Free Long Live the Queen by Ellen Emerson White

image of one. She narrowed her eyes. “Did you go to a good school?”
    He laughed again. “Want to see my class ring?”
    Automatically, she looked at his hands. No rings, of course. An expensive, but plain, Rolex. Nothing distinctive. She tried to read the time, and he immediately took the watch off, tucking it into his pocket.
    Damn. “Well—how do you communicate with them?” she asked. “I mean, how are you going to know what to do to me, or anything?”
    He smiled, very slowly looking her over. “Oh, I have a few ideas of what I’d like to do to you.”

    She couldn’t help shuddering, moving her arm to try and cover herself.
    â€œ More than a few,” he said.
    Yeah, fine, whatever. She nodded stiffly. “I get the point.”
    â€œThe point ,” he said, “is that once I have you, it’s my show. They can do or say whatever they want, but the deal was autonomy.”
    Meg frowned. “So, they take all the credit, yank everyone around thinking they have me, but really don’t have anything to do with it?”
    â€œBingo,” he said.

7
    WHEN HE WAS gone, with a mocking “Sleep well,” she couldn’t stop shivering. It seemed even colder and darker sitting on the floor and, with a lot of effort, she managed to pull herself up onto the bed. Spots of color seemed to be bouncing against her eyes, and she closed them, the throbbing in her nose joining her jaw and her head. Moving around had started a fresh rivulet of blood, and she tilted her head back against the wall. Her whole face felt sticky, and she wondered—for the first time—if her nose was actually broken . Jesus Christ.
    She closed her eyes more tightly, praying that the pain would fade. People got beaten up all the time and still managed to—Christ, Steven had come home with so many black eyes and bloody noses over the years that they—Steven. Was her family safe? And Josh? She was almost sure that he had been lying about Josh being—but, what if he wasn’t ? What if—thinking wasn’t going to help much. And, if she started crying, it wasn’t going to help at all . The important thing was to stay cool, and—why the hell hadn’t they ever briefed her about something like this? All of that god-damn security—and here she was, lying in some place , and—weakest link, they were probably saying to her mother. Human error. Lack of precedent. We’re really sorry. One thing for sure—all hell must be breaking loose.
    The blood seemed to be stopping and cautiously, she brushed at it with her sleeve. Talk about gross. Her eyes seemed to be swelling shut, which was going to make it even harder to stay awake. But, she couldn’t sleep —she had to be ready. He—or someone else—might come in, and—and—it was hard to decide which would be
worse: them coming in to kill her, or coming in to do something—obscene. Something—her stomach literally seemed to turn over and she made herself swallow, not wanting to throw up. Not that there was much of anything inside. Jesus, what a day to decide to skip lunch.
    Not that she was hungry. Exactly. But, she was definitely thirsty . All she could taste was blood, and everything hurt , and—okay, okay, she had to focus. He’d said “Sleep well,” so he probably wasn’t coming back until the morning to bring her food or whatever. Which meant that maybe he was lying about not negotiating. Otherwise, it would have made a lot more sense just to execute her—Christ—or—the only thing she could tell for sure, was that he seemed to be feeling pretty safe. Seemed, to a degree, to be playing this by ear. So, all she could really do was wait. He was cocky as hell, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t about to be rescued. Except that the longer this went on—unless it stretched into days , and they could get