Prologue

I open my eyes in darkness. My head hurts and my vision swims for a few minutes as I try to make sense of my surroundings. That tells me I probably have a concussion. I don’t know where I am. I can see a little bit through the moonlight filtering in through the windows. It looks like some sort of barn. I flex my arms and nod slowly when I feel the ropes biting into my wrists. I slowly clench and relax my fists, testing the ropes. They feel scratchy, maybe a little frayed. I’m tied to a chair. I close my eyes again and take a few deep breaths before opening them again.

I take in my surroundings again, looking more closely. It’s a barn. A horse barn by the smell and the look of the stalls. It has an air of neglect and I wonder where it is. My head still hurts, but it’s mostly concentrated above and behind my left ear. Did someone hit me? It’s hard to remember and that’s another strong indicator that I’m suffering from a concussion.

I shake my head and remind myself that’s not important at the moment. I’m not blindfolded or gagged. That tells me that my captors aren’t worried about me being heard and that they’re not as concerned about me identifying them. I wonder who I have to thank for my current predicament and whether they’ll get to the point soon.

‘DAMN IT! FOCUS!’ I berate myself angrily. Horse barn, probably abandoned, definitely isolated, tied to a chair, no gag, no blindfold. I flex my knees, but my ankles are similarly tied to the chair. I wished they’d used handcuffs. THOSE, I could deal with, thanks to Sam. I thought about Sam and bowed my head in silent gratitude. Those lessons would get me through this, I suspected. If not, they’d certainly turn my captors angry enough to kill me before they’d inflicted as much pain as they wanted.

It was all a matter of motivations really. If this was personal, then I was in for a very long night. If it was business, then it was gonna be a ... well, that’d be a long night too, but it would be a different brand of arduous.

I listened hard, but I was the only person here. I could hear scuttling in the rafters that meant rats were happily going about their personal business, possibly curious about what sort of creature I was to invade their domain.

I looked down at myself and was glad to see I was still dressed. I’d had a moment of horror that I might be about to relive the torture scene from James Bond fame. I had no desire to method-act my way through that performance.

I looked around more openly, looking over my shoulder and at the walls to see if there was any way out of this rat trap. I leaned forward onto my feet, hoping I could waddle my way around the barn a little bit and was about to explore in more detail when I saw headlights approaching and heard the crunch of tires on gravel as a car pulled into the yard. I sat back down and heard the chair creak as I settled my weight back into place carefully.

I hung my head and acted like I was still unconscious, hoping to pick up a bit of conversation before I had to meet my captors. I slowed my breathing and put myself into a meditative state while I strained to listen. I twisted my hands against the ropes a little harder and sagged in the chair, like I’d been sitting when I first woke up.

The door was thrown back, flooding the room with the harsh glare of the headlights as two people came to face the chair.

“You said he’d be awake by now,” complained a voice I recognized. That wasn’t good. That meant tonight was going to be a very long night. It also meant that the rats were probably going to eat well in the morning.

I thought about my family and prayed for the first time I can remember, not for myself, but for them. My life was already over if that voice was the reason I was here.

“He should be,” argued the second voice and I wondered if I was already dead. These two talking together meant that I was well and truly fucked. It also meant that this was personal. VERY personal.

I take a moment and calm my mind, taking a few minutes to remember how this all started.

Chapter 1 »