I arch my brow. Is he trying to make a joke about his situation? He’s lucky to be alive, and he’s making light of his strength? Did they knock a screw loose?
“I’m not sure when I can do that again.”
“Because your boyfriend might walk in?” he asks. “He didn’t look too happy to find you in here earlier.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I huff, looking down at floor. “He’s my captor.”
“Captor?”
“You’re not the only prisoner in this place.” He glances down at my monitoring bracelet. “I’m a slave here,” I confess. “My uncle sold me to them as a child when he couldn’t pay his debts.”
Priest stares at me, his eyes taking in the scars buried beneath the fresh bruises on my arms. “They obviously beat you. Do they rape you?”
I swallow. I’ve never spoken so openly about my captivity to another living soul, but if I want his help, he needs to know my situation. “They rape all of us. Some of the girls are just more willing to adapt than others.”
Priest curses inaudibly under his breath. Anger comes off of him in waves as he forces himself to stand from the cot. His legs shake beneath him, and he has to use the wall to help him move closer to the front of the cell where I’m now standing, his chest heaving from the labor of his motions.
“He hits you,” he whispers as he draws closer.
I reach up, touching the tender spot where Alan had struck me earlier. “He gets off on hurting me.” My voice trembles at the admission. “It’s the same for all of us. If we comply, they’ll reward us with less beatings and more chores.”
His hand reaches for my face, but when I recoil from his touch, he drops it. “You want out, don’t you? That’s why you’re helping me, with the extra food and stuff?”
“I want out of here more than anything,” I reply, hope filling my chest. Stupid fuckinghope. “But you’re no help to me in your condition. You can barely stand. And by the smell of you, I’d say something is getting infected.”
“You need to call my club president. That’s the only way either one of us is getting out of here.”
My heart sinks to the floor. Making a phone call is a huge risk. “Is that our only option?”
“I was alone when they grabbed me,” he grits out, his voice laced with pain. “My club doesn’t know where I am, or they’d already be busting down that fucking door. You call him, they’ll come.”
“I don’t have a phone,” I admit, the budding hope I’d been feeling mutating into dread. “Getting access to one is impossible.”
“Make it possible,” he urges. “Without that call, neither of us are leaving.”
I hesitate. Why, I don’t fucking know. The answer to my prayers is literally standing in front of me with an offer of escape, and I’m hesitating. What the hell is wrong with me? I should be jumping at this chance.
My mind races through the possibilities. I could get a phone and get caught. Alan would likely kill me. Or I could get a phone and not get caught. Either way, Alan will eventually kill me. That’s a fate I’ve always known as an inevitability.
“I’ll try.”
Priest stares at me for a long moment, and then he nods. “Can you remember a number?”
“Yes.”
He rattles off a number. I repeat it back to him, and he says it again. We do this back and forth, reciting the number several times before he seems satisfied.
“You call that number, tell Judge where I am, and he’ll come. He’ll get us both out of here.”
The faint rumble of motorcycles outside reverberates off the stone walls. They’re back.
“I have to go,” I squeak, fear flooding every cell in my body. “If they find me in here, they’ll kill us both.”
I turn to run, but Priest reaches out and gently grabs my wrist, his eyes boring into mine. “Call Judge.”
“I’ll try.” I choke out the words before bolting from the cells. I run at full speed, barely making it into the hallway when the hinges on the back-door creak open.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.