of it made her stomach turn, and the action would most likely get her killed, but death would be preferable.

Beyond the bars of the gate they led her through, a dim light pierced the gloom of the tunnel. She had no idea what was coming toward them, but dirt crunched beneath the weight of whoever approached.

When those footsteps got closer, the person lifted the beam of their flashlight and focused it straight on her face. She recoiled and held up her hand as she turned her head away from the light.

As soon as it no longer hurt to do so, she lifted her chin and glowered at her approaching jailers as