Free Old Lady by Evelyn Glass

had she been shifted from one house to another? She didn’t quite know. Was it days or weeks? Or perhaps hours? Time had lost all meaning. “Gabby,” said the man in a persistent voice. “Look at me.”
     
    What the hell did he want? Wasn’t it enough that she didn’t protest, didn’t scream, or pleaded? What did he desire more than what he was already going to take?
     
    “Gabby, it’s me. Lyle. Open your eyes. I want to talk to you.” In some corner of her mind in which sanity prevailed, she saw figments of her past life. Lyle? The man who helped her escape. Had she been brought to him?
     
    She opened her eyes. His face swam into view. She was tied to the bed by Joseph and stripped of all clothes. She squirmed as she tried to sit. To her surprise, he opened the bonds that held her. He sat on the bed. “Lyle?”
     
    His eyes traveled down her bruised body that was nearly black and blue. “What have they done to you?”
     
    Tears poured down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop. Gabby didn’t want sympathy. He would do what he always did so there was no point asking for mercy. What was the use anyway? If he didn’t rape her, the next man would. “Kill me, please.”
     
    Much to her surprise, he took her in his arms and patted her back. “Gabby? I want to help you.”
     
    “There is nothing you can do,” she said.
     
    “Is there anyone you can call for help? He told me to surrender my phone before I came in, but I have got another phone. He didn’t know.” Her confused mind couldn’t process the request. “Should I call the police?”
     
    What if she reached someone who was on Joseph’s take? She couldn’t afford that risk. If he knew that she had called the police, he would kill her this instance and throw her body in the river. Joseph was bent on exacting his revenge but he wouldn’t keep her alive if it meant being caught. For him, self-preservation was everything. “No,” she said. “I need to…call someone else.”
     
    Would Lyle actually help her? Was he joking? Perhaps this was part of Joseph’s plan? Maybe he told Lyle to ask her to see if she still had any courage left? But he put the phone in her hand. “You can use this.”
     
    She stared at the phone as if it was a foreign object. “I can call someone. No! Wait!” What the hell would she tell Nick? She couldn’t speak of the horrors that were inflicted on her. “Where are we?”
     
    He gave her the address. “Whom do you want to call?”
     
    With fingers that trembled, she typed out the message and sent Nick a text. She gave him the address of Joseph’s club and this place. Joseph wasn’t too discreet when he called her old clients to see if anyone was interested. She’d heard him talking to a few more of them in half daze while he drove the car. She could take a guess as to where he intended to take her next. Of course, she could be wrong, but she sent Nick the addresses of two other places where he could possibly take her.
     
    Would he come? How long would it take him if he set off now? By the time he arrived in town, she would be elsewhere. He wouldn’t be able to track her. But at least he would know that she tried. At least, that was enough for now.
     
    “Thank you.” She returned the phone to Lyle.
     
    He glanced at her as if he was trying to memories her features. “I am sorry for what he has done.”
     
    Her lips lifted in a wry smile. “It would be better if I was dead. I am as good as. He is not going to let me live.”
     
    “When he called and said that you were available, I couldn’t believe it. You’d left. So I told him yes, that I was interested. My wife has gone out of town, otherwise I would have had to say no. He insisted that you weren’t available in his club. I wondered what that was all about,” he explained.
     
    “He doesn’t want a police raid. I think he is keeping all the girls somewhere else right now because there is an investigation going on against him,” she said. Even