Free Don't Lose Her by Jonathon King Page A

and realized she’d been crying. Choking against the close air, she began grabbing at the cloth, wrenching at it to pull it from her face. In frustration, she cinched it tighter around her throat instead. Strong hands suddenly clamped onto her wrists, and Diane began screaming for help.
    She may have let loose two, maybe three cries before the sound of a door bursting open was followed by three heavy steps and a clap of thunder in her right ear. The blow spun her. Her body reeled, the creaking bed frame screeched, and the heaviness of her belly swung a fraction of a second behind the rest of her body, sloshing behind the force that sent her hard against the wall.
    Silence, or maybe deafness, followed. The flashes of light she saw were from the slap to her face, not the removal of the hood. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, saw more swirls of light and color behind her eyelids. Then through her undamaged ear, she heard the first words since being in her court chambers—guttural, threatening, deep, but controlled words:
    â€œIf you cannot control her, we will find someone who can.”
    She heard the door slam. Then the stunning quiet took over again. You’re still conscious, Diane thought. The pain at the side of her face was humming, and there was a ringing in her ear, like a high-pitch tinnitus. She curled her back and bowed her head. Does trauma to the mother cause damage to the fetus? she wondered. If you go unconscious, maybe it does, and if you stop breathing, definitely. End of heartbeat? Stay alive, Diane, no matter what. She again listened to the silence.
    Then she concentrated, tuned her good ear: Was the captor still there? The one who had obviously been upbraided for letting her scream? She stilled her own heart rate and breathing, and settled herself, then listened intently to the air—to the vibration of it, the movement. Maybe the electric air of the disturbance itself made it hard for her to get back to the acute listening she’d been trying to cultivate. Was she alone, or not? Was her guard still here? Was he pissed because she’d gotten him into trouble? Was it possible to hear anger?
    She made a tactical choice.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said.
    No reaction.
    â€œI’m sorry I screamed and got you into trouble. I panicked. I won’t do it again.”
    Nothing—no response. No “shut up, bitch,” or “It’s just a job for me.” No scraping of chair legs. No sliding open of a shut window, just to change the air and take a breath.
    Diane listened closer for the breathing she’d detected before. Certainly, any human being would be feeling something after the threat from that guttural voice that had just berated her overseer. Anger like that raises the blood pressure and increases the respiration. No one could not be affected.
    Then she heard it: a ticking, a wispy click, click, click -ing. She knew the sound of texting. She made it herself when she used her phone while court was in session. She thought of it as a quiet, incognito way to communicate even when you weren’t supposed to be doing it.
    My guard is texting someone, reaching out, outside of this room at least , she thought. A connection to the outside was something, she told herself—a possibility.
    â€œYou can understand that I’m afraid, can’t you?” she said aloud. “I’m a pregnant woman grabbed off the street and stuck in this room with a bag over my head. You can understand that I’m scared, for myself and for my baby.
    â€œYou were a baby once,” she said, taking the chance, making the calculated move, working the only possibility for compassion that she could think of.
    â€œYou have a mother, too. Wouldn’t your mother be afraid for you?”

Chapter 13
    W hen she was sure the woman was asleep, Rae carefully, so carefully, slipped out of the room to pee, to see Danny, and to bitch. On the landing outside, she looked