Lucia
The first thing she felt was the jarring, rocking motion. Then, crawling up her nose and coating her throat was the smell of gasoline and damp earth.
The first thing she saw was nothing.
Darkness. Absolute and suffocating.
Lucia’s head pounded, her thoughts thick and syrupy as if moving through tar. A groan escaped her lips, but the sound was muffled. There was something in her mouth, a rough cloth tied tight.
Panic, sharp and cold, began to cut through the drug-induced fog. She tried to move, to sit up, but her hands were bound tight behind her back, her ankles cinched together.
She was in the trunk of a car.
The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow, and she began to struggle, a useless, frantic thrashing in the cramped space.
The motion only made the na
