A/N: I swear I fully intended to post this on Friday, after writing it in my study period, but real life in the form of homework interrupted slightly. When I got home I got some bad news about an old school friend and then I spent the whole weekend away on retreat, so sorry!
Disclaimer: Jess, Rob and the motorcycle belong to Meg Cabot and various publishers around the world.
Chapter three
You know that feeling you get when you wake up and you don't know where you are? Maybe you're in an unfamiliar bed or can't work out why you've been asleep. Yeah, that one, the feeling of who, what where, when, why. The one you recover from in about two minutes. Well, multiply that by about 6 million and you are beginning to approach my feelings on waking up. I knew straight away that this wasn't my own bed in my own room – I had no blanket for one thing. I also knew that it wasn't Ruth's room as I was in complete darkness and she always sleeps with a lamp on. Really there was nowhere else I ever slept, except Rob's, and I couldn't think why I might be there. Gingerly I reached out to either side. My left hand touched the floor beside the mattress – it was cold concrete. My right hand, meanwhile, collided with a warm body. I instantly froze, but the person didn't move. Slowly, carefully I moved my fingers across the person's chest and, realizing it was a man, up onto his face. As my digits brushed a familiar face I realized that it was Rob. Shit.
What had happened last night? Surely I hadn't slept with him? All I remembered was him picking me up late from school and announcing his decision not to take me all the way back to his. Then a sense of fear. We'd crashed. The memory filled my brain like ice and I jerked upright, no longer caring about the sleeper now I knew it was Rob.
We had crashed and a paramedic had given me something and now I was lying in a dark room on a mattress in a building that was definitely not a hospital. Oh shit. This was it. For ages Rob had been warning me that I was really going to upset someone and, clearly, I had. Big time.
I jumped up and paced the room. It was tiny – no more than ten feet by ten feet. There was a door (locked) in one wall and no windows, or at least none that I could reach. Disappointed at the apparent proficiency of our captor or captors I sank back down on to the mattress and felt, rather than saw, Rob struggle up to a sitting position and mutter, "ugh, what hit me?"
Yes, I know it was probably a rhetorical question but hey, I'd been sedated, kidnapped, locked in a dark room and was absolutely terrified. I wasn't thinking so I responded, somewhat acidly, "the ground."
"Jess?" he croaked, "where are we? 'Cos you know, I really don't think this is the hospital." I agreed and told him the results of my short walk, then thought for a moment.
"Hang on, what about that paramedic, then?" I asked, suddenly remembering my friend with the needle.
"I dunno" replied Rob, his voice still groggy with sleep, "but since we're locked in a dark room with a really skanky mattress, I'm willing to bet he wasn't actually a paramedic."
"So…so do you think we've actually been kidnapped then?" I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.
"Mastriani, we're locked u…" he began, trailing off as the part of his brain marked 'overprotective boyfriend' suddenly gave the rest of his mind a good kicking. "Come here," he finished, reaching out an arm to pull me close; with, it has to be said, some difficulty, since we were in pitch darkness.
Just as he said this we heard footsteps outside the room and then, as I scooted backwards into Rob's suddenly clutching embrace, a key was inserted into the lock and the door flew open. The light flooded in and Rob flung up an arm to protect his eyes as I turned my head into his broad shoulder. As my eyes adjusted to the sudden change I turned back to look at the doorway. I couldn't see the features of the man, who was very short, but his voice, when he spoke, sent chills through me. It was a voice I had thought to be safely locked up, along with its owner, in the maximum security wing of the state penitentiary.
"Hank, Ginger, good to see you again," said Jim Henderson.
A/N 2: I have realised that I may have completely confused some people with chapter two. If the plot so far is still unclear, e-mail me and I will explain slowly and carefully in words of less than two syllables.