CHAPTER 63

2 days earlier…

SMASH!

When their car got hit, Emily was thrown sideways in her seat. If she hadn't been wearing her belt, she would for sure be dead right now. But no, she was smashed into the side impact airbags, which helped lessen the impact pretty immensely. However, she was motionless to go anywhere as she felt the car roll onto its side, and then go tumbling down the small hill next to them.

SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!

Each time the car rolled over, Emily could hear the car almost crumpling in on itself, doing unspeakable damage to Miguel's beloved truck. Eventually, they came to a stop with the car thankfully the right way up. Emily, who had been bracing herself for the impacts all this time, slowly relaxed her body. As she felt the car stop moving, she realised something… she was okay! She wasn't dead! Bar whiplash and a bit of glass, she wasn't really even harmed! But the same couldn't be said for the man next to her. Immediately, Emily's thoughts went to Miguel, and she quickly spun around, her neck creaking in protest, but to her horror, Miguel looked a LOT worse than she did. He was completely unconscious, knocked out from the impact. His left arm that had previously been on the wheel when the car had hit them had utterly mangled his left arm. However, most terrifyingly, his face was covered in blood as a lot of glass from the shattered windshield had stabbed him in the face.

As Emily took in the damage he had taken, her heart stopped for a moment. She was immobile, too shocked to even move. Seeing Miguel in such bad shape had made her blood run cold. However, eventually, she was snapped out of her shock as she heard a roaring sound begin to around her. She began to feel hotter and hotter and that's when she realised… FIRE!

The panic of being in a car on fire that could blow up at any second kicked the shock from her system, and she immediately grabbed Miguel and started to shake him, trying desperately to get him to wake up.

"MIGUEL! MIGUEL!" She screamed, shaking him desperately. Miguel groaned softly in pain as Emily roughly slammed him against his seat, but he was still very much out of it. "MIGUEL! PLEASE WAKE UP! GODDAMN IT PLEASE WAKE UP!"

With every passing second, Emily could hear the sound of the fire and feel its scorching heat get worse and worse. She knew that they didn't have long until it completely overtook them, but she wasn't about to leave Miguel in the car. It was either they both got out or neither of them did.

"Miguel, please open your eyes." Emily begged, tears beginning to stream down her face, both out of fear and due to the smoke that was rapidly beginning to fill the car. Miguel didn't, his chest softly rising and falling the only indication Emily had that he was even still breathing. Emily tried desperately to wake him up for a while longer, before the flames and the smoke got so bad she could hardly breathe. She eventually gave up and sat back in her seat, grabbing Miguel's hand in hers. Miguel's words from 2 weeks ago in the canyon came back to her.

"If something awful happened to me tomorrow, I wouldn't want to go without you knowing that. I love you." He had told her.

"I love you too, Miguel Diaz." Emily whispered. This was it. This was the end. And strangely, Emily was extremely calm. She would be going with no regrets as Miguel finally knew how she felt about him, and the two of them would be able to reunite pretty soon in the afterlife.

However, Emily wasn't granted that. Instead, her passenger door was suddenly flung open, ripped completely off its hinges. Emily's breath hitched. Oh, my God! Could it be the firefighters and paramedics already?! Could her and Miguel seriously walk away from this?!

Emily then felt herself being lifted out of the burning car and pulled away from the scene. She immediately looked around to see who was holding her, but strangely it wasn't a fireman. It was a random man with his face mostly covered, presumably to protect himself from the flames right?

Finally out of the car, Emily's adrenaline began to wore off, and she immediately was so overcome with pain that she collapsed to the ground. However, she didn't pass out. She could feel unconsciousness beginning to creep up on her, but she couldn't let it take her yet. Not while Miguel was still in the car.

"Please! My boyfriend's still in there!" Emily screamed to the random stranger. However, for some reason, he didn't even turn back to the car. Instead, he grabbed Emily and started pulling her away from the wreckage and into the forest, his hand creeping over her mouth to prevent her from saying anything. Immediately, Emily realised what was actually happening and she began panicking. What was going on? "GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" She shouted. "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

She tried kicking him, scratching him, biting him, doing anything she possibly could to get him away from her, but there was no use. This man had about a foot in height and about a hundred pounds on her. "HELP!" Emily shouted. "HELP! SOMEBODY! HELP!"

"No one can hear you," the man growled into Emily's ear, dragging her to his car which was further down the road. He opened the door and practically sat on Emily to prevent her from moving as he tied her arms together, then her legs. "Now you can't get away."

"What are you doing to me?" Emily stammered, trembling furiously and tears welling up into her eyes. She couldn't believe what was happening. "Please let me go! I swear I've never done anything to you! I won't tell the cops! I won't tell anyone! Just please let me go!"

"Alright. You're seriously annoying me now." The man growled, before striking Emily in the back of the head so hard that she passed out…

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Emily woke up to a completely different setting. She was still in the car, but at some point she had been moved from the back seat to the trunk of the vehicle. She had no clue how long she laid in that trunk, tears pouring down her face, unknown objects pressing hard into her back. Every time the car made a sharp turn, her body slid from one end to another, objects crashing against her. On top of everything else, Emily's childhood tendency to be prone to car sicknesses was coming back with tremendous fury. That combined with her nerves resulted in her having to concentrate to keep the rising bile from coming up. Just when she was sure she couldn't stand it any longer, the car rolled to a slow stop. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears, She tried to steady her breathing, but the apprehension was too much for her body. She was utterly terrified.

