Chapter 2
“No,” Maya screamed. “Stop. Please. You don’t want to do this.”
After two years taking this same route, trying to help people, she’d been captured by militants.
They were dragging her to their compound.
Laughing. Five or six of them.
It was hard to see clearly. Her eyes were swollen shut from being punched so many times. Her jaw was sore. She was certain she had broken ribs from being kicked.
It was impossible to walk on her own. Her legs wouldn’t take orders from her brain. Two men were holding her arms, dragging her. They were walking fast, pulling her along between them. They didn’t care if they injured her further, which meant they had only one use for her. Rape and leave for dead.
That’s often how militants operated. She was well-aware. She’d found evidence of their pillaging before. Homes broken into. The male occupants killed. The females raped and killed or left for dead.
Maya was a fighter. She would fight these men until they were forced to kill her. She would shut off her mind and not let them break her when they raped her. She had to. It was the only way she could survive.
Another sharp tug on her arms as they hauled her into the back of some sort of delivery van.
She fought harder, trying to free her arms. If they took her to another location, she might never find her way back.
But they held on tight to her arms. No matter how hard she tugged, she couldn’t free herself.