He remained still, not wanting to wake Autumn yet. She was breathing so peacefully, her body in perfect rest.
The footsteps approached, and he squeezed his eyes shut as the bolts were unlatched.
‘Autumn, you need to wake up. They’re coming back,’ he whispered.
She murmured, and as gently as he could, he shifted her off of him and scampered away from her.
The door creaked open.
*
Her eyes were sore, and her mouth was dry. She was lying on the floor, and it took a few seconds before she realized where she was. There were people in the room. Nathan, where was Nathan?
She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t move.
‘Get up! Get him up!’ the leader of the group yelled.
‘Nathan!’ she called, her voice giving away her terror.
There was no response to her anguished cry, just more scuffling then the slam of the door. She was alone.
*
The room engulfed her in silence. She had started to count as soon as he had left the room and was now up to 8095. She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t count indefinitely. What if he didn’t come back? As she processed that thought, her heart lurched. Maybe that was why he wasn’t back. He wasn’t coming back. They had killed him. A sick feeling manifested itself in her gut, rising up into her throat. She swallowed it back down as her eyes spilled hot tears. What would she do if he was gone? He had become everything to her. Everything. In a few days, she had gone from thinking he was a vulgar, rough bastard to believing he was the person she wanted to spend her life with. He was good. He made her good.
There were shouts coming from outside the door. Autumn held her breath and closed her eyes.
Was he alive? Was he coming back?
*
The door opened and he fell to the floor. Every part of him throbbed with pain. He tried to open his eyes, to get a sense of where he was. One eye opened steadily, the other he could barely blink.
‘Nathan! Are you all right?’
He heard her call, but her voice sounded like it was in a vacuum. He’d taken several blows to the head with a chair, as well as a beating from all four members of the group in turn. He’d fought back to begin with, as much as you could with both your hands bound, but eventually, he’d run out of energy. He needed to let them have their way, and, at least while they battered him with blunt objects and their fists, they weren’t holding a gun to his head.
He needed to get the rope from his and Autumn’s hands. They wouldn’t be coming back for them tonight. They had to ensure their video went live and was distributed to the appropriate channels.
‘Nathan,’ Autumn called again.
He crawled on his stomach in the direction he thought the nail in the wall was. It was painfully slow, every inch felt like a mile, but he had to get Autumn untied, get some water into her, make her more comfortable.
‘I’m… okay,’ he said. Forming the words took effort, but he continued on, dragging his aching body toward the wall.
‘You’ve been gone such a long time. I was worried. I thought they had… What did they do to you?’ she asked.
‘Just… give me a… minute,’ he croaked. He felt along the baseboard for the nail. Where the fuck was it? His finger found it at last, and he began furiously rubbing the rope against it.
‘Are you hurt? Nathan, where are you? Please come here.’
‘I’ll be there just… give me a second… to get this rope off.’
The anguish in her tone hurt him inside, and he moved the cord back and forth as fast as he could.
He was done with pretending now. He didn’t know what was going to happen. He had never felt so out of control before. He had made her promises, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep them. He knew the government didn’t care about his fate, but what about hers? Was she going to be collateral damage? Would her mother really let that happen?
His rope came loose, and he squeezed his hands out of the entrapment and threw the bindings to the floor. He tore the sack from his head, ran to her, and knelt by her side, then very gently began removing the hood from her head.
‘Close your eyes. I’m going to take this off,’ he told her.
She shivered as the sack inched away from her face. When the covering was finally off, he swallowed a ball of emotion as he saw the extent of her facial injury. Her cheek was red and swollen, and a large, dark bruise was already starting to form.
She blinked open her eyes and adjusted to the dim light.
*
She let out a gasp as Nathan untied her hands.
It wasn’t because he was hurting her. It was in response to how he looked. One of his eyes was bruised and almost swollen closed. He had abrasions all over his face, a cut to his head, and his shirt had been ripped open, revealing more wounds on his abdomen.
‘Nathan, they hurt you so badly,’ she whispered as he finally released her hands.
He moved his hands to examine her cheek. ‘Your face,’ he remarked.
‘It’s fine, a little sore, but… You need something on that eye,’ she told him, holding one wrist with her hand and smoothing over the skin.
He reached for the bottle behind him. ‘You need to drink some water. Here.’ He unscrewed the lid and held it out to her.
It was only then, on the very verge of being able to have fluids, that she realized how sore her lips were and how dry her throat had become. She took hold of the bottle and guzzled greedily.
‘Try to take slow sips. Not too much,’ he instructed.
She stopped drinking and held it out to him.
He shook his head and let out a sigh.