As Emily lay there in the trunk, she heard the driver step out of the car, before being met by someone else. Emily strained her ears to try and listen into their conversation, but unfortunately for her they were talking in Spanish so she had no clue what they were saying. Hearing Spanish sent a stabbing pain into Emily's heart as even in her terrifying circumstances, her thoughts immediately went to Miguel. Where was he? Was he okay? Was he even alive? Did he make it out of the crash?!

However, Emily was pulled out of her thoughts as keys were inserted, and the trunk popped open. Her eyes were met by the sight of the two guys. Due to the lack of lighting, she still couldn't see either of their faces. They reached in and grabbed her, unceremoniously pulling her out of the trunk. She didn't bother trying to escape. Just from a single look around, she could deduce that we were in the middle of nowhere. There was a house to the side, but on every other side was just open land. And even if they were back in the city, there was no way her 5'6 frame could have any chance against the two muscular men currently keeping her stationary. They roughly pulled her towards a side door. Even though in her heart she knew that resistance was pointless, she couldn't help but drag her feet and desperately try to not be taken inside. But in the end, all her efforts were for nothing.

The inside of the house was expensively furnished, but it was obviously not taken care of. Mud was tracked across the floors, shoes just thrown every which way. The huge living room smelled like sweat, alcohol, and… man. Emily didn't have any other words to describe it. She was marched across the living room, through a kitchen that food had obviously rarely been cooked in, and then down a cement staircase.

At the bottom of the stairs was a large, empty basement. The walls were cinder block, the floor cheap linoleum. It was the complete opposite of the lavishness that she had just passed through. There wasn't a single piece of furniture in the room, with just the floor, the four walls and a tiny lightbulb in sight. There were two plain doors on the other side of the room. Her eyes darted around, trying to take everything, trying to understand why she was here. Emily was then roughly shoved onto the ground, groaning in pain as she hit the ground, before the door was slammed on her face, leaving her in the darkness…

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Emily had no idea how long she had been locked in the basement for. There were no clocks anywhere obviously, so the only indication of time Emily had was the dripping of a leaky pipe in the corner of the room. It had dripped hundreds of times but problem was Emily didn't know how long it was between the drips so it was pretty useless. She then decided to walk around every inch of the room, trying to find anything that could help her escape. Absolutely 0 success. It wouldn't be exaggerating if she said that there was literally nothing in the room. There was not only no phone or no way out, but there wasn't any furniture, wasn't any food, wasn't anything at all. It was just her in the vast, pitch-black room all by herself. Eventually, she gave up on looking around and curled up in a tiny ball in the corner of the room. It was at this moment that reality truly set in. There was a good chance that she never made it out of this room. That her family, her friends, everyone would think that she was dead so wouldn't go looking for her. And even if they somehow dead, no way they would be looking in some random person's basement in the middle of nowhere. And for all she knew, Miguel was dead too. Before Emily knew it, she was breaking down into silent sobs.

However, after what was to her an interminable amount of time, she heard the loud sound of her door's lock clicking open and the two men walking into her room. Emily scrambled to her feet as she faced them, trying to get a good look at them. They weren't wearing masks anymore, so for the first time, Emily was able to get a good look at them. One of the men, the one who had kidnapped her, was an absolute giant. There was no way she was escaping this prison past him without every bone in her body being smashed to a pulp, she thought to herself. The man was absolutely covered in muscles and blanketed with tattoos. The other man looked a lot smarter than the giant. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt and trousers. He wasn't tattooed at all, and he definitely looked stronger than her, but wasn't brutishly strong like his partner. He seemed like the leader, as the other man stood a few feet behind him, his head slightly bowed, ready to obey the man's every command. The leader seemed vaguely familiar to Emily but she had no clue why.

"Please, why are you doing this to me?" Emily whispered quietly. Between all of her smoke inhalation a couple of hours ago, as well as her crying now, she felt extremely hoarse. Her whole body was screaming in pain, but she forced herself to stand.

"Well, well, well, good morning my dear." The man remarked, slowly bringing out a hand and slowly running it through Emily's hair. Emily slapped it away immediately and recoiled. The man chuckled at her reaction and smirked. At that moment, Emily realised why this man seemed so familiar to her. All of his mannerisms, his hair, his skin color, his eyes, his tone, his laugh, all of it reminded her so much of Miguel. Not that this was Miguel obviously. Emily just put it down to the fact that he was from a similar part of the world to Miguel and thought nothing more of it. She had a lot more pressing things to think about than that.

"Get off me." Emily growled at him.

"A feisty one I see. I like it." The man laughed. "However, you're going to have to learn something sweetheart… I am not a man who likes being disrespected."

With that, the man took a step back and gestured to his bodyguard, who immediately prowled towards Emily and grabbed her, lifting her like she was a sack of potatoes and throwing her across the room with ease. Emily threw through the air and hit the other side of the room with a nast THUD, sliding to the ground and lying there, groaning in pain. The leader then walked over to her and stood over to him.

"You see what I mean? It's in your best interest to cooperate with me, isn't it dear? I wouldn't want to lose my temper and you getting permanently hurt." He commented. He then moved his left hand towards her once again, but this time he slid it up her leg and hip and then all the way up to grope her chest. As she felt his hand reach the place where only Miguel had touched her before, she swallowed back bile that was climbing up her throat, but out of fear of being killed, she forced herself not to retreat further.

Noticing her submission to him, the man's face spread into a nasty, toothy grin, exposing to her his extremely yellow and blackened teeth.

"Yes. That's it. I believe you and I are going to have some fun, aren't we?"