Chapter 4

“There’s no one here,” Roy called, and the closet doors slammed shut.
Relief flooded over me like a bucket of cool water. Roy hadn’t seen me. I would be okay. They would go away, I would get back to the room, and…probably become a slave girl? Soon my relief faded. But who knew what would happen. Maybe I could still escape. Or maybe Daddy would find me and save me. But I knew now that that would never happen. I doubted he even noticed I was gone yet.
The voices started to move away from me, and I softly opened the closet door and leapt out into the hall. Now that I knew what they were planning, I really did want to escape. But I also knew that if they found me, they would probably just kill me because I was too much of a hassle or something. And they’d probably be checking for me soon.
So I walked carefully back to the room I was being held in, deciding my best bet was to pretend I’d been there all along and find more information.
My body had this kind of sinking sensation in it, like I knew life as I had once known it was over. There wasn’t much of any hope left. I’d be some sort of slave girl and I would never go home again. I was finally starting to grasp my situation. I was numb with horror and fear and a little hatred. What was I going to do?

I lay down onto the soft couch, and before I knew it, I was asleep, and I had no dreams, just darkness and softness and the only comfort I’d felt in a while, and would feel for a while.
The door banged open sometime in that period, and it was Roy, who walked in and looked at me, pondering. I decided to pretend to be asleep, because I didn’t really want to deal with him right then.
“I know you’re awake.” He found a chair and pulled it up to sit by me on the couch. I turned over and lay against the back of the couch, gruffly.
“What?” I muttered.
“I just have to be here to watch you again.” He didn’t seem too happy about it either.
I sat up a little. I needed to find out more. And Roy could tell me.
“So, why do you work with them?” I asked, genuinely, because I really did want to know.
“Them?”
“Yeah, you know, the people that wanted you to find whatever was at Swarovski.”
“They give me money,” He said dryly.
“Why don’t you just get a real job?” I replied with a frosty glare.
“You should talk, your Daddy pays for everything for you.” He almost growled.
I tried to remain aloof, but it hurt. Was it true? Did I take everything for granted? Like it mattered anyway. Soon I was going to be dead.
“Maybe some people aren’t so lucky, Ashely.”
“You’re calling me lucky?  You haven’t been kidnapped,” Was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
I began to feel sort of delirious, and I lay back down on the couch, dizzy.
My face was getting colder and colder and so were my hands. I began to shiver in my sweater. I wanted to throw up.