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** HOWIE **

If it were at all possible to die from fear, Joey and his steroid-popping friend would have been pulling my lifeless body from the back of the car. Instead, I was being pushed out of the backseat amidst a series of grunts and cursing. The toe of my shoe caught in the dirt and I almost face-planted into the ground. At some point during the drive, Vinny had managed to bind my hands behind my back. The most unnerving part of the whole experience was that I couldn’t even remember him doing it. I felt like I was functioning on autopilot; my ability to think for myself and to fight back seemed to have completely disappeared.

The cable ties cut into my wrists as I struggled to right myself. I could feel my skin tearing against the sharpness of the plastic as Joey came around the side of the car and grabbed me roughly by my upper arm. He jerked me forward and the two of us fell in line with Kevin and Vinny. Kevin’s hands were also locked behind his back, and Vinny was dragging him along in much the same way as Joey was controlling my movements.

The mystery woman was leading the way; staying a few feet ahead of us as we tripped along the flattened grass to what appeared to be an old industrial unit. The nondescript building loomed ahead of us and, while it looked empty, it didn’t appear to be overly rundown.

Joey’s fingers were hot on my skin and I could feel his sweat mixing with mine. My stomach flipped and I could taste the bile in the back of my throat. Kevin and I were in a seriously bad situation.

The tiny blonde came to a stop once we reached the front of the building. She began rooting around in her purse and she eventually pulled out a ring of keys. She inserted the largest key into one of the double doors and my heart sank as it popped open. We were in the middle of nowhere; at least fifteen minutes away from the two lane road that had brought us here. There was no way that anyone was going to be able to find us.

“Take them downstairs.” The woman instructed. She held the door open and gave me and Kevin identical looks of disdain as Vinny and Joey shoved us into the building.

It was dark inside. All of the window coverings had been drawn and nobody made a move to turn on any of the overhead lights. Most of the furniture had been removed, aside from two identical desks and a couple of office chairs. The result was a hollow, echoing space that was enough to triple my heart rate. Our footsteps sounded overly loud as Joey and Vinny directed me and Kevin down a narrow hallway.

The exit sign above the door at the end of the hallway was glowing ominously in the darkness, indicating that the building still had electricity. We reached the door and Vinny pushed it open, revealing a staircase lit only by the soft glow of emergency lighting. We began our decent in silence, and I could hear my own laboured breathing as Joey pushed and pulled me down the steps.

I desperately wanted to scream, to cry out for help, to elbow Joey in the stomach, to run for my life. So, what did I do? I did nothing. I stayed limp and silent and allowed myself to be led further into the depths of the building. I was a coward.

The basement was much the same as the ground floor; sparsely furnished, poorly lit, and hallow. The large space had been divided up into a series of smaller rooms that looked as though they had, at one point, been used strictly for storage. There were no windows and the cheap, florescent lighting flickered and hummed as Vinny turned on the switch. Needless to say, the overhead lighting did little to combat the shadowy dimness.

The four of us crossed the scuffed cement floor at a rapid pace and I found myself struggling to keep up. As usual, I was the shortest of the group and I had to take two steps for every one of Joey’s. I could tell that Joey was becoming agitated with my inability to match his pace as his grip on my arm intensified.

“Where are we going?” Kevin spoke for the first time since the two of us had been forced into the car. “What is it that you want?”

I looked up at Kevin. While his voice sounded relatively calm and steady, his eyes betrayed him. He was scared, probably the most scared that I had ever seen him. I tried to catch his attention, tried to send him a look of support, but he purposefully avoided my gaze. It was then that I knew that he was blaming himself.

“We’re here.” Joey announced. He jerked me to a stop and pushed open a heavy door.

Light flooded into the hallway, disrupting the dimness and causing me to turn my head in order to shield my face. After the darkness of the stairwell and the hallway, the bright light was an assault to my senses. My eyes were still struggling to adjust to the change in illumination as Joey released my arm and shoved me towards the open door.

Once again, I stumbled forward as the toe of my shoe dragged across the floor. I banged into Kevin as the two of us pitched into the room, and we struggled to hold one another up as Joey and Vinny chuckled sadistically in the background.

“Make yourselves comfortable.” Joey quipped, pulling the heavy door closed behind him.

Kevin’s eyes finally met mine as the door slammed shut and the lock clunked into position. The two of us exchanged a petrified glance, before Kevin shifted his gaze and began to look around the room.

The large room was empty, aside from the two of us and a flat screen television that was mounted high on the wall in the far corner. With the exception of the door, everything was cement; the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It was like we were in a tomb; a well-lit, empty, cement tomb.

“They’re filming us.” Kevin jerked his head in the direction of the far wall.

My stomach was officially doing summersaults as I took a few cautious steps towards the wall that housed the television. A closer inspection revealed that there were a series of tiny cameras mounted in specific intervals along the base of the ceiling.

I licked my lips in an effort to clear the dryness from my mouth. “How high do you think the ceilings are?”

Kevin sighed. “Maybe twelve feet.” He slid down the wall so that he was sitting on the floor and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Too high for us to be able to reach the cameras.”

Although it was obvious that Kevin was correct, that wasn’t the answer that I had been hoping for. I cautiously lowered myself to the ground and positioned myself on the floor next to Kevin. The binding around my wrists was becoming increasingly painful, and I winced as I struggled to find a comfortable position on the hard ground.

“Did you recognize the woman?” Kevin asked the question without looking at me. He was staring straight ahead, his gaze locked on the door.

“No.” I shook my head in defeat. I had been racking my brain to try and place the tiny blonde since before we had been herded into the car, but I hadn’t been able to come up with anything.

“Me either.” Kevin admitted. “I can’t believe that I didn’t figure out that Joey was corrupt. He practically tried to kill AJ this morning and I just brushed the whole thing off. What’s wrong with me, Howie? How could I have overlooked something so obvious? How could I have fallen for that woman’s ruse in the hardware store? She asked me about screwdrivers! Do you believe that, screwdrivers?! The paper that we found in the diner bloody well told us that the culprit was a woman and I ignored the whole damn thing!”

Kevin’s voice was wavering as he berated himself and I shuffled closer to him, ignoring the pain in my wrists as I slid along the cold floor. I gently knocked my shoulder against his, forcing him to look at me.

“This isn’t your fault, Kev. I’m just as much to blame as you are. We both read the note in the diner, and we both allowed ourselves to be taken in by the ruse. I was so happy to see Joey in the hardware store that I didn’t even realize that he was holding a gun at me until it was too late.”

“I just don’t understand.” Kevin held tight to my gaze. “What have we done to deserve this?”

This time it was me who looked away first. I settled my eyes on the dark television screen in the corner, forcing myself not to look directly into any of the cameras.

“Nothing.” I deadpanned. “We haven’t done anything to deserve this.”